I was abused too. I have cptsd. My sister and I both had it rough. The only difference was I had a golden cage with a comfort while she did not have anything taken care of. I was given food while she was starved. The abuse inflicted was different. She tried suicide while my abusers soul murdered me to meet their needs. It’s just different however I still think I had it better.
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This will probably be a quiet post
Yup. Although I wasn’t always the golden child… More the peace maker or (I hate this term) “hero” child with elements of the golden child. My mother made me an extension of herself.
I’m younger than my scapegoated sister. She was abused (physically then emotionally by my mother), and she emotionally abused me growing up so it was VERY confusing. She deserves love and a healthy family. So do I. I just can’t be her therapist and my mother’s (they both tried to make my their therapist).
I think that I clung to the definitions of family roles to help me understand what was going on. It helped but it also limits my perspective on the complexity of toxic family dynamics. I also realize now that roles can be pretty fluid and change at the whim of the narc parent’s desires and behavior, and/or if one person starts to shift and heal/break free. I went from favored to scapegoated, with hills and valleys in between. My sister went from scapegoat to hero, but I’m convinced she’ll be scapegoated frequently since she’s still in contact with my mother and I’m NC with both of them.
So yes, I do find that I minimize my own experiences with abuse because I felt complicit in my older sister’s abuse while I was a child and teen. But I also realize that my mother triangulated us, which created an impossible dynamic and also resulted in my older sister taking out everything on me instead of my mother.
Edited to add: you’re not alone, OP. I feel you.
My GC sister is still in the cult, even though the Ns are dead. I wish she’d wake up.
Me!✋🏻
Yes I’ve always felt guilty that my older sister was the scapegoat and suffered worse abuse but I’ve never felt that my trauma was not valid. The reason I became the gc in the first place was because I always kept a blank face and never talked back when ndad was abusing us. I was constantly praised for having no needs and no emotions. That didn’t get me anywhere good in life. All my siblings to seem to be doing a little better than I am.
I was the scapegoat, and I always envied the golden child. However, seeing how everything has shaken out, I am glad to not be in her place. I learned self-reliance, how to speak up, how to fight back. While I don’t always see them, I can spot red flags better than she can. I got away and she didn’t. She might never get away.
Golden children don’t always have it better in the long run.
Not many GCs realize they are GCs. As a Scape I feel the opposite as you feel. I am thankful things were so bad for me, as that road led to freedom, strength, and a chance to break then cycle. So for me, I understand I had a hard youth but at least I can find a road to a real life. At least I have the chance.
As your thread might be lean on answers, I hope I might be able to give you comfort from a scapegoat’s perspective.
I was the scapegoat and my younger sister the GC.
We’ve only recently realised that the reason our mother is the way she is, is due to her being a covert narcissist.
I always thought my sister had it easy… but through this process of revelation/discovery and extensive conversation with my sister, I’ve realised that she suffered every bit as much as I did – and in some ways more.
I was scapegoated because I refused to conform to our mother’s will. I was punished physically and emotionally for my refusals.
Witnessing my physical punishments, my younger sister lived in terror of receiving the same… and because of her fear allowed herself to become exactly who she was told to be. She was timid, shy and quiet… and entirely lost herself and her Self in that process.
I gravitated towards our dad, and his love kept me whole and vibrant… meaning I reached adulthood as a confident, outspoken and unbroken person.
My sister remained ‘mummy’s girl’ (our mother’s words)… and has not enjoyed good physical or mental health as an adult.
What I want to say is that whilst you named your sibling/s may have had very different experiences, your trauma is still perfectly valid – and the effects on your adulthood will be just as real.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. 🩷
My brother was the scapegoat until he died. Now I’m the scapegoat. It sucks and I wish I could have said that to him. That he wasn’t crazy the way they projected on him.
Yes. A million times a million. I literally turned into a brat in High School just to get the attention off my hated sister. I became the scapegoat but even as a teen I was well educated on family dysfunction and was able to save her to some extent.
Me except I had no scapegoat sibling. My „I had it worse than you“ invalidating person is my nmom LOL
I alternated being forced into both roles till my 9 years younger brother was born and then he was golden and I was the goat. Till I turned 18 and got out, then I got the gold status and he got the abuse. I felt bad about how he was treated after I left but he never cared when our roles were reversed. About a decade ago when I went zero contact with everyone he was still an asshole.
I was the scapegoat. I feel like being the scapegoat made it easier for me to see that we were being abused, and that made it easier on me emotionally when I left. I was abused in ways my sister wasn’t, but that doesn’t mean she survived our childhood unscathed.
My GC sister became a narcissist as an adult, but I still remember her as a 5-6 year old, melting down into a puddle of tears and despair because her report card wasn’t perfect, and she was terrified of disappointing our parents. Our mom stood over her and just looked down in disgust, and didn’t even try to comfort her.
My sister wasn’t beaten or sexually abused (that I know of. Our dad was pretty fixated on me, but who knows?). Still, she saw our parents abuse me repeatedly. She saw my dad hit me, and worse. Witnessing abuse is still abuse. It is an implied threat to the other kids, that they will be treated the same way if they fail to toe the line.
Emotional abuse is abuse. It does terrible damage.
This is a quote by Edith Eger. She was imprisoned in Auschwitz, so she definitely knows something about suffering and abuse:
>I also want to say that there is no hierarchy of suffering. There’s nothing that makes my pain worse or better than yours, no graph on which we can plot the relative importance of one sorrow versus another. People say to me, “Things in my life are pretty hard right now, but I have no right to complain — it’s not Auschwitz.” This kind of comparison can lead us to minimize or diminish our own suffering. Being a survivor, being a “thriver” requires absolute acceptance of what was and what is. If we discount our pain, or punish ourselves for feeling lost or isolated or scared about the challenges in our lives, however insignificant these challenges may seem to someone else, then we’re still choosing to be victims. We’re not seeing our choices. We’re judging ourselves.
Edith Eger, The Choice: Embrace the Possible
I’m an only child so I was the golden child scapegoat, and the glass child all rolled up into one………..
I’m the youngest daughter among three children. I have two older brothers..
My oldest brother is my mother’s Golden Child. To her, he is the perfect son who always gave in to her antics and never “disrespected” her despite her actions. He always tried to make amends with her whenever they happen to fight. She became emotionally dependent on him especially when my dad passed, he was left with no choice but to become a sub-parent to me and my other brother.
The older brother is the scapegoat. It seemed like everything he ever does is wrong. She often called him names, commented on his weight, puts a curse on him to not do well in life especially because he looked like my dad the most out of all siblings. She tells us he doesn’t have a dream and no plans for his future. I can see that he’s very much overwhelmed by the pressure of becoming a veterinarian like our dad was. He never wanted to become one but had to because no one will inherit our dad’s clinics (he never did anyway because he remarried and none of the clinics were put to my brother’s name)
As for me, I’m quite in the middle. She wants me to be her other Golden Child. After all, I’m her one and only daughter. If there’s anyone who could become exactly like her, it’s me. I am conventionally attractive, I have a well paying job for a young age, and I’ve always done well in school. Life has been a series of emotional neglect and a lot of verbal abuse. I’ve grown to become a perfectionist, and ironically, becoming one made it so hard to function as a normal person in adulthood. At surface level, I’m the perfect child, but she always hated the way I have critical thinking and a strong desire for self-expression. She tries to beat it out of me by provoking me to anger and making me the aggressor.
All of us went through different kinds of trauma from our mother. Even the Golden Child himself. I talked to my oldest brother about everything that happened and still happening, and we often confide in each other. I couldn’t talk to my older brother about it because we were never that close. I’m afraid he will tell me he doesn’t share the same trauma, and I’ll spiral into self-doubt again because he had it worse. I struggle with CPTSD, and since none of my brothers ever tried to get help, my brain sometimes tell me I was making this all up for attention.
I think about it every day, I talk about it at least once per therapy sessions. I live with so much guilt and think about how my mom and dad having them at 18 and being hellaciously physically abusive with my siblings in the early 80s versus me having 30 year old parents in the late 90s who just felt I was their “last shot” at a “smart” child.
My siblings see it as me being given more opportunities and therefore more loved but it was I wasn’t accepted or loved AT ALL unless my grades were perfect (and I was not an A+ smart student even though my mom will say otherwise). She wanted the type A doctor but got the weird creative type B instead, what’s hilarious is either sibling are more type A and competitive and probably would have excelled in school if they didn’t have our parents.
sadly there really is no “better” or “worse” for many of us here. The abuse just differs but it’s still abuse and none of it is good in any capacity or in any moderation whatsoever.
any form or moderation of abuse matters and there isn’t one that matters less than another.
I’ve found that dropping this whole mindset of better or worse can also be quite liberating. And that’s really because these limited inaccurate perceptions of “better” and “worse” were most likely put upon us at a very young age by the very same people who felt entitled to abuse us.
My mom wanted so bad for me to submit to the role but i was primarily the truth teller so that meant a looottttt of friction and manipulation to keep me in check. I hate all versions of the role and still do. VLC now. My brother thought I had it easy until I explained all the ideation and self-loathing I endured quietly and he was shocked I had it bad too. Like, dude, I was bullied everyday by classmates and at home and you were always trying to be the peacemaker instead of my ally in this meaning dignifying her abuse. I thought you knew.
Never felt more alone with my family than in the last few years and the covert sexual, emotional, and financial abuse getting rugswept by the sibling I didn’t realize was jealous of me even though I got abused too? Fuck it all
I am the scapegoat. My youngest sibling is the GC. Sadly, GC is more like our mother than they’d like to admit. None of us speak to our mother, but the rest of us are NC with the GC. Their own children hate them. GC isn’t physically abusive, but is definitely a narcopath & a perpetual victim.
Scapegoat here. My GCsis thinks she had it bad so no one else matters. She did learn the lesson of the golden one – only she matters. Certainly not me, the scapegoat, who “got what I deserved” as Ndad always said.
I’m looking at it from a distance of many years. I was the scapegoat, but thanks to a lot of self-discipline and growth and healing , I’m doing OK.
My GC sibling, on the other hand is just now starting to realize how deep the abuse went, now that nmom is gone. It was some insidious shit.
Scapegoat here. The GC abuse is insidious. It’s crazy.
Only after many years do I really see it. GC can’t do anything. He can’t leave because he has no money, no resume, no job or work history, no references, no skills or trade. He can’t get an apartment—see above. He can’t get OT or PT or even regular therapy because he has no income and he’s on Medicaid if he’s on anything. He’s living with NM and he’s there until the end of time. And there’s a real possibility that he’s going to be 80 and run out of people willing to let him play video games and eat chicken nuggets and he’s going to be homeless.
He’s a leech. He’s just letting it happen and he’s missed 90% of things in life because of his own laziness or whatever it is. He will not buy his dream car. He will not have his mom over for thanksgiving at his own place or for a cookout. He will not buy his first house let alone his dream house. He will not celebrate a promotion or delivering a project at work. He will not be married to a college sweetheart and celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary. He won’t have grandchildren. He won’t have children. He won’t have a retirement party and a send off from his last job.
At this point, he’s absorbed all of my mother and left me to the tender mercies of NGM. They got to abuse me because they could cry that they were helping him. They ignored my accomplishments—even getting tossed from my wedding. They totally missed my son’s birth. And they totally wrecked my MILs and my relationship by trying to get her to be in the middle.
Abuse is abuse and it’s valid no matter which side of GC to SG you are on. But I think it’s human to wonder if your trauma is valid. I also think it’s human for a scapegoat to want little to do with a GC.
I was the golden child AND the scapegoat. So, no.