The scapegoat is great if you are not the scapegoat.
Psychologically, what you do is project your painful reaction to a life event onto some other poor soul and then make sure they are punished well and properly for it. It leaves a pleasant feeling of satisfaction in your stomach, until the problem returns and the cycle begins again, at which point you find someone new to do it with.
When it’s done in a small group, we call it “bullying.” In large organizations we call it a “blame culture.” Between countries is usually the reason for war. As an individual, you can only be aware of it, but will you know when it is happening to you and will you recognize and accept what needs to be done to avoid it?
The scapegoat is the act of creating an ‘escape goat’ that we tie to the ground for a predator to eat, giving the rest of us time to escape; what was once a tribal survival tactic is now deeply ingrained in human social behavior.
A wonderful method as long as you are not the scapegoat, huh? But there is also another twist to this story. In their defense, the older generations developed a way to make the younger and fit members of our tribes join in privilege as well – we call this heroism.
I’m not talking about heroism; simply saying that you need to be careful that you are not acting like a hero in a situation where you don’t fully understand what is happening.
Heroes sacrifice for the greater good. This is fine as long as you survive the sacrifice opportunity (i.e. you kill the beast or the beast pacifies itself in some other way) you get some of that greater good yourself.
What if, after sacrificing a large part of your life or risking your neck for a while, you find that the ‘greater good’ is not what you receive yourself from those for whom you took this risk? You should pay attention to this and make sure to stop offering yourself as a sacrificial lamb if it is a person or a group of people who do not want the same good things for you that they want for themselves after the ‘beast’ is defeated. .
In many dysfunctional families, for example, the beast is the norm of behavior for the family itself.
To prevent each individual family member from having to deal with the pain of their own inner world, aggressive families sometimes name a “black sheep.” Seen as the worst member of the family, they then blame that person for all their ills, avoiding facing the predator within (their painful feelings). The scapegoat gets a reward from this process by feeling very important; if it is not noticeable. They get a lot, a lot of attention from this process, which is better than the lack of attention they had before.
I remember working with a young man a couple of years ago where the rest of the family came from (two whole generations plus uncles and aunts) and they all talked about their concerns for him. As they spoke, the family members criticized each other for the way they treated him, and past arguments would come up and argue again in front of him. Dazzling eyes, snappy comments, it all works. He would have thought he was on the brink of a violent criminal future.
The young man himself sat passively, answered questions intelligently (however, according to the family, he was a bit grumpy and unpredictable) and when I spoke to him alone, it was very easy to get along with him. He had become the eye of the family storm: he was the family scapegoat.
This kind of thing can last for years, and eventually, if you are the scapegoat, you may start to believe the hype on an unconscious level. Here is what to do if this happens to you:
Salt.
It will not be easy for you.
The first reason is because it can mean months of unpleasant planning in several different areas: financially; logistically; legally. It could take years to just move out (the young man I speak of earlier left his family a few months later).
The second reason it can be difficult is because when they realize that the scapegoat has escaped, other members of the group want the scapegoat to return and will chase after it.
Scapegoats can be useful for a number of reasons: they tend to give to people and, as such, are quite useful financially and in other ways; They make great absorbent punching bags who love to take full responsibility for getting hit (heroes).
I have seen many people, of all ages and different types, play the role of the scapegoat and become seriously emotionally ill from it.
In their mind, they justify this treatment with an internal dialogue such as: “they don’t know what they’re doing” or “someday they’ll get it” or “they didn’t really mean that.”
they know exactly what they are doing. It is you who does not understand. They mean everything they say, you just aren’t listening. Still here?
What a great person you are, huh? Hello scapegoat.