Tag: scapegoats

I Diagnose Myself a Scapegoat 

What is a Scapegoat?

To put it plainly: a person blamed for the wrongdoings, mistakes, or faults of others. What does that mean exactly?

It means that if you are someone’s scapegoat, you are going to be the reason someone else did or said something, or the reason something happened, or more broadly YOU are the problem.

The scapegoat is given a tremendous amount of power, but ends up feeling weak, shameful, pitiable, guilty, or that they are evil, bad, or wrong. In come cases, wrongness becomes inseparable from the way they see themselves: they can mistake what others say for their true identities.

In families, the scapegoat tends to be the person the family collectively identifies as a source of their dysfunctional behavior. The idea being that if the person to blame for familial disruption is somehow fixed, then the family will be fixed.

by Elizabeth Invictus

Am I having an Existential Crisis?

I had a plan. I put everything int0 this plan: my time, effort, and energy, and to no avail. The universe returned my efforts with a message: there is a greater plan you need to follow now, and it is not the one you were working for (and you know it).

I had put all of my effort into plan B, which did involve a lot of courage: facing fears, working through setbacks, and being honest with myself. However, Plan A is less comfortable, less secure, more of an unknown than Plan B.

It seems I have a choice before me: work towards the life I have envisioned for myself or make a new plan B. The decision seems obvious but, following plan A has me feeling lost, confused, scared, and courageous, brave and strong all at once.

Am I experiencing an existential crisis, or is it something else?

by Elizabeth Invictus