What Happens in the Narcissistic Family When the Scapegoat Goes No Contact?

6 min readJul 14, 2023

The family goes into panic mode.

It has been the family’s priority to keep the narcissistic parent or family member as calm and stable as possible.

If the narcissist is stable, then the family feel as if they are safe, the narcissist won’t abandon them.

However, even the slightest shift in the family can upset the narcissist. And their scapegoat breaking free and going no contact is a huge change for the narcissist.

A narcissist gets used to the dynamic. They’re used to calling the shots, being in charge, and choosing their family members for their roles.

If someone tries to break free from their role, then the narcissist knows exactly how to reel them back in.

The scapegoat is watched, all the time, by the narcissist. They are constantly assessing, checking for any slight changes in behaviour.

Once they sense that slight change in their scapegoat, even if they don’t do or say anything, the narcissist will have to claw back their power and control over them.

They know exactly how to manipulate their scapegoat, how to get them back into that role without them even being aware that they’re working on them.

Their normal tools are to use guilt, fear and obligation to get them back.

Other family members will also be doing all that they can to get them back.

No-one wants to be the narcissist’s scapegoat, every family member would have experienced it, even just for a short while. And they hated it.

Their priority is to get them back because the narcissist needs a scapegoat. They know that one of them will be selected for the scapegoat role unless they get them back. And that’s the scapegoat role for most of the time, the main target of the narcissist’s abuse.

So, they will do whatever they have to to get them back, because then the narcissist will be stable, and they’ll continue to be the scapegoat.

Sadly, there is no love and acceptance in a narcissist’s family.

In fact, the narcissist has done all that they can to nurture resentment, competition, dislike, or even hatred between family members.

So, the poor scapegoat will probably not get the support and love that they need.

In fact, family members will turn against them, trying to manipulate them back, or maybe making threats.

When the scapegoat goes no contact, that is when the true toxicity of the family is revealed.

The narcissist, the perpetuator of the abuse, experiences the support of their family. Everyone rallies around them.

Of course, the family will also be trying to make sure that they are not the one selected as the next scapegoat. So, they’ll fight amongst themselves and stir up trouble to win favour with the narcissist.

The narcissist will recruit family members as their flying monkeys, because they know that these people have the narcissist as their priority. They’ll be sent with messages, all about the narcissist and no concern for the scapegoat.

If they can get the scapegoat back, then that person will win favour with the narcissist. And they are less likely to be the main target of the narcissists abuse.

It’s a struggle for survival. And the scapegoat leaving will upset the dynamic.

Then each family member will fight the other family members for their own survival. Not only siblings against siblings but children against their other parent (not a narcissist) and vice versa.

It is all about survival.

The narcissist has created a family reliant on them for their survival. That’s why the family are so focused on the narcissist, they worry that they won’t survive without the narcissist’s approval. It feels like the narcissist has the power of life or death over them.

For a child, that fear of the narcissist’s power over them is very, very real. It would have already been established within the family that no-one will look out for that child, not even their other parent.

So, without the narcissist the child would be abandoned and might not live.

Children don’t know that there might be systems in place to look after them if things break down in their family.

Also, a narcissistic parent will isolate their child, and make them feel reliant on them for everything, even as they get older and can do things for themselves.

An adult raised by a narcissistic parent, may still feel reliant on their parent, and may be reliant on them still for a home or finances. And this will be used against them.

Narcissists are all about power and control over people.

Their families are their greatest sources of maximum power and control.

This is because their children are reliant on them and yearn for their love and approval.

Their practical and emotional needs are exploited by the narcissist and used against them.

To the scapegoat, it is strange because once they start trying to break free, the family don’t react in the way that they’d think.

Sometimes family members may appear to agree with the scapegoat about the narcissist. But it’s only a rouse to get them to stay in their role, look like they’re supported, but they’re not.

At other times the family members will invalidate, abuse and manipulate the scapegoat themselves.

The narcissists scapegoat is the family’s scapegoat.

It’s not just the narcissist, the whole family targets the scapegoat.

The narcissist encourages it, they relish the abuse that the scapegoat suffers, either from themselves or from other people.

The scapegoat may not even be aware that they are the target of the family’s abuse. They’re told that they deserve it, and they believe that.

It shows an awareness of their family about how the scapegoat is treated, because they are so determined to not get that role.

In a way that is validating for the scapegoat!

No-one else wants that role, and they fight to make sure that they don’t get it.

So, the abuse is clear, but no-one takes it up with the perpetrator. It’s about them making sure that someone else is in the firing line not about stopping the abuse at the root cause.

This is how toxic the family set up is, no-one takes it up with the abuser.

In fact, the abuser twists things to make themselves appear to be the victim of abuse.

People will believe them, even if they know the scapegoat and know how they’ve been treated.

The narcissist starts the smear campaign, sometimes decades previously, that paints the target of their abuse as the perpetrator. Then they just have to maintain this story, using a little a of the truth but twisting it to make the scapegoat out to be bad.

This creates the impression for the scapegoat that the problem is them.

Everyone is in on it, everyone that has contact with the narcissist.

They are on the narcissist’s side and that is why the narcissist has kept them around.

Anyone that didn’t go along with the narcissist’s lies, is ignored or pushed out in a massive drama fest.

The poor scapegoat knows that something is very wrong but may not break free.

It’s so hard, when they’ve been conditioned to think that it’s them that’s to blame, and everyone else is in on the conspiracy, whether they know it or not.

https://comebackbrighter.com/2023/07/11/what-happens-in-the-narcissistic-family-when-the-scapegoat-goes-no-contact/

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