This is all very understandable to me. For me, some of what you describe and have experienced ties into the experience of radical acceptance (not sure this would be true for you, however). Linking you to my article in case you'd like to read it: https://familyscapegoathealing.substack.com/p/radical-acceptance-and-its-role-in
You write: "...We need to adopt the idea that it's perfectly okay to be rejected and unwanted..." - This brought to mind a Buddha Story a Substack author posted yesterday. This excerpt here really struck me: (Backstory first: Someone walks up to the Buddha and spits on him. The Buddha's students are very upset by this. The Buddha is not upset, and says the following): "He must have heard something about me like ‘This man is godless and dangerous; he leads people astray, misleads people’. He has formed an idea about me. He has not spit on me; he has spit on his own idea; he does not know me; how can he spit on me? If you think about it, he has spit on his own mind."
Excellent article, Rebecca. I've taught Janet Hurley's system of boundary management for years, but this addresses a key teaching of Buddhism known as " emptiness" but actually " boundlessness." We all are connected but as humans we need that to be done in a healthy way. Thank you.
Lovely to meet you here, Hannah, just followed you. I will look into the work of Hurley, had not known of her! Yes, these great truths are often paradoxical in nature. Look forward to reading your offerings here on Substack.
I’ll be sharing. It’s quite a journey to disentangle from enmeshment and as the Buddha article says, we first need a self in order to surrender our self. It’s within us beneath all the layers of conditioning which set us up to not even recognize and to mistake ourselves for the personality and survival behaviors we developed in reaction to our environment and from our highly sensitive empathic natures. Thank you Rebecca for another phenomenal article!
Much appreciated, Kelly. Precisely why I included a chapter on the 'false self' and a chapter on the 'true self' in my introductory book on family scapegoating abuse (Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed). I tried to keep it simple while still pointing to trans/personal concepts / realities.
I'm so appreciative of these articles which allow us to continue to learn and develop ourselves. Thanks to Rebecca's work, which I consider to be groundbreaking, it has allowed me to heal far more deeply than previously possible. I'm nearly 60 now and am glad these resources are available to the younger survivors, so they won't have to stuggle as long as we did.
I'm not an empath, but I care for someone who expects me to share their pain. I am compassionate. I understand her situation and what they are going through. If I enter into the pain that they experience, I'm not able to do my job. I've given up explaining that or suggesting that the caretaking shows my love concern and taken up hardening my heart and faking it. We're at Pareto optimal, I think. Neither of has a move that will improve their position..
Sounds like a tough situation. An apt analogy (Pareto optimal), given double binds (which I refer to in my article) are a "lose/lose". How to be there for others - and remain authentic - and not lose ourselves? How much adjustment toward another's needs is an abandonment of self? Close attention must be paid, and at times, hard decisions must be made.
I enjoyed your article, and wish to add that it is common for everyone who creates boundaries and holds them to be attacked mentally, verbally, and emotionally for holding their boundaries. This doesn’t only happen to empaths, sadly.
Very true. I discuss that exact thing here in a video as related to scapegoated adults setting boundaries with family members. Link here, if you care to watch. https://youtu.be/gLptzBP_Arw
For some reason I missed the video you linked in the post, and something you said at some point, around min 17, ressonates with a past moment I lived. When I tried to sort of communicate my truth about what I was experiencing, I was blackmailed, and regressed to a point I didn't experience for a long time. Ironically, this happened while I was having "therapy" for the first time. Being in "therapy" made it all worse, as it was not trauma informed and I felt even more invalidated (three times in a row on the same situation, parent and sibling; uncles while trying to reach out for help; and non-trauma -informed therapist). I wasn't aware of C-PTSD myself back then, so I didn't have the tools to recognize the situation and signals. it was after this that I started searching and eventually found out first Jonice Webb on emotional neglect, then Pete Walker on C-PTSD, and later Rebecca on FSA.
Thanks for another insightful and validating post.
So very sorry this happened to you, Mariana. I'm glad you could share this with us in this space. What you are describing sounds like traumatic invalidation and is common with FSA child victims and adult survivors, as attested to by my years of research. I have a video on this here: https://youtu.be/8BQ5Vrarp1g
Thank you for reminding me of this video and the term "traumatic invalidation". Terms are important, indeed, they help to give some structure to a very confusing narrative. I do relate with most of the syntoms you describe, such as impostor syndrom - struggling a lot with that while trying to secure a job, while doubting and permanently invalidating my capabilities, despite beingh highly qualified... And many others...
No 🙈 shame on me, I've been wanting to read for a long time, and still wasn't able to. I read and saw probably most of your articles and videos, though.
No shaming of self, please (!) It is there for you when you are ready....Audiobook will be out next year, if that works better for you. And the Dutch translation will be out next year, more than likely as well.
Hi, Rebecca. I enjoyed reading your article. To be attacked mentally, verbally, and emotionally is always possible in our era now. Even if you are doing nothing, it can happen to all of us at any time. However, in the cases you have mentioned, I agree the frequency is much higher. Why is the case so? Why are such cases more common to experience or to see, especially in our era? I, myself, have found the answer in spiritism. At this point, I can recommend you read the book Obsession by Allan Kardec if you are interested also. And I can recommend listening to Dr. Melvin Morse on YouTube to understand better that there are really valuable things in spiritism to be investigated. You can search the following title to find him:
“Near Death Experiencer Researcher REVEALS Message From The Other Side - Dr. Melvin Morse”
However, in our daily lives, we need practical solutions. So, what are/is the solution(s)? I think we cannot talk about only one solution that fits everyone. Depending on the culture and belief system of a person, of course, the solution will also differ. If you ask a person interested in Sufism, they will explain to you how they think in these cases. Similarly, if you ask Buddhists, they will also explain to you their own approach. And spiritists have their own approach to these cases. Of course, it would be better if one had no prejudices about all these approaches and tried to learn each of them because I can assure you that each adds something valuable to a person. But of course, this takes time and a lot of reading and sharing. I want to emphasize the word "sharing" because the best way to learn something is to teach it.
Let me put them aside since we all need an immediate solution as soon as possible. Not all of us have time to investigate these thinking systems. Therefore, I want to share where you can find the quickest solution, although it still requires some reading and a lot of work on oneself. In my last post, I shared the following lines of a person who is also interested in spiritism. :
"A person can experience powerful changes in almost all of his life by changing his way of thinking. Because the point is not to change the events that happened in the past, but to change our perspective and the way we interpret them. When we give a different meaning to the same event, it is now something completely different and makes us feel different emotions..."
All the thinking systems—Sufism, Buddhism, and Spirism—that I mentioned above surely help us change our way of thinking and give a different meaning to the same event. Therefore, if you have time or are a researcher, I strongly recommend you investigate each.
For those who have no time, which is unfortunately now the problem of our era, I urge them to explore "The Work of Byron Katie". This summer, I’ve read four books by her. And now, I have the fifth one in my hand. Her books have a profound effect on shifting our perspective and fundamentally altering how we interpret the events in our lives and offer much more to know ourselves. Her books involve a bit of every thinking system related to every subject, including the subject of setting boundaries, and they help you a lot if you apply what she recommends.
And Rebecca, I listened to your YouTube video. Your way of explaining the problem so clearly and your openness to all the solutions are worth to be appreciated. I felt myself encouraged to share my experience here with you after watching it. So, hoping that it would be helpful to someone, I wanted to write my experiences here.
When I first encountered The Work of Byron Katie, I liked her approach so much that I wrote the following article before reading one of her books to introduce her to my friends and to understand "The Work" better. Lastly, I also want to add it.
Thank you for taking the time to leave such a rich and full comment. As former Core Faculty at the world renowned 'Institute of Transpersonal Psychology', I am more than a bit familiar with these pathways mentioned by you here, and was introduced to them well before then as I have been studying (and later teaching on) ancient wisdom texts for over four decades now (including Gnosticism, the Nag Hammadi texts, Taoism, Sufism, etc). I also find much integrative wisdom in Taoist literature; my favorite translation of the Tao Te Ching (as well as the I Ching) is by Dr. Yi Wu, a teacher and scholar who I was privileged to personally know. I look forward to reading the article attached here (and I am familiar with 'The Work', of course, although it is not the transmission I most strongly identify with and align with).
This is all very understandable to me. For me, some of what you describe and have experienced ties into the experience of radical acceptance (not sure this would be true for you, however). Linking you to my article in case you'd like to read it: https://familyscapegoathealing.substack.com/p/radical-acceptance-and-its-role-in
You write: "...We need to adopt the idea that it's perfectly okay to be rejected and unwanted..." - This brought to mind a Buddha Story a Substack author posted yesterday. This excerpt here really struck me: (Backstory first: Someone walks up to the Buddha and spits on him. The Buddha's students are very upset by this. The Buddha is not upset, and says the following): "He must have heard something about me like ‘This man is godless and dangerous; he leads people astray, misleads people’. He has formed an idea about me. He has not spit on me; he has spit on his own idea; he does not know me; how can he spit on me? If you think about it, he has spit on his own mind."
Ditto!
Yes, so right! Accused of things I never thought of!
Excellent article, Rebecca. I've taught Janet Hurley's system of boundary management for years, but this addresses a key teaching of Buddhism known as " emptiness" but actually " boundlessness." We all are connected but as humans we need that to be done in a healthy way. Thank you.
Lovely to meet you here, Hannah, just followed you. I will look into the work of Hurley, had not known of her! Yes, these great truths are often paradoxical in nature. Look forward to reading your offerings here on Substack.
I’ll be sharing. It’s quite a journey to disentangle from enmeshment and as the Buddha article says, we first need a self in order to surrender our self. It’s within us beneath all the layers of conditioning which set us up to not even recognize and to mistake ourselves for the personality and survival behaviors we developed in reaction to our environment and from our highly sensitive empathic natures. Thank you Rebecca for another phenomenal article!
Much appreciated, Kelly. Precisely why I included a chapter on the 'false self' and a chapter on the 'true self' in my introductory book on family scapegoating abuse (Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed). I tried to keep it simple while still pointing to trans/personal concepts / realities.
Yes the false self! It serves the scapegoaters until we unmask it. 🎯
(and/or unmask them…!)
🤣more like it!
I'm so appreciative of these articles which allow us to continue to learn and develop ourselves. Thanks to Rebecca's work, which I consider to be groundbreaking, it has allowed me to heal far more deeply than previously possible. I'm nearly 60 now and am glad these resources are available to the younger survivors, so they won't have to stuggle as long as we did.
Couldn't agree more Lynn, from a fellow nearly 60 year old.
Thank you, June!
So heartening to hear, Lynn, thank you for letting me know. Appreciate your support and glad you're here!
This is good! I need to send this to a couple of other people I know too who fit this description
That would be great, thanks Rachel!
I'm not an empath, but I care for someone who expects me to share their pain. I am compassionate. I understand her situation and what they are going through. If I enter into the pain that they experience, I'm not able to do my job. I've given up explaining that or suggesting that the caretaking shows my love concern and taken up hardening my heart and faking it. We're at Pareto optimal, I think. Neither of has a move that will improve their position..
Sounds like a tough situation. An apt analogy (Pareto optimal), given double binds (which I refer to in my article) are a "lose/lose". How to be there for others - and remain authentic - and not lose ourselves? How much adjustment toward another's needs is an abandonment of self? Close attention must be paid, and at times, hard decisions must be made.
Got your message - charge reversed.
I’ll continue to look forward to reading. I wish that my means stretched to cover you and everyone else with so much useful to say.
No problem at all. You also can subscribe for free - that way my articles go straight to your inbox or at least you'll get push notifications.
I enjoyed your article, and wish to add that it is common for everyone who creates boundaries and holds them to be attacked mentally, verbally, and emotionally for holding their boundaries. This doesn’t only happen to empaths, sadly.
Very true. I discuss that exact thing here in a video as related to scapegoated adults setting boundaries with family members. Link here, if you care to watch. https://youtu.be/gLptzBP_Arw
For some reason I missed the video you linked in the post, and something you said at some point, around min 17, ressonates with a past moment I lived. When I tried to sort of communicate my truth about what I was experiencing, I was blackmailed, and regressed to a point I didn't experience for a long time. Ironically, this happened while I was having "therapy" for the first time. Being in "therapy" made it all worse, as it was not trauma informed and I felt even more invalidated (three times in a row on the same situation, parent and sibling; uncles while trying to reach out for help; and non-trauma -informed therapist). I wasn't aware of C-PTSD myself back then, so I didn't have the tools to recognize the situation and signals. it was after this that I started searching and eventually found out first Jonice Webb on emotional neglect, then Pete Walker on C-PTSD, and later Rebecca on FSA.
Thanks for another insightful and validating post.
So very sorry this happened to you, Mariana. I'm glad you could share this with us in this space. What you are describing sounds like traumatic invalidation and is common with FSA child victims and adult survivors, as attested to by my years of research. I have a video on this here: https://youtu.be/8BQ5Vrarp1g
Thank you for reminding me of this video and the term "traumatic invalidation". Terms are important, indeed, they help to give some structure to a very confusing narrative. I do relate with most of the syntoms you describe, such as impostor syndrom - struggling a lot with that while trying to secure a job, while doubting and permanently invalidating my capabilities, despite beingh highly qualified... And many others...
Yes, we do need reminders sometime! Did you already read my introductory book on FSA (Rejected, Shamed, and Blame)?
No 🙈 shame on me, I've been wanting to read for a long time, and still wasn't able to. I read and saw probably most of your articles and videos, though.
No shaming of self, please (!) It is there for you when you are ready....Audiobook will be out next year, if that works better for you. And the Dutch translation will be out next year, more than likely as well.
Hi, Rebecca. I enjoyed reading your article. To be attacked mentally, verbally, and emotionally is always possible in our era now. Even if you are doing nothing, it can happen to all of us at any time. However, in the cases you have mentioned, I agree the frequency is much higher. Why is the case so? Why are such cases more common to experience or to see, especially in our era? I, myself, have found the answer in spiritism. At this point, I can recommend you read the book Obsession by Allan Kardec if you are interested also. And I can recommend listening to Dr. Melvin Morse on YouTube to understand better that there are really valuable things in spiritism to be investigated. You can search the following title to find him:
“Near Death Experiencer Researcher REVEALS Message From The Other Side - Dr. Melvin Morse”
However, in our daily lives, we need practical solutions. So, what are/is the solution(s)? I think we cannot talk about only one solution that fits everyone. Depending on the culture and belief system of a person, of course, the solution will also differ. If you ask a person interested in Sufism, they will explain to you how they think in these cases. Similarly, if you ask Buddhists, they will also explain to you their own approach. And spiritists have their own approach to these cases. Of course, it would be better if one had no prejudices about all these approaches and tried to learn each of them because I can assure you that each adds something valuable to a person. But of course, this takes time and a lot of reading and sharing. I want to emphasize the word "sharing" because the best way to learn something is to teach it.
Let me put them aside since we all need an immediate solution as soon as possible. Not all of us have time to investigate these thinking systems. Therefore, I want to share where you can find the quickest solution, although it still requires some reading and a lot of work on oneself. In my last post, I shared the following lines of a person who is also interested in spiritism. :
"A person can experience powerful changes in almost all of his life by changing his way of thinking. Because the point is not to change the events that happened in the past, but to change our perspective and the way we interpret them. When we give a different meaning to the same event, it is now something completely different and makes us feel different emotions..."
All the thinking systems—Sufism, Buddhism, and Spirism—that I mentioned above surely help us change our way of thinking and give a different meaning to the same event. Therefore, if you have time or are a researcher, I strongly recommend you investigate each.
For those who have no time, which is unfortunately now the problem of our era, I urge them to explore "The Work of Byron Katie". This summer, I’ve read four books by her. And now, I have the fifth one in my hand. Her books have a profound effect on shifting our perspective and fundamentally altering how we interpret the events in our lives and offer much more to know ourselves. Her books involve a bit of every thinking system related to every subject, including the subject of setting boundaries, and they help you a lot if you apply what she recommends.
And Rebecca, I listened to your YouTube video. Your way of explaining the problem so clearly and your openness to all the solutions are worth to be appreciated. I felt myself encouraged to share my experience here with you after watching it. So, hoping that it would be helpful to someone, I wanted to write my experiences here.
When I first encountered The Work of Byron Katie, I liked her approach so much that I wrote the following article before reading one of her books to introduce her to my friends and to understand "The Work" better. Lastly, I also want to add it.
https://open.substack.com/pub/mysticheartphd/p/the-work-of-byron-katie?r=3lctwb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
All the best.
With Love.
Thank you for taking the time to leave such a rich and full comment. As former Core Faculty at the world renowned 'Institute of Transpersonal Psychology', I am more than a bit familiar with these pathways mentioned by you here, and was introduced to them well before then as I have been studying (and later teaching on) ancient wisdom texts for over four decades now (including Gnosticism, the Nag Hammadi texts, Taoism, Sufism, etc). I also find much integrative wisdom in Taoist literature; my favorite translation of the Tao Te Ching (as well as the I Ching) is by Dr. Yi Wu, a teacher and scholar who I was privileged to personally know. I look forward to reading the article attached here (and I am familiar with 'The Work', of course, although it is not the transmission I most strongly identify with and align with).