On “Scapegoats”

It seemed to me, even as a young person, that I was not the one who really belonged in therapy.

Not because I was arrogant, or because I felt “great” about my life or myself. I felt insecure, lost, often sad—like many teenagers do. It was because I wasn’t confused about reality. I remember saying to a therapist once: I may be the one in therapy in my family, but I actually think I’m the most sane one of all.

When I was nine, my parents went through a brutal divorce. I won’t go into details—because they have not chosen to be public about their lives in the way I have—but everything was wrong. Deeply, profoundly wrong.

And yet no one was acknowledging it.

I was the only one who could smell the gas leak, the only one who could see the smoke.

So I raged, despaired, struggled, and absorbed —in mind, body, heart, spirit—the dysfunction of it all. Digestive issues and chronic illness, diagnoses — ADHD, depression, anxiety, ODD, BPD — medication, and eventually, I was sent away—to wilderness therapy, and then to a therapeutic boarding school.

My story is not unique. We now have language for what many of us have always known: identified patient, black sheep, scapegoat. These terms describe a familiar pattern—when a family system cannot tolerate its own pain, one person often absorbs it on behalf of the whole.

As an etymology nerd, I’ve always been curious about where words come from. The history of scapegoat is as ancient as it is revealing.

The term comes from the Day of Atonement—Yom Kippur:

Then Aaron shall lay both his hands on the head of the live goat, and confess over it all the iniquities of the people of Israel… putting them on the head of the goat, and sending it away into the wilderness.
—Leviticus 16:21–22

In this ritual, the collective sins of the people were symbolically placed onto one being—and then that being was cast into the wilderness. All the wrongdoing is transferred, and then the carrier is sent away. I absorbed the pain of a dysfunctional system—and I too was sent into the wilderness. Literally.

I didn’t think I was “better” than anyone. But I was observant. And I felt the profound isolation of awareness—of being the only one who could sense that something was not okay.

As a child, when I couldn’t find the right words—or when my words weren’t taken seriously—my body spoke for me.
Acting out was way of truth trying to survive, of sounding the alarm bells.

When I arrived at the therapeutic boarding school, every alarm in my system went off. I knew—without a shadow of a doubt—that something was deeply wrong with the place: its practices, its logic, the people in charge.

I felt like a character in a dystopian novel—someone trapped in a system that felt clearly backwards and harmful, while being told at every turn that this was right and good. That my resistance was evidence of my illness.

It was actually a sign of health. I was reacting to something real.

You cannot learn boundaries when they are constantly overridden. You cannot advocate for yourself when you are punished for advocating. Freedom and connection—two basic human needs—were used as leverage. Comply, and you might earn them back. Resist, and their removal became further proof that something was “wrong” with you.

This creates an impossible bind. What does a young person do when the cost of staying connected is self-erasure, and the cost of self-respect is isolation? No one should be asked to choose between the two.

And the only way out is to admit you’re crazy. Because if you deny it—if you fight it—that resistance itself becomes the proof. Another student once named it perfectly: the paradox of treatment.

You have to want to be here to leave.
You have to stop fighting in order to get free.

This is where scapegoating reveals its deeper logic.

The scapegoat is often not the sick one—but the most perceptive one. The one who can’t unknow what they know, who can’t unsee the truth, or who can’t stop feeling what is demanding to be felt.

In systems that prioritize stability over truth, unbearable feelings need a container. Projection offers temporary relief. Sending someone away creates the illusion of “resolution.”

That’s what scapegoating does.

It takes behavior out of context and turns it into pathology. It asks what is wrong with this person? instead of what happened here? What are they responding to? What are they carrying?

The truth is, people rarely act in ways that are random or senseless. Even the behaviors that frighten us, exhaust us, or feel “too much” are often deeply logical when we understand what someone has had to survive.

What we call “acting out” is often a form of communication.
What we call “defiance” is often self-protection.
What we call “dysregulation” is often a nervous system sounding an alarm.

Scapegoats are not the source of the problem. They are the signal. They are the ones whose bodies, emotions, or behaviors express what the system cannot. They carry the truth in a way that can’t be ignored—until it is punished, medicated, or sent away.

If we want healing—real healing—we have to start asking what they’ve learned to do in order to survive. We have to approach people—especially young people—as wise, perceptive, and responsive to something real.