In this solo Talk Therapy episode, Fun Coach Tameka Anderson shares her personal evolution from being the scapegoat in a narcissistic family to becoming a "cycle breaker" for her own family. She begins with a disclaimer that she is not a mental‑health professional, then outlines the typical roles in a narcissistic family system – golden child, scapegoat, lost child, and enabler – using anecdotes from her own upbringing. Tameka explains the Be‑Do‑Have transformation model she adopted (inspired by a business coach and biblical principles) and describes how she applied each step: first deciding to break the cycle (Be), committing to therapy and personal‑development reading (Be), then actively nurturing her family, setting healthy boundaries, and cultivating each family member’s gifts (Do). The "Have" stage manifests as improved communication, a peaceful, loving home, regular family meetings, and clear core values. Throughout, she ties her experience to her work with parents of children with ADHD/ADD/ODD and promotes her book Parenting the Confident Child as a resource for families seeking to crush dysfunction.
Chapters
Hey y'all, it is Fun Coach Tameka here. Welcome back to Talk Therapy, and Talk Therapy is where we Talk our way through family dysfunction. If you're new here, don't forget to hit the subscribe button, share with your friends, and comment below if you're ready for this conversation today. Okay, so today we're going to jump right into it and talk about how I went from being scapegoat to family cycle breaker. Okay, and what I wanted to— what I want to start with is, if you have gotten a copy of my book Parenting the Confident Child, you know that I have experienced extreme dysfunction on both sides of my family, so I'm no stranger to it. However, I knew that it was something I wanted to change for me and my children, so I adopted the model. It ran into my family until it ran into me, right? And I work with parents who have children diagnosed with ADHD, ADD, ODD, all the D's. They bring them to me, okay? And I always talk about family dynamics, but why? So as an ADHDer myself, I understand that environment plays a large role in how we show up, right? And I need— I'm like a systems girl, so like I need things to operate on a system. And now I'm understanding that it's because there's a lot of trauma involved with ADHD. However, that's a whole nother conversation for a whole nother day. We ain't gonna get into that today. Okay. All right. We're gonna stick to What, what we here to talk about today? All right, and today we are here to talk about what I like to call the Scapegoat Chronicles. Okay, so now in the Scapegoat Chronicles, I'm gonna briefly go over like the narcissistic family roles. Okay, and before I do that, let me just say real, real quick at the bottom— look at the bottom of this, this, uh, live— I am not a therapist. I am not a psychologist, psychiatrist, any of the -gists. I am not none of them. Not a mental health professional. I am sharing information from my level of research and awareness. Okay, all right, now that we have gotten that out, let's discuss narcissistic family roles. So people often only talk about the narcissist, but the narcissist cannot be a narcissist by themselves. So, um, I want to talk briefly about some roles that um, we assume in a narcissistic family unit. Okay, so the first role that I want to talk about is the golden child. So, you know, golden child, this is somebody that's like the favorite in the family. They get all the attention, they pretty much get coddled a lot. So this is that person, you know, pretty much everything that they want And when I think about it, I remember one of my siblings who I strongly believe is a covert narcissist. However, I digress for now. Um, my sibling would pit the golden child against me and would blame me for everything that the golden child would do, essentially. The golden child, I remember, um, getting kicked— she got kicked out of college one time, you know, because her, um, in her dorm, her, her boyfriend was selling drugs. And so they got kicked out, and I was living with this particular sibling at the time, so she came to live with us. The boyfriend was in jail, and so then he would make collect calls, and she was just like, oh, please don't tell, please don't tell. So I didn't tell, right? However, when the bill came, guess who got blamed for the bill, right? And so the, the first role is the golden child— never blamed for anything, everybody's taking up for that child. And then there's the scapegoat, the role that I assumed, which was the scapegoat. I was blamed for everything. This is what I believe. I believe that people who are scapegoats is because They are willing to stand up and advocate and speak against the dysfunction happening in the family. Because I know that was me. I was not a go-along-to-get-along. I stood up to everybody, including my mother. And if you weren't right, I didn't go along with it. So because I refused to go along with things, I was the one that was the easiest target. For the blame, the shame, the everything. So everybody just blame me. I have people who don't talk to me simply because of something that another family member said about me, which may or may not be true. However, and it's because I was the easiest target, right? To just blame, blame, blame, blame, blame. So that's the scapegoat. And then there's the lost child. Another thing that I realize in the narcissistic family unit. Because the family is so focused on 3 people: the narcissist, the golden child, and the scapegoat. Those 3 people are like the, the headliners, if you will, in the narcissistic family role. And so because everybody's always focused on those 3, you know, other people get kind of lost in the shuffle. So the lost child is pretty much ignored by the family. And then there is the enabler. Now, the enabler can be anybody. And mostly people enable because they don't want to feel the wrath of the narcissist. Okay, all right, so now what I want to do is I want to actually talk about transformation model. So there's a transformation model that I've just adopted, and I just learned from one of my favorite people, one of my favorite business coaches, and it, it is called Be-Do-Have. And you know, like, it talks about it in the Bible. Be fruitful, do multiply, have dominion over the earth, right? So be, do, be, do, have. And that is for the results that you want, you first must become the person, do the things, and then you have the result, right? A lot of people don't want to become the person, but you can't become the person— you know, you can't do the things until you become the person. So I'm going to talk quickly about how I went through the model in order to become the cycle breaker. So the first thing I had to do was I had to be— I had to become someone who made a decision to say, hey, I want to break this cycle. I don't want my children to do this. I don't want my children to go through this. So I'm going to break the cycle, right? So I became someone who broke the cycle, right? Um, And that was my first thing, my first B. I had to become someone who said, hey, here's the decision. The next thing is I had to be— I had to be my behind in therapy. So I had to be in therapy. I had to— I remember when I first started therapy, my therapist is— oh, she's just amazing. But she told me, she was just like, do you realize that when you used to come to therapy, you would sit on the edge of the couch? I did think I did that for about an entire year when I— my first year of therapy. And I think it was because I was just so used to people letting me down that I was just waiting to just leave. But so grateful she didn't. 7 years later, she still has been a very safe place for me. So grateful for that. But I had to be my butt in therapy, right? So I had to be someone who was willing to go to therapy. And then the final B was I had to be in the word, like both the Bible And books. Like, I had to just be in those books hard. I had to learn how to read the Bible, apply to my life, be someone who, uh, read personal development books and apply those to my life, right? And so then therefore I was able to break the chains of the dysfunction that was— is still running rampant in my family. But I was, you know, really, really focused on starting with me and my family unit, my children and grandson. So in order to break the chains, the next part of the transformation cycle is do. So the first level of do that I had to did is I had to nurture my family. So in a narcissistic family unit, No one is nurtured. No one is poured into because no one has it to give, so they can't give it. So that was the first thing that I had to do. I had to pour into my family unit. Um, one of the things that I do is I had to learn what my children's love languages were, and I had to learn what their top 2 basic needs are. And this is what I actually help and teach my clients as well too, like teaching them the top basic needs Teaching them how to you know learn what their love languages are so that they can pour into that every single day. So I had the the first do was nurturing my family, and the next do that I had to did was I had to set healthy boundaries. So, and I can talk about boundaries all day. Just my favorite B word. But for sake of this live stream tonight, I'm going to make it very very brief. A lot of parents struggle with setting boundaries, and it's because society, especially with moms, society just makes you believe that moms are just supposed to be invincible. You're not supposed to have time to yourself. How dare you not want to be around your children 24 hours a day? That's not true, okay? So setting and maintaining healthy boundaries in my family unit is something that I had to do in order to break the chains, because in narcissistic family units, there is no boundaries. None. And then the final do that I had to did was I had to cultivate my family's gifts. So I remember, you know, me being a speaker. I didn't know I was a speaker until, you know, I was an adult, had to move away from the family unit and do my own thing. But it was frowned upon that I talked. So, oh, Tamika talked too much. Well, I don't do that to my children. As a matter of fact, my youngest daughter, because she talked so much, I put her in speech coaching, and now she's a 3-time TED speaker. Oh, thank you, right? So like nurturing the family gifts. And so like that's something that if I hadn't moved away from the family to do these things, I would not have been able to do them. The good thing is once I made the decision to break the cycles, there was a rippling effect. And so now we're going to talk about the have, right? So one thing that I have is excellent communicators. I even teach my 4-year-old grandson. My 4-year-old grandson can communicate better than most adults that I know. And it's because communication is very key in our family. Everything is a conversation. Everything, right? But because of that, we have peace. There's no fighting in here. I was very, very cautious about fighting. I knew that I didn't want my children to be like my family and fight a lot, so there was no fighting. And, and finally, we have a loving home environment. Okay, because of do, be, and now we have. So I embrace the new narrative that I don't have to worry about being afraid to be at home, feeling nervous and anxious, none of those things. We have family meetings once a month, we go over our 3 core family values, and that is what, uh, healthy family structure looks like. Okay, so before I wrap things up, don't forget to hit the subscribe button. And this was me talking about how I went from being a scapegoat to a family cycle breaker. And I help families all over the world to crush family dysfunction. Again, my book is, you know, Parenting the Confident Child. I help families to crush family dysfunction, eliminate behavioral issues, and raise excellent communicators. So in the meantime, in between time, don't forget to give this video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, and I will catch you on the next one. Be confident, and, uh, I'll see you next time, my friends.
