Resources For Family & Scapegoat Abuse Survivors
Some Things That Helped Me See, Accept, Heal, Rise and Speak Out
Hello beautiful souls!
I was overwhelmed (in the most beautiful way), by all the messages you have sent me in response to my “Karmic Family Chronicles” piece posted on Sunday June 16th. This also came days after hosting my first “Karmic Family Recovery Group,” where I met a group of beautiful women who are still healing from the myriad of ways that these foundational stories shaped them.
If you have known or worked with me for a while, you know that I like to give my clients practical guidance for how they can reach their next unique level of freedom.
I don’t ever come as a person looking down at you from on top of a mountain, but as a survivor fighting every day in the trenches with you. I believe we all have the inherent right to thrive, not simply survive or scrape by.
Family (scapegoat/narcissistic) abuse robs us of so much of what we need foundationally to do well. We can spend a whole lifetime feeling like we’re playing catch up, and never arriving at a state of personal stability that others seem to find with so much greater ease.
This sort of abuse is insidious in its invisibility, and heart wrenchingly painful in the fact that it is enacted by those who are our core introduction to love and intimacy. It feels at time like these wounds run so deep - that we will never fully heal and step into our rightful place of thriving. I want to tell you that you owe it to yourself to fight, but that you also don’t have to go through this alone.
One of the most validating experiences we can go through on this journey is when we wake up and find that we are not alone.
So much of the abuse, suffered at the hands of our families of origin, has been designed to isolate us and make us feel as if there is something inherently wrong and unlikable about us. Many of us carry this lie from infancy, and it is easier for us to align with thoughts and people that further promote this story of how we are “difficult” to love, or unworthy of proper care, respect and attention.
That was always a lie by the way.
You are only “difficult” to love by people who don’t like you, or those who lack the capacity to love anyone (including themselves) in the first place. You were born perfectly lovable, and another being’s inability to find your beauty and value doesn’t make you without worth and glory. It simply makes them blind to your value….which is actually sometimes their judgement, especially when it comes to parental situations.
I wanted to take the time to provide you a list of resources to assist you on your journey. As some of you may know, I am a qualified integrative health coach, medical herbalist, and naturopathic chef, but my own journey brought me back home to spirituality. I now utilise the wisdom I have gleaned from both my professional education and esoteric experiences, to help others find their way back to wholeness….because I was so desperate to find a way for myself.
Regular psychotherapy was helpful, but it was not sufficient. Allopathic medicine let me down in ways I can’t even begin to detail in this post.
I had to learn how to begin to heal myself on all planes of the destruction that had been wrought against me, and that I had grown and fed. This meant I had to tackle the spiritual root issues, the mental programs, and the emotional patterning and behaviours that had me manifesting situations that were the opposite of who I knew myself to be - under the many blankets of abuse.
I call what I do “trauma-informed spirituality,” because I utilise the power of ritual and energy work to break through stubborn patterning that therapy was never able to help me touch….let alone process. I also know the danger of much of the spiritual rhetoric and philosophies when it comes to the re traumatising of survivors - especially those who have been scapegoated. I am a survivor of spiritual and religious abuse too.
As such, my approach to helping people is unique and nuanced - based on not only education, but years of personal experience in which I utilised many modalities to get my head back above water. I share these insights with clients in both 1:1 and group sessions, but am even more committed to helping people find what is uniquely valuable and important for them in their own recovery process.
While many of us share similar stories and dynamics, we may need very different things to get back to a state of wholeness. This is why I believe I am here to help you heal yourself, and tap into the power that you alone have to bring yourself back into truth and oneness with self and Source/God. I am but a guide on your journey - you are the true master over self.
If you don’t want to work with me, that is of course fine too, and I want to take the time to share some free online resources that have helped me out on my own solitary path to healing.
Please also know that my monthly group Q&A for my Substack patrons is one of the perks to being a monthly or annual subscriber. I host many group events each month with different themes- all geared towards helping you come back into wholeness and truth. Some of my offerings are free, or have reduced pricing to make this information accessible to all. Please follow me on ko-fi if you want to know when I list and open events for sale to the public.
Without further ado, here are some of the professionals, creators, and survivors that have assisted me on my path home to self.
Much love to you all….and please know that you are worth fighting for.
Solarah 🤗✨
JAY REID: is a California based Psychotherapist who focuses on helping his patients overcome the often overlooked wounding born of childhood abuse and dysfunctional family dynamics. He grew up as the family scapegoat, and so his insight comes from both personal experience and a professional perspective. I find his videos to be very validating and helpful. He also has a recovery program tailored for scapegoat and narcissistic abuse survivors, but I have only ever utilised his content on You Tube for my own personal healing.
DR. ARIANNE MISSIMER: is a Doctor of physiotherapy, a dietitian, functional medicine practitioner, and founder of “The Movement Paradigm.” Her videos have assisted me in coming back into my body following decades of dissociation - especially when it comes to my gut health. Her guidance is rooted in her knowledge on nutrition, movement and kinesiology. I have found her videos to be simple and instructional in connecting with the various ways my body shut down in the aftermath of abuse. She also offers exercises to do in the rebuilding of the mind-body connection.
"The Movement Paradigm" YouTube Channel
TÁMARA HILL: is a licensed psychotherapist whose focus is family trauma. Her videos and lives help get to the bottom of so many of the mysterious ways family dysfunction and abuse plays out, and how it can affect us when we are unaware of the systemic structures that support its invisibility. She is knowledgeable on so many interweaving and interconnected topics, and I find her guidance to be so nourishing and validating.
REBECCA MANDEVILLE: is the one who coined the term “Family Scapegoat Abuse,” or FSA trauma. As a recovering scapegoat and licensed clinician and family systems expert, Rebecca approaches her practice from the standpoint of a survivor and a professional. Her YouTube videos have helped me tremendously, and I am so happy that she has recently joined us here on Substack too
ART FLORENTYNA: is a family scapegoat abuse survivor who now coaches other survivors. Her videos are raw, real, and extremely heart centred. All forms of abuse are isolating, but scapegoat and narcissistic abuse also causes its victims to question the validity and realness of their situations. Because so much of the abuse centres around mind games, emotional manipulation, and power games, it is easy to deny the experience. Listening to Art share her story and recovery process helps me to remember I am not alone. She also has a very warm and nurturing approach to her guidance. I find her work and words to be very affirming.
THE SOUND HEALERS: these gifted souls put together a beautiful range of healing frequencies that deal with all manner of situations and issues. Their anti-mind control, empath and psychic protection, and frequencies to disrupt narcissistic soul ties and karmic patterns have all been tremendously useful to me….especially when my living situation hasn’t allowed for me to go completely “no contact.”
Check Out "The Sound Healers" On YouTube
HERE IS A LINE UP OF A FEW OF MY FAVOURITE YOUTUBE VIDEOS ON THE TOPIC OF NARCISSISM AND SCAPEGOAT ABUSE, AND HOW TO RECOGNISE AND HEAL FROM THESE ABUSIVE DYNAMICS:
I’m so happy for you!!! May you continue to get to the root issue of the clutter instead of shaming yourself for the mess. I know this journey all too well as I am walking it with you too. Sending you love and hugs…..and a reminder that mess is also a healthy reflection of a life being lived 🤗🤗🤗🤗
I sort of randomly chose the video on clutter, as I'm having issues with that right now, after having just recently had all these self-affirming and exciting plans about setting up an environment conducive to doing things I want to, and also having, finally, the really pretty decor I'd always wanted. Like, WHAT HAPPENED!?
Suddenly my space is way worse than ever before. OK, it actually has everything to do with having rescued some dogs from last year's bad hurricane in Baja. I had to really lower my neatness-expectations. But still, it was so extreme, it seemed like something deeper was going on.
I'd only recently come to see that my always & constant need to please, yet always being made to feel unsuccessful, must certainly have put me into a state of never-ending cortisol production.
And the video talks about precisely that!
So in this moment I'm feeling supported "by the universe" in terms of synchronous offerings -- and am SO grateful for your aid, Solarah!