A scapegoat remains effective as long as we believe in its guilt.

My name is Andrea and this is adult child.

what you're holding.

what you holding on to

what you're holding on to the just let it all go. What's making you slow now. Welcome back to adult child where we take a deep dive into the impact of growing up in a dysfunctional family.

Ahoy, my dear shit shows.

How we be doing?

I am very tired, thanks for asking. I'm like that tired cracked out feeling I'm in the process of moving and it turns

out when people say that moving is stressful, they're not lying.

This is like the first time that I've coordinated a move myself and done all the adult

like things related to moving and I don't I don't know

about this whole adult thing I'm still trying to figure it out. So today we are

diving deep into scapegoat abuse. Yes, scapegoating is a form of abuse and we are talking to, I am talking to not we but me Rebecca Manville so she is a

therapist she's an author and she is the woman who deemed the term, who coined the term,

the term scapegoat abuse, family scapegoat abuse.

I have deemed her the queen of the scapegoats. This is a really

really damn good conversation even if you weren't the scapegoat of your family

you're still going to get a lot out of this. We talk about other things too, complex PTSD,

narcissistic abuse, cutting, going no contact with family, all the things.

So I've shared my scapegoat origin story on the podcast before but in case you haven't heard that here's the cliff notes version so at nine I started to develop separation anxiety with my mom. It started with not being able to spend go to sleepovers. I was always that girl who got sick right before it was time to go to bed. I know that a lot of y'all can relate to that.

And then it escalated to me sleeping in my mom's bed every night while my dad slept in mine. One night I woke up in the middle of the night

absolutely terrified feeling like I was going to die if I didn't sleep in my mom's bed.

...