In this vlog, Fun Coach Tamika explains the concept of the family scapegoat within narcissistic family systems, sharing her own experience as a former scapegoat and how that trauma influences her parenting. She cites Psalm 34:18 to frame the emotional pain of scapegoats, describes the cycle of blame, shame, and abuse they endure, and recounts her decision to separate from her dysfunctional family and seek therapy. Tamika outlines three primary parenting challenges that former scapegoats face—difficulty setting and maintaining healthy boundaries, people‑pleasing, and passive‑aggressive behavior—illustrated with a personal anecdote about her child confronting her irritability. She emphasizes that these patterns stem from unresolved wounds and that self‑awareness, boundary work, and therapeutic support are essential to break the cycle and foster healthier parent‑child connections. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to like, subscribe, and suggest future topics.
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Hey y'all, Fun Coach Tamika here and welcome back to my channel. Today we will be discussing how a former family scapegoat parents their children, and this one is close to home, so let's dive in. Psalms 34:18 says, the Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit. So what I got from this verse is that God is close to people who are brokenhearted, and I don't know anyone who could be more brokenhearted than a family scapegoat. So for those who may not be familiar with what this term means, this is the person in the narcissistic family unit that bears all the weight of all the blame, shame, guilt, and abuse of the family. This is the family's emotional trash can, if you will. Scapegoating refers to the act of blaming a person for something bad that has happened or that someone else has done. As a former scapegoat myself, I must say life has been extremely hard for me. A lot of it had to do with the trauma that I inflicted upon myself after being traumatized because I was more likely and susceptible to accept dysfunctional friendships and romantic partnerships because it was normal to me. I had difficulty setting boundaries, Maintaining healthy boundaries, and self-sabotage was my best friend. Years ago, I decided I had enough of my narcissistic family unit, so I separated myself from the dysfunction so that I could heal. I went to therapy, and I wanted to break the cycle. If you can relate, listen up. And remember, this is PTSD—parents trying to stop dysfunction. So that's why we're here. When a scapegoat becomes apparent, they struggle with a variety of things. Some of the main things that I can mention is. Setting and maintaining healthy boundaries with their children, people pleasing, and good old passive aggressiveness. I remember when I was not maintaining and setting healthy boundaries with my child. She would ask me inappropriate things, and because I didn't want to seem mean, I would go along with it. But then because I was angry more so at myself, I was resentful, and so I was very passive aggressive, and and I would take things out on her, or I would just be just. Just irritated and aggravated until one day she came to me and she said, Mom, are you okay? And like that question just kind of like snapped me out of it. And I was like, why you ask that question? She said, because you've been snapping at me all day. And so it kind of shifted perspectives for me. And once I started working through this in therapy, I realized that I was the problem because I didn't know how to maintain healthy boundaries. So I didn't want to do what was done to me as a child. So I was doing a total opposite. And the The total opposite of what was done to me as a child was also not healthy. Now these cause more emotional wounds onto the children that we parent because we're parenting from a place of a wound and our children more often than not will be a trigger. And so we are literally spilling onto them all of our emotional wounds of not being able to set and maintain healthy boundaries, people pleasing, and passive aggressiveness. So practicing self-awareness is the only way as a former scapegoat that you can identify when you are slipping into those people-pleasing ways or not being able to set healthy boundaries or passive aggressiveness. And the more aware you become, the healthier the connection will be. So I had to learn to maintain healthy boundaries so that I would no longer be passive aggressive, snappy, and irritated. Hope this was helpful. Click the like and subscribe button. Be sure to share this with a friend and drop comment below if there's a subject you want me to discuss. See you next video.