If you have been the scapegoat of a social predator or you are a Whistleblower who outed a pack of bullies, chances are no one needs to tell you that you have been the victim of people committing deplorable acts of social, emotional, spiritual, and health impacting psychological and/or physical abuse.
But how to explain this bizarre twist of fate (about how you ended up a victim) to people who are learning about Narcissistic Abuse?
Begin here, by telling them clearly in plain language, what exactly happened to you without needing to go into an excess of gory personal details.
Small talk and casual conversation tips shared below can help you learn how to train your mind to respond to social stimuli prompts in ways that differentiate you (as the victim) from whoever or whatever group socially aggressed.
If someone asks you… what happened between you and ABC or QRS or XYZ member of your social life (meaning someone you were involved with romantically, a friend, or a family member), tell them something like this…
I was a victim of Narcissistic Abuse. I tricked myself into overlooking the red flags and all the warning signs because I wanted to believe the person was being genuine.
I was a dupe — someone they turned into a whipping boy over time. I was told that they liked and loved me when actually they were simply looking for someone to treat like a fall guy.
I was a patsy who fell for a con artist. Every sacrifice I made of myself and in the relationship was for their personal unjust, unearned, and underserved social gain and benefit.
I was a FOOL for believing their story and granting them trust before it was earned and verified.
I have no desire to be a martyr. Being a martyr, suffering in silence while enabling my own abuse and neglect, is something they have demanded I do but I have decided not to indulge them.
As a targeted mark, I was like a sitting duck — caught in the crosshairs of their narcissistic and anti-social disposition. Cluster B people use their words to charm and to harm with equal facility.
If there was supposed to be an Underdog story, I never intended to be involved in the tall tale. I was conned into believing the person was something they were not. I was tricked into believing they liked and loved me.
I was asked to TRUST THEM without a reason… and when I did, they chose to take.
Givers need to learn how to set limits and healthy boundaries — not feel like they need a superhero cape to make sure everyone but themselves feel great.
I was a sucker for a sob story that was rooted in gaslighting — not reality. Alternative facts might be true or accurate and complete presentations in a parallel reality or in an alternate dimension but on this planet in this year on this day in this timeline things like truth and accuracy matter.
A goat says, “Baaaaaaaahhhh.” Embrace their mantra.
Refuse to be an easy mark, a gull for them to socially abuse hospitality.
Stool pigeons eventually all become targets to aim at for fun and sport by people who use words to harm. I prefer to be a Phoenix.
The “Sufferer” persona depletes health and does nothing to truly assist anyone — included people who choose to abuse and or to neglect or to socially persecute others.
Self-immolation is passive suicide.
Refuse to be their clown or court jester — the pinata they choose to strive to destroy for their personal sadistic and truly anti-social pleasure.
[You are not required to be their stooge; if you are the butt of everyone’s jokes, told you have no sense of humor… understand they are ABUSERs.]
Expect toxic family members to use the person they treat the worst like a strawman for their own self-serving or impulsive purposes. What they choose to say about you will vary depending on who they are seeking to manipulate.
Tell people you are a casualty of someone who can perhaps be best described as a changeling that does not appear to possess any form of emotional conscience. If they are not a dummy, they will understand the burnt offering you are extending them by sharing a handful of ashes from the bridge you burned (metaphorically).
If Cluster B people and vertical thinkers had their way, they would find a way to commit infanticide of any person born with biological HSP skill sets or who is capable neurologically of horizontal (rather than simply vertical) thinking.
If you remember you were prey, someone that a social predator sized up like a mine to strip or quarry, it makes you less likely to think like a sap.
You were a HOSTAGE. If you know that and choose to remain, understand if you stay willingly you have become a complicit enabler. If you have to stay… use whatever free time you have available to self-educate and to devise a way to stop enabling and or to get away.
There is nothing positive or romantic about being treated like you are a sub-human whose life and time and emotions don’t matter — even if you do manage to smile through the pain.
Even if you/we / I constantly strive to make the best of every situation… regardless of how difficult or seemingly logically ridiculous other people’s behavior or your own seems to get. There is no amount of magical thinking or gaslighting that can make someone abusing another okay.
The weakling mentality is self-indulgent, leaving hedonistic people prone to harming others impulsively. If you need to say anything about someone else’s behavior, simply explain you choose to behave a more pro-social way.
Being a whipping boy does not build character — it leaves people scarred. Grown-ups in the room all know this… that praise and appreciation and celebrating neurodiversity leads to all parties involved doing great things.
There’s a reason why effective leaders are shown respect, feared in an emotionally and socially intelligent and respectful way, and loved for mentoring in fearless and group protecting ways.
If you vanquished a Cluster B person from your life after setting healthy boundaries they stepped right over, understand you are the injured party.
It does not take two people to harm one. It takes one double ego size social predator to provoke, to bait, or to aggress.
The buck stops here — assume male goat stance and headbutt back when and if a serial provoker or complicit enabler tries to gaslight you into believing that it’s the victim’s fault if they are standing in a pasture and some fool runs up and headbutts them off the side of a cliff.
It takes two to Tango — but only one psycho to drag their date kicking and screaming against their will around the dance floor.
Buck the system. Be the he-goat.
A male goat — when confronted by an aggressor — stands his ground or runs right at the menacing or aggressive social predator.
He goat.
Goat yoga.
Invoke the memory of Totes M’Goats. Let him be your spirit animal that helps to guide you through the process of learning how to set healthy boundaries and to self-assert.
Fashion a makeshift goatee on yourself in your mind as a replacement for the real thing. Visualize the horns, the clack of resistance — challenging when someone tries to make you feel small or toxic shame about having been treated like a scapegoat or the replacement metaphoric punching bag abusive and egocentric people like to use to displace their anger.
If you are being treated like crap by other people for no reason you can figure out of fathom, consider the possibility you are a stand-in. A makeshift form of whatever person in their past or current life who they are too afraid to lash out at, to speak up to, or to in any way challenge or hurt.
People who need a target or scapegoat to pick on, to bully, to alienate, to shame, to shun, or to socially mistreat are Cluster B. There’s no other classification of personality type that explains the phenomenon.
It is what it is, if you are a person who an Abuser and their enablers or other abusers by proxy choose to target.
If someone fears you will become a whistleblower, expect them to attack your mental and moral fitness and credibility early. If you break the silence about abuse — acting as a whistleblower — expect them to call you a liar and to tell anyone willing to listen in great gaslighting embellished detail that you are “crazy” (meaning morally unfit and psychologically unstable, not to be trusted, and to be socially ridiculed and ousted).
Victims die all at once or slowly — a little more day by day as life passes them by.
Choose to educate yourself about things like Stockholm Syndrome, Narcissistic Abuse, how to spot people with Cluster B personality disorders, and abuse tactics before making any decision to end your own life or to stay with an abuser for any longer than you practicably have to…
Survive by putting on your own intellectual, academic, spiritual, psychological, and emotional oxygen mask first if you are a scapegoat.
Education is key to Narcissistic Abuse recovery.
That’s the final or only real thing you need to tell people about your personal life or family issues when you have gone low to no contact with people who you used to consider your friends, your love, or your most beloved people.
Tell them you stopped thinking like a victim or a dupe and gave up your whipping boy position as the fall guy for an unholy group once you spent a few hours reading Narcissistic Abuse recovery material.
If they ask you… what’s that?
Send them to do their own internet research. It’s not your job to fill them in or to share the Cliff notes version.
If you sacrifice your time to share wake-up literature with others, share a link. A breadcrumb.
We all come to a point where either we choose to self-educate in order to socially and emotionally improve our behavior or we don’t. We show interest in what we — in any given minute — mindfully choose to prioritize most.
Scapegoats who are tired of acting like a sitting duck, pigeon-holed into playing the martyr, suffering in silence for no one’s best interest and for no reason, tend to seek to change their personal behaviors.
Acting aggressively toward a Cluster B person gets them hurt and Empaths no place fast.
The only way to survive their games if you have been scapegoated or targeted for social abuse by Machiavellian social predators — regardless of how savvy or sophisticated they are — is to lose all interest in continuing the relationship and all forms of nurtured toxic shame.
That’s what you say.
That going NO CONTACT was an act of survival for the health of your mind, body, and spirit.
You make a choice to limit your involvement in toxic relationships.
And you take pride in being an abuse SURVIVOR who refuses to tolerate the inhumane or socially caustic behavior of Cluster B people any longer. Stop being afraid to butt heads with strangers and casual acquaintances who ask prying questions that are likely to cause you to melt down or to trigger.
Standing up for yourself never requires conflict or anger. You can let people know you are not comfortable talking about someone who you used to know with whom you have chosen to leave voluntarily or from whom you have been functionally alienated.
It’s okay to set and to enforce that boundary bu simply not being a pushover. Tell them while you appreciate them asking that you prefer to respect your own as well as that person’s right to privacy if they insist on socially meddling or conversationally prying.
