Scapegoating
What it is
Making one person the source of every problem. "Everything was fine until you came along." Not a one-off conflict — an assigned role. You're always the difficult one, the one ruining everything, the one to blame.
Does this sound familiar?
How it gets justified
“Before you, everything was fine.”
Making you the cause has a function: if you're the problem, nobody has to look at the pattern. They need an explanation for their own dysregulation, and you're the most accessible one.
“Whenever there's a problem, you're in the middle of it.”
Repetition is the strategy. Hear it enough times, and you start running the story as your own. You start watching yourself, shrinking, trying not to cause problems. That shrinking is exactly what they need.
Often escalates toward
When a behavior stays unnamed, the nervous system stops registering it as alarm — and the door opens to what comes next.
Related patterns
Something feels off but you can't name it?
An exercise to listen to what the body already knows.