Excellent explanation of open and closed family systems - very important concept for people to understand, especially those of us from dysfunctional or narcissistic family systems. I encourage all of my subscribers to read!
I grew up in a closed family. Ugh! The word enmeshment brought back some memories. One thing on the various roles you mentioned, I personally have played several of those roles. When you’re the child of a narcissist, changing your strategy is survival.
Yes, I find this aspect really interesting too… only now does it occur to me how these roles extended outside the family, as well. For instance becoming early the “class clown” unaware that this arose not only to deflect cruelty with humor, but to perform for much needed attention as well as a protection against the vulnerability of authenticity. And of course there are the “schoolyard bullies” and their “easy targets.”
Oct 6·edited Oct 6Liked by Claire Pichel, MA, LCSW
Great explanation that makes things clear that otherwise can be very confusing. Our system was so closed that no one knew how much abuse went on and I literally had to split on some level. I was one person away from the family of origin and a separate one when with them. There were also extreme levels of enmeshment and disallowance of separateness. No privacy or boundaries were allowed and any attempts to have either were severely shamed and punished. I eventually chose to leave for my own mental health and so I could finally integrate, which was *not* allowed in the family. No one was allowed to individuate. Attempting to do so was heavily punished and shamed. Unfortunately I married into a different closed system later, and literally realizing that was part of why I divorced my then spouse. I'm afraid of being part of another family now other than the one I've built myself with my own children. I am near phobic of being suffocated yet again back into splitting or psychological death.
I am sorry you went through that with your family of origin and then with your in-laws. It makes sense that you would not want to repeat that pattern. The way you describe splitting and psychological death makes so much sense. You had to disown parts of yourself in order to survive. That's a painful experience.
Yes, it is extremely painful and that pain is never allowed to be part of the conversation. There's always denials that you couldn't be yourself, yet when you tried to do so in my family of origin anything unacceptable to the narcissist was punished with humiliation and invasion to try to shut it down. Whatever the made the narcissist's uncomfortable feelings go away was acceptable, no matter how severely it injured the person who was being humiliated and invaded. The pain and labor load of having to split and hide and keep secret anything I didn't want invaded has never been allowed to be discussed, and the pain of the injuries inflicted by the invasion (which is exactly what I kept things hidden and secret to prevent) is also never allowed to be discussed. Only how the narcissist "had" to abuse and invade, repeatedly, chronically, for decades, never listening to how they were harming in the process. When a set of in laws did the same thing, it was game over for me with than entire family unit, immediately. Done. Never again with people who can't mind their own business or discuss directly, openly, and explicitly rather than humiliatingly invade me.
Oh Brooke, your experience with your family of origin and then your in-laws (at the time) sounds awful!! Truly awful. How wise of you to see what was going on with your in-laws at the time and immediately eject yourself. I am not that smart - it took me several years to see my MIL's escalating rejection of me (because I was just absorbing it and not giving her signs of rejection distress, my MIL narcissist kept upping her rejection game). It took a really nasty bunch of events over a 48-hour time period several Christmas' ago for me to see exactly what was going on. Unfortunately, I was so shocked in disbelief and grief, I was unable to leave at the time. I have not shown up at my in-laws since. My husband and I are still trying to sort it out years later - not going so well. I am asking for him to see the dynamic and acknowledge it with accurate language (not beating-around-the-bush too soft of language). Who knew this is such a difficult task! It's all so unnecessary. Good for you for branching out on your own so bravely. I hope to get there soon, if needed. Take good care. 🙂
I feel you on the husband part. It’s very challenging for partners who have no previous awareness of family issues to see things as clearly as the person who married in. And admitting it is so painful for them . My experience of my husband is that he loves his family, so it’s hard to see and acknowledge their bad behavior because love and loyalty are deeply intertwined. And those two things loosely translate, in a narcissistic family, into obedience and compliance. Which we know is not love. Also, there is good woven in. So, often the good is used to negate the bad. But of course this tactic is what we see in DV relationships and it’s not healthy. You can hold the good and the bad. But not negate one or the other. I often remind myself and sometimes my husband that the only reason I kept trying with his family is because they are his family. With anyone else I would have walked away a long time ago. I just don’t understand why we are taught to tolerate disrespectful, manipulative, emotionally abusive behavior from people because they are family.
Oct 11·edited Oct 11Liked by Claire Pichel, MA, LCSW
"I just don’t understand why we are taught to tolerate disrespectful, manipulative, emotionally abusive behavior from people because they are family." Exactly. This. I've been pretty angrily regarded because I finally stopped tolerating this "because they're family." I don't care how negatively I'm viewed or labeled now. The negative labeling hurts less than continuous emotional and psychological pummeling (which in my case was *frequently* denied [gaslighted away] when I tried to discuss it in a healthy way directly with them) from people who are never called on it or made to be accountable for it or made to stop, "because they're family."
Oct 9·edited Oct 9Liked by Claire Pichel, MA, LCSW
I have been reflecting on your wise words. There is something gnawing at me that I don't understand. I mention it here, in case it helps others on this platform. In the workplace, my husband is super capable of recognizing injustice and instinctively standing up for his staff by firmly approaching higher management. He has no fear, no hesitation, no avoidance of conflict. His whole life, no problem dealing with conflict in the workplace and exercising his personal power. Part of his innate personality is very angry and defiant (since a kid) - he gets it from his narc mother. BUT, with BOTH his family (narcissistic mother) AND with my family (narcissistic parents leading textbook family scapegoating of me) he APPEARS to lose the ability to recognize injustices done toward me and the instinctual desire to remedy these injustices. Yet, he easily empathizes with his mother and family. He is happy to leave me to fend all on my own and not even recognize what it going on and is sooo resistant to seeing it clearly. It is so hurtful and offensive when I know he innately has these skills to protect his staff and his family members. It reeks of BIAS. I've asked him to get counselling for it, which he did, but he never came to me with one realization and avoided talking to me about it. He is happy to put it all on me and I am so done with it. It's super confusing and hurtful. I am plain confused. I know it's intentional and it's happened so many times that it's not coincidence. Even describing it makes me want to leave. I think it has to do with him wanting to look good to his family and to my family (vs. just looking good to one person, me) and he's happy to sacrifice me to maintain this. This is NOT integrity.
Yes, he is out of integrity. And he may be still enmeshed with his family and unwilling (perhaps not consciously) to see the dynamic and instead project it onto you. This can be an incredibly painful situation to be in, and I am sorry you are there. It feels like a betrayal to your marriage and so yes, it’s definitely out of integrity.
I often see that in my clinical work many people are their wisest adult selves at work, where the executive functioning part of their brain is running the show. And when they get back to their family of origin, they regress. All the old programming comes online.
But that’s no excuse for scapegoating you. It’s hard to not have the person who is supposed to love and protect you fail to follow through on it. Have you tried couples counseling?
Oct 11·edited Oct 11Liked by Claire Pichel, MA, LCSW
I related to some of this with my former spouse. We do ok now as co-parents but part of the reason I could not stay partners with him was because of this. In my case, I perceived him needing to be seen as the good guy in every situation, even if it meant throwing me under the bus when I didn't deserve it or I was the one who'd been wronged. Unsure if that's helpful, but I picked up on a similar thing with my former spouse (who had been his family scapegoat since childhood and who seemed to me to have a strong need to always be "good" now after having being "bad" for so long--a need of his which I ended up paying for in the form of the dynamics you described).
Thank you for ALL this, Claire!! SOOOO helpful. I am going to read your reply like 20 times to really imbibe all this incredible insight. Thank you for being YOU and for all you are and all you do! ♥️
Oct 11·edited Oct 11Liked by Claire Pichel, MA, LCSW
It took me nearly nine years of "escalating rejection" (what a great way to describe it, thank you!!) from them for it to click with me. When I say "immediately" I just mean that was when the realization clicked into place in my brain, and from then on, I couldn't unsee or unfeel the hurt. Before then, I'd spent those 8+ years constantly discounting my hurt and looking for reasons why they didn't mean it or it was something other than how it felt to me. I spent 8+ years giving them the benefit of the doubt and being unable to accept that I was always going to be a lesser value person in that group. (Now when I detect treatment as a lesser value group member that appears intractable, I leave the group and no longer participate and contribute there. This has taken *multiple* repeats of being treated this way, for decades, to get here and be willing to cut my losses and just get somewhere I am not treated as a less than object it's ok for the others to use but not treat as equally valuable as everyone else.)
I think it takes time to be able to accept that people you love and look up to, who you thought loved you or at least cared about you to some degree, feel in such hurtful, uncharitable ways toward you, and that while you've been looking for the best in them and giving them the benefit of the doubt, they've been looking for the worst in you and finding reasons why it's ok to talk about you and behave in ways that hurt. It takes time for the "disbelief and grief" to give way for acceptance of such a painful reality. It has nothing to do with being smart. It's about the sincerity of your heart needing time to wrap itself around cruelty you did not deserve and would not have done to them. I'm sorry you're in a similar situation and I hope you are protecting yourself well now.
Brooke, your writing is stupendous! So accurate and so clearly and acutely worded. Thank you! YES, how you describe it is exactly how I feel too! It's good to know it took you several years to see the abuse clearly too and then to be able to take action. I so get the absorbing the abuse and trying to explain it away, as this kind of treatment was so foreign to us, we just couldn't believe it was intentional. I love your term "cutting my losses" - that's such a good way to view it. Don't want to waste even more years of our life in the mud. And the way you talk about being treated as lesser than is so heartbreakingly true. That's exactly how it feels and exactly how they intend to make you feel. And, yes, us always looking for the good in others, while they look for the bad in us and exercise their endless judgement, often mixed in with a sickly mess of anger and rejection. Ha, "the benefit of the doubt" ... A month ago, I asked my sister to "give me the benefit of the doubt" (with regard to our lying, narc mother) and of course, no way my sister would give me that, ha ha, when of course I would offer that to her. I'm getting better at protecting myself, but the phases of grief are still there, especially when something activates all the memories. Getting there, but it's quite a process, isn't it. I hope you are doing better now, Brooke. Thank you for all your insights. ♥️
I wrote about my experience of being the scapegoat, or as I call it, the black sheep, in the pinned essay on my page. I was rejected for not following the family line until I just had to leave.
My therapist might have mentioned “enmeshment” but the word didn’t stick. That’s exactly what it was, though. Everyone had a role to play and my mom thrived on creating chaos and playing the victim.
Sometimes i wonder if i could ever go back but then i read essays like this and go even deeper into understanding the disfunction
Excellent explanation of open and closed family systems - very important concept for people to understand, especially those of us from dysfunctional or narcissistic family systems. I encourage all of my subscribers to read!
Thank you Rebecca!
I grew up in a closed family. Ugh! The word enmeshment brought back some memories. One thing on the various roles you mentioned, I personally have played several of those roles. When you’re the child of a narcissist, changing your strategy is survival.
Yes, I see that too! Thank you for mentioning it.
Yes, I find this aspect really interesting too… only now does it occur to me how these roles extended outside the family, as well. For instance becoming early the “class clown” unaware that this arose not only to deflect cruelty with humor, but to perform for much needed attention as well as a protection against the vulnerability of authenticity. And of course there are the “schoolyard bullies” and their “easy targets.”
Such a great observation on how our coping strategies fog beyond our families. Thank you for sharing!
Great explanation that makes things clear that otherwise can be very confusing. Our system was so closed that no one knew how much abuse went on and I literally had to split on some level. I was one person away from the family of origin and a separate one when with them. There were also extreme levels of enmeshment and disallowance of separateness. No privacy or boundaries were allowed and any attempts to have either were severely shamed and punished. I eventually chose to leave for my own mental health and so I could finally integrate, which was *not* allowed in the family. No one was allowed to individuate. Attempting to do so was heavily punished and shamed. Unfortunately I married into a different closed system later, and literally realizing that was part of why I divorced my then spouse. I'm afraid of being part of another family now other than the one I've built myself with my own children. I am near phobic of being suffocated yet again back into splitting or psychological death.
I am sorry you went through that with your family of origin and then with your in-laws. It makes sense that you would not want to repeat that pattern. The way you describe splitting and psychological death makes so much sense. You had to disown parts of yourself in order to survive. That's a painful experience.
Yes, it is extremely painful and that pain is never allowed to be part of the conversation. There's always denials that you couldn't be yourself, yet when you tried to do so in my family of origin anything unacceptable to the narcissist was punished with humiliation and invasion to try to shut it down. Whatever the made the narcissist's uncomfortable feelings go away was acceptable, no matter how severely it injured the person who was being humiliated and invaded. The pain and labor load of having to split and hide and keep secret anything I didn't want invaded has never been allowed to be discussed, and the pain of the injuries inflicted by the invasion (which is exactly what I kept things hidden and secret to prevent) is also never allowed to be discussed. Only how the narcissist "had" to abuse and invade, repeatedly, chronically, for decades, never listening to how they were harming in the process. When a set of in laws did the same thing, it was game over for me with than entire family unit, immediately. Done. Never again with people who can't mind their own business or discuss directly, openly, and explicitly rather than humiliatingly invade me.
Oh Brooke, your experience with your family of origin and then your in-laws (at the time) sounds awful!! Truly awful. How wise of you to see what was going on with your in-laws at the time and immediately eject yourself. I am not that smart - it took me several years to see my MIL's escalating rejection of me (because I was just absorbing it and not giving her signs of rejection distress, my MIL narcissist kept upping her rejection game). It took a really nasty bunch of events over a 48-hour time period several Christmas' ago for me to see exactly what was going on. Unfortunately, I was so shocked in disbelief and grief, I was unable to leave at the time. I have not shown up at my in-laws since. My husband and I are still trying to sort it out years later - not going so well. I am asking for him to see the dynamic and acknowledge it with accurate language (not beating-around-the-bush too soft of language). Who knew this is such a difficult task! It's all so unnecessary. Good for you for branching out on your own so bravely. I hope to get there soon, if needed. Take good care. 🙂
I feel you on the husband part. It’s very challenging for partners who have no previous awareness of family issues to see things as clearly as the person who married in. And admitting it is so painful for them . My experience of my husband is that he loves his family, so it’s hard to see and acknowledge their bad behavior because love and loyalty are deeply intertwined. And those two things loosely translate, in a narcissistic family, into obedience and compliance. Which we know is not love. Also, there is good woven in. So, often the good is used to negate the bad. But of course this tactic is what we see in DV relationships and it’s not healthy. You can hold the good and the bad. But not negate one or the other. I often remind myself and sometimes my husband that the only reason I kept trying with his family is because they are his family. With anyone else I would have walked away a long time ago. I just don’t understand why we are taught to tolerate disrespectful, manipulative, emotionally abusive behavior from people because they are family.
"I just don’t understand why we are taught to tolerate disrespectful, manipulative, emotionally abusive behavior from people because they are family." Exactly. This. I've been pretty angrily regarded because I finally stopped tolerating this "because they're family." I don't care how negatively I'm viewed or labeled now. The negative labeling hurts less than continuous emotional and psychological pummeling (which in my case was *frequently* denied [gaslighted away] when I tried to discuss it in a healthy way directly with them) from people who are never called on it or made to be accountable for it or made to stop, "because they're family."
I have been reflecting on your wise words. There is something gnawing at me that I don't understand. I mention it here, in case it helps others on this platform. In the workplace, my husband is super capable of recognizing injustice and instinctively standing up for his staff by firmly approaching higher management. He has no fear, no hesitation, no avoidance of conflict. His whole life, no problem dealing with conflict in the workplace and exercising his personal power. Part of his innate personality is very angry and defiant (since a kid) - he gets it from his narc mother. BUT, with BOTH his family (narcissistic mother) AND with my family (narcissistic parents leading textbook family scapegoating of me) he APPEARS to lose the ability to recognize injustices done toward me and the instinctual desire to remedy these injustices. Yet, he easily empathizes with his mother and family. He is happy to leave me to fend all on my own and not even recognize what it going on and is sooo resistant to seeing it clearly. It is so hurtful and offensive when I know he innately has these skills to protect his staff and his family members. It reeks of BIAS. I've asked him to get counselling for it, which he did, but he never came to me with one realization and avoided talking to me about it. He is happy to put it all on me and I am so done with it. It's super confusing and hurtful. I am plain confused. I know it's intentional and it's happened so many times that it's not coincidence. Even describing it makes me want to leave. I think it has to do with him wanting to look good to his family and to my family (vs. just looking good to one person, me) and he's happy to sacrifice me to maintain this. This is NOT integrity.
Yes, he is out of integrity. And he may be still enmeshed with his family and unwilling (perhaps not consciously) to see the dynamic and instead project it onto you. This can be an incredibly painful situation to be in, and I am sorry you are there. It feels like a betrayal to your marriage and so yes, it’s definitely out of integrity.
I often see that in my clinical work many people are their wisest adult selves at work, where the executive functioning part of their brain is running the show. And when they get back to their family of origin, they regress. All the old programming comes online.
But that’s no excuse for scapegoating you. It’s hard to not have the person who is supposed to love and protect you fail to follow through on it. Have you tried couples counseling?
I related to some of this with my former spouse. We do ok now as co-parents but part of the reason I could not stay partners with him was because of this. In my case, I perceived him needing to be seen as the good guy in every situation, even if it meant throwing me under the bus when I didn't deserve it or I was the one who'd been wronged. Unsure if that's helpful, but I picked up on a similar thing with my former spouse (who had been his family scapegoat since childhood and who seemed to me to have a strong need to always be "good" now after having being "bad" for so long--a need of his which I ended up paying for in the form of the dynamics you described).
Thank you for ALL this, Claire!! SOOOO helpful. I am going to read your reply like 20 times to really imbibe all this incredible insight. Thank you for being YOU and for all you are and all you do! ♥️
It took me nearly nine years of "escalating rejection" (what a great way to describe it, thank you!!) from them for it to click with me. When I say "immediately" I just mean that was when the realization clicked into place in my brain, and from then on, I couldn't unsee or unfeel the hurt. Before then, I'd spent those 8+ years constantly discounting my hurt and looking for reasons why they didn't mean it or it was something other than how it felt to me. I spent 8+ years giving them the benefit of the doubt and being unable to accept that I was always going to be a lesser value person in that group. (Now when I detect treatment as a lesser value group member that appears intractable, I leave the group and no longer participate and contribute there. This has taken *multiple* repeats of being treated this way, for decades, to get here and be willing to cut my losses and just get somewhere I am not treated as a less than object it's ok for the others to use but not treat as equally valuable as everyone else.)
I think it takes time to be able to accept that people you love and look up to, who you thought loved you or at least cared about you to some degree, feel in such hurtful, uncharitable ways toward you, and that while you've been looking for the best in them and giving them the benefit of the doubt, they've been looking for the worst in you and finding reasons why it's ok to talk about you and behave in ways that hurt. It takes time for the "disbelief and grief" to give way for acceptance of such a painful reality. It has nothing to do with being smart. It's about the sincerity of your heart needing time to wrap itself around cruelty you did not deserve and would not have done to them. I'm sorry you're in a similar situation and I hope you are protecting yourself well now.
Brooke, your writing is stupendous! So accurate and so clearly and acutely worded. Thank you! YES, how you describe it is exactly how I feel too! It's good to know it took you several years to see the abuse clearly too and then to be able to take action. I so get the absorbing the abuse and trying to explain it away, as this kind of treatment was so foreign to us, we just couldn't believe it was intentional. I love your term "cutting my losses" - that's such a good way to view it. Don't want to waste even more years of our life in the mud. And the way you talk about being treated as lesser than is so heartbreakingly true. That's exactly how it feels and exactly how they intend to make you feel. And, yes, us always looking for the good in others, while they look for the bad in us and exercise their endless judgement, often mixed in with a sickly mess of anger and rejection. Ha, "the benefit of the doubt" ... A month ago, I asked my sister to "give me the benefit of the doubt" (with regard to our lying, narc mother) and of course, no way my sister would give me that, ha ha, when of course I would offer that to her. I'm getting better at protecting myself, but the phases of grief are still there, especially when something activates all the memories. Getting there, but it's quite a process, isn't it. I hope you are doing better now, Brooke. Thank you for all your insights. ♥️
I wrote about my experience of being the scapegoat, or as I call it, the black sheep, in the pinned essay on my page. I was rejected for not following the family line until I just had to leave.
My therapist might have mentioned “enmeshment” but the word didn’t stick. That’s exactly what it was, though. Everyone had a role to play and my mom thrived on creating chaos and playing the victim.
Sometimes i wonder if i could ever go back but then i read essays like this and go even deeper into understanding the disfunction
I will check out your essay!
I hear you. Being the scapegoat is a pretty rough role to have to play.
Another fantastic article and sooooo helpful!! Thank you Claire!! You're saving me. ❤️
I’m so glad it was! 🫶🫠
Thank you for this
You are very welcome.
Hi Claire, not sure if you've been getting my messages. Can you reply to this one please?
It's been a beautiful fall day here...glorious is how I would describe it. Hope you had a good day as well!
Yes, I replied!