Interoception, Trauma, and Healing From Family Scapegoating Abuse
Expanding Mind - Body awareness to address interoceptive disruption secondary to FSA and Complex Trauma
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Family Scapegoating Abuse (FSA) is a deeply wounding experience that can have long-lasting psycho-emotional and physical effects. Those who endure FSA are often blamed for family dysfunction, carrying the burden of collective problems that are not their own. Because many survivors of FSA suffer from complex trauma (C-PTSD), betrayal trauma, and attachment trauma, healing from FSA requires a multi-faceted approach. One promising avenue involves strengthening interoception—the ability to perceive and understand internal bodily signals. Addressing interoceptive disruption by developing mind-body awareness can help survivors of FSA reconnect with their bodies (particularly important for those suffering from structural dissociation), foster emotional resilience, and reclaim a sense of agency over their internal world. This post serves as a brief introduction to interoception and the benefits of increasing interoceptive awareness to support FSA recovery. Related resources are also provided.
Included Resources: This post includes the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness (Self-Test); a link to a free online Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course; and a link to my article on Structural Dissociation as related to FSA and Complex Trauma. To access exclusive paid subscriber content and paywall-protected Community features supporting FSA healing and recovery, consider upgrading your subscription from free to paid today.
What Is Interoception?
Interoception is the internal sense that helps us perceive bodily sensations, such as hunger, heartbeat, and breath. It is the sense that allows us to answer the question, “How do I feel?” in any given moment.
Interoception plays a critical role in emotional regulation and self-awareness. When interoceptive awareness is impaired—a common consequence of chronic stress, abuse, and attendant trauma—individuals may struggle to identify and process their emotions, leading to emotional dysregulation and physical health problems which can at times become chronic.
For adult survivors of FSA, the journey toward healing often involves reconnecting with a sense of self that has been deeply fractured. Because FSA involves consistent invalidation and distortion of one's reality (something that can begin early on in a scapegoated child’s life), survivors frequently struggle with identifying and trusting their own internal cues.
This is where the practice of mindfully tuning in to internal bodily sensations becomes profoundly valuable. By cultivating interoceptive awareness, FSA survivors can begin to reclaim their bodies and minds by recognizing and responding to their authentic needs and emotions, which were systematically overridden during their formative years. This process facilitates the development of a secure foundation within oneself, empowering survivors in recovery to begin navigating the world with greater self-trust, confidence, and resilience.
The Link Between FSA and Interoceptive Disruption
Interoceptive disruption refers to a dysregulation or disturbance in the body’s ability to accurately perceive and interpret internal signals, such as hunger, thirst, heart rate, or emotional states.
Interoceptive disruption can also significantly impact the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS). The PNS is part of the autonomic nervous system and is responsible for "rest and digest" functions. It relies on accurate interoceptive feedback to maintain homeostasis. When interoception is compromised, the PNS may struggle to appropriately regulate functions like heart rate, digestion, and respiration. This can lead to a cascade of physiological and emotional dysregulation, as the body's ability to respond effectively to internal cues is diminished, potentially resulting in heightened anxiety, digestive issues, and difficulty relaxing.
Family Scapegoating Abuse (FSA) occurs when a specific family member is consistently blamed, shamed, and treated as the root cause of the family’s dysfunction. FSA can significantly contribute to interoceptive disruption, particularly when the abuse occurs over an extended period during the targeted child’s formative years.
The chronic invalidation, traumatic shaming, rejection and emotional maltreatment can lead to child victims and adult survivors of FSA disconnecting from their internal bodily sensations as a survival mechanism because being present in their body is not safe. When the body’s cues are consistently ignored, dismissed, or misinterpreted in the context of abuse, survivors may lose trust in their internal experiences, resulting in long-term difficulties in identifying and regulating emotions and physical states.
The constant stress and hypervigilance caused by FSA puts the body in a persistent state of fight, flight, freeze, or fawn, which can impair the nervous system’s ability to regulate interoception. To complicate matters further, scapegoated individuals are frequently subjected to reality distortion in their families, including gaslighting, leading to confusion about their own experiences, perceptions, and feelings. This can cause a profound disconnection from their bodily experiences, as tuning into physical sensations may feel overwhelming or unsafe.
Over time, this detachment can manifest as physical symptoms like chronic pain, debilitating migraines, neck tension, lethargy and fatigue, or gastrointestinal issues, which are common in individuals with complex trauma. The body’s inability to process and integrate internal cues effectively contributes to emotional dysregulation, further exacerbating feelings of shame, worthlessness, and self-doubt that are often instilled by scapegoating.
Family Scapegoating Abuse can disrupt interoception in several ways:
Dissociation: To survive the emotional pain of scapegoating, many individuals unconsciously disconnect from their bodily sensations.
Hypervigilance: Scapegoated individuals may become hypersensitive to external threats while losing touch with internal signals.
Emotional Numbing: Chronic blame and criticism can lead to emotional suppression, reducing awareness of both positive and negative sensations.
Interoceptive Disruption and Complex Trauma
The relationship between interoceptive disruption and complex trauma (C-PTSD) is particularly profound. Complex trauma results from chronic stressors from which their are no escape, as well as prolonged exposure to relational harm, which is the core of FSA. This often results in survivors experiencing emotional flashbacks, dissociation, and a fragmented sense of self, and yet they may have no idea that they are experiencing trauma symptoms and may never be properly diagnosed.
Because the scapegoated individual is repeatedly subjected to emotional and psychological abuse in their families - the place they were supposed to both feel and be safe - their nervous system becomes dysregulated, impairing their ability to accurately interpret internal states. This disruption can make it difficult to differentiate between safety and threats, leading to maladaptive coping mechanisms like emotional numbing or hyper-sensitivity to bodily sensations.
Furthermore, the chronic invalidation inherent in FSA often teaches child victims and adult survivors to suppress or ignore their internal experiences to avoid further abuse, reinforcing patterns of disconnection from the self. Healing from this requires addressing interoceptive disruptions, rebuilding interoceptive awareness, fostering self-compassion, and addressing the deep-rooted effects of relational trauma on both the mind and body.