How Scapegoat Survivors Can Stop Solving Old Problems
If you grew up as the scapegoat in a narcissistic family, much of your early life was likely spent trying to solve problems no child should have to face. These weren’t problems about school, friends, or growing up. They were about survival—in a household where love came with conditions and connection always felt just out of reach.
This post is about the legacy of those early problems—and how the solutions you created in childhood can become the very things that keep you stuck in adulthood.
We’ll explore:
The two original problems the scapegoat child faces
The creative—but costly—solutions children come up with
How these solutions begin to cause problems of their own
Then I’ll explain what recovery looks like when the original problem is gone, but the solution remains. There’s now an opportunity to surrender the old problem-solving and recognize that what used to be the solution has become the new “problem.” This becomes possible when you’re with safe people today.
The Scapegoat Child’s Two Problems
If you were the scapegoat child in a narcissistic family system, you were treated like the problem—whether directly or by implication. But beneath that treatment lies a deeper emotional reality: the child is facing a parent who cannot love them.
Not because the child is unlovable, but because the parent is incapable of providing that love.
This poses two problems for the child:
Problem #1: How do I get love from a parent who doesn’t show they love me?
Most children take for granted that their parent can and will love them. It’s a biological expectation. But when that love is missing—or only shows up under rigid conditions—the child must work much harder to try to access it.
The first major problem the scapegoat child must solve is: What do I need to do to be loved by this parent?
To understand the gravity of this problem, it helps to understand the parent’s limitations.
A narcissistic parent isn’t simply distracted or emotionally distant. They are psychologically invested in preserving a particular self-image—one of superiority, admiration, or being beyond reproach. As a result, they tend to see others—not as individuals—but as reflections or extensions of themselves.
That includes their children.
If a child reflects well on them—by being obedient, flattering, or successful in ways the parent values—they may receive conditional approval. But if the child asserts their own mind, draws attention to the parent’s flaws, or simply becomes a container for the parent’s disavowed feelings, that child may be designated the scapegoat.
The scapegoat child is not allowed to be loved as they are. The parent’s use for them—as a container for unwanted feelings—conflicts with any capacity to love them. Recognizing the child’s value would mean acknowledging that the child is not who the parent needs them to be.
Problem #2: How do I get this parent to value the love I give them?
The second problem arises from the first.
Not only is love absent from the parent toward the child—but the child’s love for the parent goes unnoticed or devalued. The child may bring care, loyalty, even devotion—but these offerings don’t seem to matter. Or worse, they’re dismissed as manipulative, clingy, or weak.
This sets up a second problem: What do I need to do to make my love matter to this parent?
The narcissistic parent is often so invested in seeing the scapegoat as defective that they can’t allow themselves to experience the child’s positive intentions. Doing so would upend the structure where the scapegoat carries everything the parent rejects in themselves.
So the child’s efforts to love the parent—genuine though they may be—don’t register. Not because the child’s love is lacking, but because the parent has no use for it.
The Scapegoat Child’s Solutions
The only way to psychologically go on for the scapegoat child is to find a way to fit into the narcissistic parent’s distorted reality. They do this by forming two major solutions:
Solution #1: “The problem is me—I am defective and undeserving.”
If the parent isn’t giving love, the child reasons: There must be something wrong with me.
Believing you’re the problem is often less terrifying than believing your parent won’t or can’t love you. If the problem is with you, maybe—just maybe—it can be fixed.
This leads the child to strive for “improvement” by:
Being more agreeable
Hiding their true feelings
Suppressing anger or needs
Performing for approval
The hope is that someday, if they can be “less defective,” they’ll finally earn love.
Solution #2: “I can prove the value of my love by meeting my parent’s every need.”
If the parent doesn’t value the child’s affection, the child may decide they’re just not doing it right. So they redouble their efforts:
Anticipating the parent’s needs
Taking on emotional labor far beyond their years
Trying to be indispensable
For the scapegoat child, this might even include agreeing with the parent’s negative views: hating themselves to make the parent feel right. It’s a tragic but sometimes convincing form of closeness.
These solutions might provide a temporary sense of control—but at a steep cost.
A Case Example
Dana grew up with a mother who was volatile and often critical. When Dana came to her mother with excitement—about school, friends, her drawings—she was met with cold indifference or sharp criticism. Dana concluded that her efforts were uninspiring. She decided there was nothing about her worth getting excited about.
She began to expect nothing from her mother, hoping that this would show her mother she was being the kind of child her mother wanted—and maybe that would finally win her love. It was a hope that burned inside Dana throughout her childhood and adolescence. Tragically, it was never realized.
Dana recalled trying to hug her mother at age five, only to be scolded for “trying to get out of a punishment by being cute.” She became suspicious of her own impulses to show affection—not just to her mother, but to anyone. Her mother’s dismissiveness made affection feel worthless. So she assumed it must be worthless to others, too.
Dana lived in a world where she felt unappreciated and like she had nothing to offer. But she discovered one exception: her mother liked to brag to friends about Dana’s accomplishments—even though she never praised Dana directly. So Dana threw herself into her schoolwork, hoping that straight A’s would give her mother something good to share. That became the only version of “love” she could hope for—making her mother feel good about herself.
This lesson extended into Dana’s adult relationships. In friendships, she gave far more than she received. In romantic relationships, she gravitated toward emotionally unavailable partners. She repeated the same old effort: If I just love them enough, maybe I’ll finally be loved in return.
Dana’s solutions made her competent, generous, and driven. But they also left her deeply lonely and unsure of her worth.
These weren’t failures of character. They were creative responses to an impossible situation.
When the Solution Becomes the Problem
As children, scapegoat survivors rely on these strategies to maintain any semblance of connection with a narcissistic parent—even if that connection is painful. But these strategies don’t just disappear in adulthood. They persist—and eventually, they begin to cause harm.
This is where old solutions become new problems.
Let’s return to Dana.
As an adult, Dana was thriving in her career as an accountant. She was detail-oriented, responsive, and praised for being reliable. But her personal life told a different story. In relationships, she often felt invisible. Her partners expected emotional caretaking but offered little in return. And when Dana tried to express her own needs, she felt anxious and “too much.”
At 26, she began therapy. She told her therapist that she was tired of doing everything she thought she was supposed to—yet none of it felt like it was for her. She couldn’t enjoy her achievements, and her relationships felt one-sided. Through therapy, Dana realized that her sense of self was still organized around an old mission: Prove you’re not defective so someone will finally love you.
The people she was drawn to weren’t capable of loving her in the way she needed. Her old solution—meet everyone’s needs but her own—was no longer solving anything. It was creating new problems.
What Old Solutions Interfere With
When someone organizes their life around being lovable to an unloving parent, a number of important developmental goals get put on hold—or pushed aside entirely:
Healthy self-esteem
If you grow up believing you’re defective, you don’t just feel bad about yourself—you internalize that belief as truth. Accomplishments don’t land. Compliments don’t stick. Relationships don’t feel secure. You still believe love must be earned, and you’re unworthy by default.
Belief in your own effectiveness
Children raised in invalidating environments often struggle to believe they can shape their own lives. They second-guess decisions, defer to others, and underplay their abilities. When your childhood efforts to get someone to see you never worked, it’s easy to conclude you can’t make things happen for yourself.
Mutual, respectful relationships
If your blueprint for connection involves over-functioning, apologizing, or adapting endlessly, then mutual relationships will feel unfamiliar. You might settle for emotional crumbs—or feel guilty when someone treats you with kindness, because you still believe you haven’t earned it.
Why These Solutions Persist
One of the cruelest ironies of recovery is this: the more a survivor outgrows the need to solve the original problem, the more painful the old solution becomes. But letting go of that solution can feel deeply disorienting—because it’s often tied to what has felt like reality for so long.
You may ask:
If I’m not the one who helps everyone, who am I?
If I stop striving to be enough, what happens to my value?
If I stop trying to fix my partner, will they leave?
These are not irrational fears. They reflect the emotional cost of living around a danger that’s no longer there—but still governs how you feel.
That’s why recovery isn’t just about insight. It’s about redefining the actual problem.
Defining the New Problem
The original problems—How do I get love from a parent who won’t give it? How do I prove that my love matters?—are no longer solvable. Not because you failed. But because they were never solvable to begin with.
So what’s the new problem?
How do I let go of the old solutions I created to survive a problem that no longer exists?
This shift in focus changes everything. Now, the goal isn’t to finally earn the love you were denied. It’s to stop organizing your life around that goal.
How the Three Pillars of Recovery Can Help
Letting go of old solutions doesn’t happen all at once. It unfolds over time—with structure, support, and repeated opportunities to experience something new. That’s why I created the 3 Pillars of Recovery, which I explain in depth in my course Recovery from Narcissistic Abuse. Each pillar addresses a core component of the healing process.
Pillar 1: Making Sense of What Happened
The first step in releasing the old solution is understanding why it was needed in the first place.
This means:
Understanding your parent’s psychological limitations
Naming the specific roles and rules you had to live by
Seeing how your beliefs about yourself were shaped in that environment
This is often where survivors feel their first wave of relief. You realize: It wasn’t that I was unlovable. I was trying to be loved by someone who couldn’t love me.
That realization alone can start to loosen the grip of the old solution.
Pillar 2: Moving Away from Narcissistic Abusers and Toward Safe People
Once you understand the origins of your beliefs, the next step is to live in a world that reflects a different reality.
This means:
Identifying people who respect your boundaries
Seeking out relationships where your needs are safe to express
Reducing exposure to narcissistic or critical people who reinforce your old roles
This pillar helps retrain your nervous system to see safety, respect, and mutuality as normal—not suspicious or dangerous. That’s when the old problem starts to lose its urgency, because your current environment doesn’t mirror it.
Pillar 3: Living in Defiance of the Narcissist’s Rules
This is where a new life takes shape.
Living in defiance doesn’t mean retaliation. It means building a life that contradicts the assumptions you once had to live by.
Where you were once forbidden to speak your truth—you begin saying what’s true
Where your needs didn’t matter—you begin caring for them anyway
Where you were seen as defective—you start building experiences that prove otherwise
This is how you replace old solutions—not just with insight, but with new action. You don’t argue with the old belief. You live in contradiction to it.
Tolerating Uncertainty
Letting go of old strategies doesn’t just bring relief. It can bring a quiet panic.
Even when you know those strategies are hurting you—even when you see the cost—it’s hard to stop using them. Why? Because those strategies gave you certainty. They told you who to be, what to do, and how to measure success.
Without them, there’s often a void:
If I’m not trying to prove my worth, what am I doing?
If I’m not trying to fix people to get love, then how do I love?
If I stop blaming myself for the past, what do I do with all this pain?
This uncertainty isn’t a sign that something’s wrong. It’s a sign that something’s different. You’re no longer living inside the old problem—but the new one doesn’t yet have a script. And your nervous system may protest.
Why Uncertainty Felt Dangerous
For scapegoat survivors, uncertainty wasn’t just uncomfortable—it was dangerous.
Your safety depended on knowing how to be useful to a parent who couldn’t see you as separate. That meant scanning for cues, suppressing your instincts, and performing a role—over and over.
Uncertainty about how to act, or who to be, could result in being ignored, mocked, or punished.
So of course letting go of an identity built around fixing, pleasing, and performing feels terrifying. In many ways, this is the final act of defiance: living without a script your narcissistic parent would recognize.
What This Looks Like in Practice
Let’s return to Dana one last time.
After several months in therapy, Dana decided to test her new insights. She began looking at her friendships through a different lens—starting with her friend Sarah, who often seemed to take much more than she gave.
Initially, it was Dana’s therapist who wondered aloud whether Sarah was offering Dana the kind of care Dana consistently offered her. Dana was surprised. No one had ever asked whether she was being treated well enough.
As Dana began to trust her therapist’s sincerity, she grew more comfortable questioning her own expectations. She acknowledged how often she was the one making plans, offering support, and checking in. And she recognized a fear: If I don’t prove my worth in this friendship, I’ll be discarded.
But instead of acting on that fear, Dana waited. She didn’t text first. She didn’t offer help unprompted.
And Sarah did reach out—asking Dana how she was doing.
It wasn’t a dramatic shift, but it was new. It opened a little more space for Dana to exist on her own terms—not just as the person others needed her to be.
A Place to Practice: My Upcoming Group Class
This kind of transformation is hard to do alone. That’s why I’m creating a live, 8-week online course specifically for scapegoat survivors of narcissistic abuse.
In this group, you’ll be supported as you begin surrendering the deeply ingrained instinct to solve your narcissistic parent’s problems. Through carefully structured lessons, real-time community, and a compassionate framework, you’ll gain the experiences needed to realize:
The old problem no longer exists.
And the old solution can now be the problem you solve.
You’ll be joined by others on the same path. You’ll experience what it’s like to belong to a community that doesn’t run on shame, criticism, or emotional scarcity. You’ll get to practice new ways of being—ways that honor your story without confining you to it.
To learn more and get notified when enrollment opens, CLICK HERE.