Quora: Why does the family of the narcissist never understand why the scapegoat never comes around?

I don’t want to be overly dramatic in my answer, but if it helps, think of the NPD as a cult leader and their family, friends, and negative advocates (flying monkeys) as cult followers. The scapegoat is the one who saw the truth and left the cult, therefore the scapegoat must be demonized and hated by the Narcissist and their followers. The Narcissist’s world is fragile and truth would wreck it, so the truth-seer & truth-teller—the scapegoat—is the one who must be painted as the liar.

If the narcissistic family revolves around a parent who is NPD and one of the children is the scapegoat, that child will be portrayed as ‘troubled,’ ‘sinful,’ ‘addicted,’ “ungrateful,’ etc. If the other children want to stay in the narcissist parents good graces, they follow suit. Most of the time they don’t even think about it, it comes naturally to believe and defend their narcissist parent from someone who ‘hurt’ them by being so ‘ungrateful’ and ‘wild’ (in reality: seeing through their lies and calling them out)

The scapegoat can also be the spouse who eventually got tired of the crazy and left, they will get the same smear campaign treatment—”I sacrificed everything for [scapegoat]’s happiness and comfort, to make a home with him/her and our children, I did everything to save our marriage, and s/he left us, children! What a jerk!” bla bla bla, the reality of course being that the scapegoated spouse was the one who worked, sacrificed, contributed labor and finances to the household while the narcissist didn’t work outside the home, didn’t do anything around the house (housework was farmed out to the kids), and was out cheating, or at least spending all day flirting online and making up an extravagant fake life to gather & manipulate followers on social media.

So, basically, the scapegoat doesn’t want to come around because they don’t want anything more to do with the narcissistic abuser, and the other family members are still drinking the narcissist’s kool-ade, so they do not WANT The scapegoat around, because they blame that person for the narc’s problems.

And, finally, the narcissist doesn’t want the scapegoat around because if the scapegoat’s truth telling managed to break down the brainwashing of the narc’s other family members, the narc would be rendered powerless. So the narc makes sure to reinforce the distrust between his/her followers and the scapegoat, so that they never have a chance to communicate honestly and compare their versions of reality to determine the truth about the narcissist. It’s a nice circle of dysfunction: The narcissist gets to play the scapegoat’s lack of filial duty as one more ‘proof’ of their wickedness, and it helps cement their control over the rest of the family who stays and helps feed the narcissist’s “Oh, poor me,” story.

Or, I could just simplify this all by saying why would anyone want to be somewhere they don’t feel welcome, family scapegoat or no? 

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Editing to add:  Posts tagged 'quora' were originally my answers to peoples' questions on quora.com.  They were monetized but I am giving them away for free here. 

If you feel inclined to support my writing, here's my paypal 

And if you prefer to pay it forward, I recommend Safe Place as an excellent place to support.

Quora: How rare is it to be a manipulator and an empath?

Pretty common, I would think. Many people seem to develop a high degree of empathy due to being raised in a dysfunctional or unsafe family of origin. Being able to pick up on the most subtle clues regarding another person’s intentions, thoughts, and feelings is a matter of survival in a household where the care-giver adults are unstable or abusive—the young empath learns when to hide, when to appease, and what ‘mask’ to wear in order to keep themselves relatively safe and get their needs met in an unsafe environment.

These coping skills are refined and honed into adulthood, where they are used in workplace relationships, personal relationships, and romantic relationships. The empath learned at a young age that making direct requests, open statements of needs, or any other type of honesty would only get them teased, ridiculed, beaten, or ignored, so they figured out how to get their needs met with manipulation tactics. This indirect and manipulative way of relating to others can also be called ‘codependency,’

I think it is very, very common. Especially among women, who are socialized to be indirect and oblique in their communication, while direct statements and questions are viewed as ‘rude’ coming from a female.

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Editing to add:  Posts tagged 'quora' were originally my answers to peoples' questions on quora.com.  They were monetized but I am giving them away for free here. 

If you feel inclined to support my writing, here's my paypal 

And if you prefer to pay it forward, I recommend Safe Place as an excellent place to support.