This sounds so very painful. It sounds a lot like my family - we hurt you, and then we get mad at you for looking sad or angry!

A lot of times in families one kid is chosen as the scapegoat. Some kids can do no wrong, but the scapegoat can do no right. Why? Who knows. Maybe you look like somebody's mother, or maybe you arrived at an inconvenient time, or ... any number of reasons, none of which are your fault or have anything to do with who you really are.

sorry for that i was the scapegoat because i was different and gay in a redneck family upbringing very very hard

...it's terrifically hard to accept that you were a normal kid.

Your parents were warped and took their emotional problems out on you. It wasn't you.

Oh my. So familiar to me that I think our fathers read from the same Lousy Father Handbook. Incredibly so. (I was told "you're lucky I don't hurt you" as well, verbatim. Creepy.)

I was the scapegoat, my older (and abusive) sister the Darling Princess Golden Child....

My bad luck was simply---born. That was it.

My sister did foster some of it. I hated admitting that. (Sibling abusers are not often acknowledged, apparently, but we acknowledge them here!).... She would punch me (I was five years younger) and then run to our parents crying I slapped *her*.... Um.... I was four. She was nine. I couldn't reach her *face*.... Didn't matter. She was Always Right. I was Always Wrong.

My dad and sis, who gave me this lovely PTSD of mine (grrr) are long dead. My mom, when asked by me, "Why din't you ever ask me what happened instead of just always believing my sister?".... replied, "Why would she lie?" And I answered back, "Why would I?"

Yeah. They wanted me to live in their lies. Didn't work. Why? Who knows? Random piling up of tiny bits of bad luck. I still think Dad turned against me because Mom's water broke when she was in the car on the way to the hospital, and he was driving her in his beloved Mustang. I might've damaged his upholstery, y'know? Makes about as much sense as anything else he ever did.

Sorry to ramble. been there, done that.

Soft support and prayers.

Dad was Appalachia. Family Is All. To admit disloyalty or dislike? Express car to He**.... or, perhaps, freedom from their tyranny of lies. And that scares the heck outta them.

donna and I share the family type that it seems you share, too. A family that hurt you and then demanded that you play along with a happy family script.

It seems such families follow similar scripts of abuse, really, and one role they assign to a family member is the scapegoat role, as donna mentioned. The unresolved issues of the family are dumped on that one. It's almost like being the lightning rod.

Their need to do that predated our arrival in the world, so becoming their scapegoat child really wasn't our fault, as donna says. It's hard to accept that, because if we had any responsibility we might have any control to change it. But it was a dynamic begun before we were born. It is theirs to change.

Usually, they won't change, which makes it hard going forward. In my case the refusal to change was so great that I reached the point of feeling I needed to go forward without my family in my life any more so I could have a healthy life without that undue burden.

Whatever you decide, you are not to blame.

so true we have a patriarch in my family of origin or the godfather she is rich and powerful,, and a brother who is rich and aloof and the brother who died who had to be perfect and of course i being the first female and getting alot of abuse from the as leo referred good ole boys,, and then my baby sister who everybody rescues and controls it is a spiral but i am sure in any abusive family there is a ton of pathology i remember Joihn Bradshaw, on the famiy and he and the Hazelden folks did alot of publishing on shame and the family secrets HOMECOMING was great

I am overwhelmed with the responses. Honestly I have been responding to these overwhelming feelings so viciously. I felt really jittery and numb at the same time. But I ate and I feel better. It's good to not feel alone but bittersweet to talk about. Good in the sense that I tend to deny my feelings for the sake of keeping peace around me. My counselor says I'm breaking my role. I don't really want to feel sorry for me I just want to feel something? Idk how to explain it

I'm glad it sounds as if our experiences are confirming what your counselor says. Your counselor says you're breaking your role in the family dysfunctional system. That takes enormous courage. Many people do not, even when they see how dysfunctional the system is. There's the saying "misery loves company" and they choose that rather than taking up the challenge of being an individual who breaks from the family's unhealthy but scripted pattern.

It takes a lot of support to break that pattern, and when you break it then there's the challenge of learning how to write your own script. Of learning how to feel your own feelings. So it's a learning process. That's why a support group of peers helps with what's going on in therapy, Hischild.

It is hard to explain. For me, it was fear, as if my truth equals instant punishment.... and a need to have my Voice Be Heard despite consequences. I often feel upsode down and sideways, unable to get words to describe how every therapy session or month or something seems to strip off The Me I See as taught by the cruel ones... and the Me That Is. I have no idea sometimes who I am other than Not Them.

Qnd grief for what was, what ccould or should have been,erc.? A huge thing for many of us.

Ipad, sorry for typos, but yes, the jittery overwhelming and stepping out of that place made for you is toughh stuff. No selfpity in that, just honesty. I started trying to step free as a teen and my blood kin on my dads side are noone to me now but names and memories. No contact, at my decision. I cannot heal if i am still standing in the fire.

Rambling, apologies, but yeah, the jittery feeling is familiar...

I want to feel feelings, I really do. But then I feel guilty for them? Relatable? I also feel like talking about them assumes I'm begging for attention, but I'm not trying to. And then this terrible spiral of emotions result in physical pain... wrist pain, chest pain among others. Often leading to feelings of guilt, anger, hopelessness and regret. I get so mad and I don't know where to direct my anger. Who am I mad at? Am I mad at the abuser? Those who sat back to watch? Myself for allowing it to happen? Myself for *making* it happen. Anger leads to remorse. I feel like I am not good enough. I feel empty inside and it repeats. Back at denial of a problem at all.