189: Scapegoat vs Golden Child: How Family Role Shape Identity and People Pleasing With Elle Boone

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Understanding the Family Scapegoat: Healing, Identity, and People Pleasing

Today I am joined by Elle Boone, host of The Family Scapegoat Chronicles. Elle dives deep into a role that many empaths and highly sensitive people unknowingly carry—that of the family scapegoat—and how it shapes identity, people-pleasing tendencies, and emotional well-being.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

• What it means to be the family scapegoat and how this role is assigned in dysfunctional and narcissistic family systems.
• The three key dynamics of scapegoating: blame, shame, and rejection, and how these affect long-term emotional health.
• The concept of “family mobbing” and how siblings and other family members may unconsciously or consciously participate in scapegoating.
• Differences between the scapegoat, golden child, and lost child roles—and how these roles can rotate over time.
• How scapegoating contributes to people-pleasing, overgiving, and identity confusion.
• Signs that you might have been scapegoated, including minimized successes, silent treatment, backhanded criticism, and heightened responsibility for family dysfunction.
• Practical strategies for healing: observing patterns, pacing your recovery, and reclaiming your personal identity.
• Recommended resources, including Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed by Rebecca C. Mandeville, and the documentary The Wisdom of Trauma by Gabor Maté.

Challenge for the Week:
Take a compassionate pause to observe your patterns. Notice how often you apologize, overgive, or seek approval. Write down at least three recurring behaviors and reflect on where they might have originated. This is the first step toward reclaiming your identity and untangling the people-pleasing and scapegoating patterns in your life.

Work With Me:
If you’re ready to start identifying the roles that hold you back and learn to set healthier boundaries, you can book a free clarity call with me here: https://calendly.com/maryannwalkerlife/freeconsult

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Make sure you’re subscribed so you don’t miss future episodes. Each week, we dive deeper into the practices that help recovering people pleasers create balance, self-worth, and authentic connection.

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Links Mentioned in This Episode:

• Elle Boone’s podcast: The Family Scapegoat Chronicles https://thefamilyscapegoatchronicles.podbean.com/e/the-family-scapegoat-chronicles-i-true-stories-of-survival-and-healing-after-narcissistic-and-family-scapegoating-abuse/
• Elle Boone on Substack:https://thefamilyscapegoatchronicles.substack.com/
  
  
• Book: Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed by Rebecca C. Mandeville – https://a.co/d/7kLN3lG
  
  
• Documentary: The Wisdom of Trauma by Gabor Maté – Watch here https://thewisdomoftrauma.com/