When ‘Adult You’ is actually a trauma response
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Every No Contact Scapegoat Survivor wants to put the past behind them.
It’s taken up so much time already.
It feels like you’ve been healing all your life.
You’ve peeled back all the layers and tended to the depths of the pain. You’ve worked with psychotherapists, healers, specialists, top psychologists and even shamans. You’ve been in 12 step groups and even led workshops yourself.
Your mind desperately wants to tell you ‘you’re healed now’.
But your life experience proves otherwise. Despite a lot of areas of your life that are happy, every so often chaos erupts.
And it’s eerily similar to how you felt as a child.
Back then, on the surface things looks okay but you never knew when the rug was going to be pulled out from under you - a sudden shift in mood, conflict that appeared without warning, or something happening in the family that quickly took over and left you on edge.
Children thrive in consistency and routine. It helps them feel safe. “This is dinner time, this is bed time, this is what happens when you come home from school” etc.
Lack of daily structure causes anxiety in children.
In the dysfunctional family home there is chaos and unpredictability.
There is bullying, manipulation and gaslighting. Feelings are taboo. There are mind games. There is no comeback to these games. The adults hold all the power and control.
The scapegoat is powerless, defenceless and vulnerable.
To cope, the child develops psychological defences.
They do this to try to create some form of control.
Even though any action they take to fix their situation is fruitless, they will take it anyway. That feels better than doing nothing.
This action gets reinforced year after year after year.
A part of the scapegoat child works very hard to make the best of an unsafe situation. Beliefs develop such as:
I have to handle this
There is nobody to help me
I have to figure this out alone
There are feelings of panic, urgency, and fear.
They develop a world view defined by a lack of safety.
Their survival depends on trying to solve this big problem.
Another part can develop who believes:
I don’t deserve to rest
There is work to be done
I have to carry everything
This part feels hyper vigilant and tries to tightly control everything.
These parts continue to operate well into adulthood because the neural wiring runs deep.
They don’t know how to relax.
It’s exhausting.
What’s happening is that they’re protecting unprocessed emotional pain underneath.
The pain of not being loved or accepted.
The pain of emotional abandonment.
The pain of being met without empathy or compassion.
The child was unable to fully feel or process this pain in childhood. It doesn’t magically evaporate as adulthood arrives. It’s still lodged in the body and mind.
The core pain point is the loss of a safe and happy childhood and the irreversibility of this.
The inner parts who try to control life rigidly as an adult, are holding on to a version of life where they believe if they do it right and solve the big problem, they’ll get another chance at childhood.
This is false hope.
Many people die still carrying this false hope about their childhood.
Even though it’s impossible. Even though the parent might be deceased for years. It doesn’t stop the young part of the psyche clinging to a version of life where they finally get to experience a happy childhood.
This is the program that is operating subconsciously and keeping you stuck.
Tending to the inner child part and helping them process the acute emotional pain of abandonment is the solution.
The work involves gradually letting go of the hope that ‘mom and dad’ will one day be able to meet the inner child’s emotional needs. There are multiple layers of grief with this.
When this healing work is taken on, the protector parts - those that try to control everything and keep you constantly pushing - don’t have to work so hard.
There is less panic, urgency and fear. There is room for adult you to step into the driving seat of your life - and this part is resourced, educated, discerning and can see the bigger picture.
As this happens, life begins to feel different.
You can rest without guilt. Help arrives without forcing or micro-managing. Life no longer feels like an uphill battle.
This healing work is very challenging but not impossible.
It frees you from the grip of childhood trauma and the dysfunctional patterns carried through your lineage. Over time your capacity to tolerate calm, steadiness and ease expands.
You realise your system was wired to survive unpredictability, threat and insecurity and that you’re no longer living in that environment.
And a calmer, more grounded way of living becomes available to you.
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About the Author
Mary Toolan is the founder of Scapegoat Child Recovery Ltd.
She works with high functioning adults who were cast as the family scapegoat and are now navigating life after No Contact.
Her work helps people untangle the attachment trauma and identity conditioning left behind by family scapegoating so they can build a calmer, more self-directed life.
