How Predators Misplace Shame After Sexual Violenc

The Shame He Put 

Under My Skin

Author’s Note

This essay contains explicit descriptions of sexual violence and degrading language used by a perpetrator. I include those words because they are part of the violence. Predators count on the closed room staying closed, on the survivor being too ashamed to repeat the words that were said, and on the world preferring a cleaner version of the story.

I am not writing this to display pain. I am writing it to return shame to its source.

There are sentences that do not end when the person finishes speaking. They remain in the body for years, not as memory alone, but as something foreign the nervous system keeps trying to metabolize and cannot. Some sentences are not only spoken. They are implanted. They continue to live inside the person long after the room is gone, long after the man is gone, long after the visible life has resumed.

One of those sentences was said to me after rape.

“You made me a bad man from the good man I really am.”

I carried that sentence for many years. From the outside, life kept moving. I defended my dissertation, crossed an ocean, became a psychiatrist, wrote, taught, and helped others carry pain I had not yet fully named in myself. But the sentence stayed somewhere under the skin, not because it was true, but because it had been placed there at the exact moment when my body was too shattered to reject it.

This was not spoken after seduction, a mutual affair between equals, a shared mistake, or a complicated adult situation later softened by language because the truth would require too much courage. It was said after the second rape. He was twice my age, married, professionally established, protected by title and reputation. I was twenty-four years old, his PhD student, and he had authority over my academic life and over the future I was trying to build.

Before he left that room, he left something else behind. He handed me the moral weight of what he had done and asked me to carry it for him.

That is the horror of shame reversal. The perpetrator does not only violate the body. He leaves his shame inside the person he harmed and walks out wanting to remain good.

The Scene of Degradation

The scene I need to write about did not begin in that room. The day before, I had given a lecture at a major conference in neuropathic pain, in front of almost a thousand physicians and scientists. I spoke about work I had taken seriously. I did well, and people supported me.

He had brought me there as my mentor. In public, he stood beside me as someone who was supposed to guide my formation. The next day, in private, he used that place in my life against me.

He interrupted the silence and said, “I was observing how you did the lecture yesterday; you did a great job. However, you should learn how to use your mouth and tongue in different circumstances, please proceed.”

He took the dignity I had been allowed to feel and brought it into the humiliation of that room. After that, even the part of me that had stood before others as a mind no longer felt untouched by what he did to my body.

I said no, and he slapped me.

I started crying.

I remember feeling that something in me dropped very far down, below the person I had been when I stood in front of that audience and believed my work and effort meant something. There was no confusion in him, and no tenderness I could reach. Because he was my mentor, his cruelty carried the weight of recognition I had once needed from him.

“You Don’t Deserve to Be Kissed”

When it was over, I was still crying. The tears were not a performance or an appeal. They were there because the body had understood humiliation faster than the mind could name it.

He saw me crying, and for one brief second there appeared to be something almost like a response, but even that response became another injury. 

He said, 

“Don’t cry. I don’t want you to cry. I should kiss you probably, if you cry, but you are not the kind of woman who will be kissed. You don’t deserve to be kissed.”

There are sentences that do not need physical force to continue the violence. 

He had already used my body, and then he stood over the emotional wreckage of what he had done and decided what kind of woman I was allowed to be. Not a woman to be comforted or met with tenderness, but a woman who could be used and then placed below tenderness. That was a different cruelty, not the cruelty of desire but the cruelty of contempt.

I did not have the language for that then. I only felt myself fall, as if my worth had dropped below the floor, below the ground, below the place where a woman can still imagine herself returning intact to her own body. 

There is a particular humiliation in being denied tenderness by the same person who has just taken access to the most vulnerable parts of you. It teaches the body that being touched does not mean being seen, that being wanted does not mean being valued, and that the moment after male gratification may be the moment when the woman learns how little she mattered.

That sentence joined sexuality to exclusion from tenderness. 

It did not only say, I will not kiss you. 

It said that I was not the kind of woman to whom tenderness belonged. 

It said that my tears did not restore my humanity, that my pain did not require his care, that what he had done to me had somehow lowered the category of woman I was allowed to be. 

Spoken after violation, while my nervous system was already shattered, it entered me with the force of a verdict.

This is one of the ways shame becomes sexualized after rape. 

The wound is not only the act itself, but the moment after the act, when the perpetrator reveals what the body meant to him. I was not treated as beloved, protected, respected, or even pitied in a clean way. 

He used me, then ranked me, then denied me tenderness, as if even comfort would have been too generous for the kind of woman he had decided I was.

I carried that sentence for years in the body’s hesitation around tenderness, in the difficulty of receiving desire as something clean, and in the inability to believe that male closeness would protect me from male contempt. Somewhere inside, the body had learned that a man could create the degradation and then leave the woman feeling degraded by it.

The Shame Reversal

And then he gave me the sentence that would outlive the room.

“You know I am in a relationship. The things I did to you, you forced me to do. You made me a bad man from the good man I really am. This is all your fault.”

I did not understand, in that exact moment, the full violence of what he had just done with language. 

I understood only that something had been taken from me and then something else had been placed inside me before I could even name the first injury. 

He had used power, degraded me, heard my no, answered it with physical violence, and watched me cry. Then, before leaving, he gave me an explanation for his violence that made me responsible for it.

That is where sexual violence became moral violence. 

He did not merely say that he was in a relationship. 

He made his relationship my burden. 

He did not merely say that he had done things to me. 

He made those things my responsibility. 

 

His betrayal became my guilt, his desire became my contamination, his violence became my moral debt, and his shame became the object he placed inside me before leaving the room. It was as if he could not walk out carrying the truth of himself, so he left the truth with me.

This is shame reversal. 

It is not ordinary blame and not simple denial, because it does not only protect the perpetrator from consequence. It rearranges reality around his need to remain innocent. 

He could not tolerate the sentence “I violated her,” so he created another sentence and placed it over me: “She made me do it.” In order for him to remain the good man in his own mind, I had to become the woman who corrupted him.

What made the sentence so poisonous was that it entered me at the exact point where trauma had already broken the self’s capacity to protect its own borders. 

I was not standing there as a calm adult with a strong internal boundary, able to separate his shame from mine. I was young, terrified, humiliated, dependent, and already split from myself by what had happened. The body after rape is not a courtroom where evidence can be calmly arranged. It is a flooded place, searching for meaning because the human mind cannot tolerate meaninglessness around violation for very long. Into that flooded place, he inserted an explanation. The explanation was false, but it arrived when my nervous system was most vulnerable to receiving it.

For years, I did not fully understand that I was carrying his self-protection as if it were my own shame. 

• Because the violence had happened through my body, the shame felt bodily. 
• Because my womanhood had been attacked, the shame felt feminine. 
• Because sexuality had become the place where fear and humiliation entered me, the shame felt sexual. 

I mistook the location of the wound for the source of the wound, and that is one of the cruelest effects of this kind of violation. What felt intimate did not belong to me simply because it had been placed in an intimate place. 

The feeling of contamination was not evidence of my corruption. 

It was evidence of his displacement.

Why Predators Misplace Shame

Some predatory men want access to the woman and innocence afterward. 

They want the body, the control, the gratification, the ego repair, the feeling of power, but they do not want the moral meaning of what they have done. 

They want the act without the knowledge of themselves as the person who chose the act, and that split is where the shame begins to move.

I did not understand then that narcissistic and malignant personalities do not only attack what is weak. Often they attack what feels too alive in another person, too visible, too difficult to make smaller by the usual methods of charm, dismissal, correction, or quiet contempt. 

They may never name it as envy or injury. 

They may not even know what has been touched in them. 

They only feel the person in front of them as an intolerable size, and the attack becomes the way they try to restore proportion inside themselves. This is one of the hidden logics of narcissistic injury. The woman they degrade is not always the woman who meant little. Sometimes she is the woman who meant too much, the woman whose existence made them feel smaller than they could bear.

Months later, we were sitting in his office finalizing research statistics when he looked at me and suddenly asked, “What did you find in me as a man?” I remember the question stopping somewhere in me, because the honest answer was so far from what he wanted that I could not say it. As a man, he had already destroyed whatever he was asking me to confirm. I did not feel admiration or desire. I felt disgust, and I felt trapped by the grotesque intimacy of his need to be reassured by the woman he had violated.

At the time, I heard only the insecurity in the question. 

Now I hear something more exposed. 

He wanted to know whether some part of him still existed in my eyes as desirable, masculine, powerful in the way he needed to imagine himself. After taking from me, degrading me, and making me carry his shame, he still wanted me to repair the image of him as a man.

I think this is why his violence toward me was not random. 

He could not tolerate the size of me in relation to the size of himself. 

He could not receive my attachment without feeling exposed by it, and he could not tolerate my professional promise, my youth, my mind, or even my need for him without turning that need into something he could dominate. 

So he tried to reduce me with the same force with which my existence had unsettled him. He needed me lowered because something about me had made him feel small.

Clinically, this is a defense, but the word can sound too clean for the injury it creates. 

When a man cannot tolerate his own shame, he may try to survive it by moving it into the woman he harmed. He begins to need a story in which her body, her silence, her fear, or even her inability to fight him in the way the world imagines resistance should look becomes proof that he was not the one who chose. The details may change, but the function does not. His shame leaves him and finds a place to live in her.

This is not only a psychological maneuver. It is moral violence. It protects the perpetrator’s self-image by damaging the survivor’s selfhood. What looks like his private defense becomes her long-term injury, because he remains clean in his own story while she is left feeling contaminated by what he did.

Understanding this mechanism does not soften the act. 

It makes it clearer. 

I am not interested in explaining predatory psychology in order to excuse it, or in turning cruelty into complexity for the comfort of the cruel. The point is not that he had shame. The point is that he refused to carry it, and solved his internal conflict by placing it inside the woman he harmed.

Power Gives Him Control Over Meaning

Power changes what the world is prepared to believe. 

A man with a title does not enter the story as a neutral person. 

He enters with reputation, age, professional language, institutional relationships, and the assumption of seriousness already arranged around him. Before the woman says a word, the room has often begun leaning in his direction.

That is what people miss when they ask why a student did not simply leave or report him when the first line was crossed. Professional sexual violence is never only about the body, because the body is attached to a life the perpetrator still has power to damage. 

A student is not only afraid of what happened in the room. She is afraid of what he can do afterward, quietly, professionally, without ever needing to raise his voice. He can delay her work, damage her name, make her future harder to enter, and trust that the world around him will find his version more reasonable than hers.

Years later, when I tried to name the ethical reality of this history in a professional context, I received a response from the President of the International Association for the Study of Pain that showed me how calmly this protection can operate. The language was careful and procedural, but inside it was the old structure of disbelief. One sentence stayed with me because it said so much without intending to say it:

 “Prof. X, whom I have known for over 20 years, has always had a very cordial, kind and respectful attitude towards me. Therefore, even on a personal level, I would not be able to judge whether or not he would be capable of very serious acts…”

That is how reputation protects private violence. 

A man’s kindness to another respected professional becomes part of the reason his brutality toward a young woman is treated as difficult to imagine.

This is the captivity of meaning. 

The predator with power does not only control what he can do. 

He influences what others are willing to call it afterward. 

He can make violence look like ambiguity, dependency look like consent, silence look like cooperation, and trauma look like instability, while everything around him continues to say that he is respectable, believable, accomplished, and necessary. 

That is why shame reversal is especially destructive when it comes from a man with authority. 

He does not only put shame into her. 

He has a whole world ready to help keep it there.

Returning the Shame

The shame stayed because it entered me at the moment when I had no clean way to refuse it. 

He gave me his explanation while I was still inside the damage. 

I did not yet have distance from him, or from the future he still had power to touch. 

So the sentence went in.

Later, the world made that sentence easier to believe. 

It did what the world often does with violated women. 

It looked too long at what I did after, and not long enough at what he did first. 

It treated the fact that I kept working and continued with my life as if survival could be used against the person who had to survive.

After a history like this, trust in men does not remain simple. 

I know this in a way I would rather not know. 

A woman may keep living, working, loving people, even appearing strong, while something in her body no longer believes that male closeness is safe. 

She may not hate men. 

She may understand them, respect them, care about them, even see their pain clearly. 

But trust is different. 

Trust asks the body to lower its guard near the very thing that once became dangerous, and there are men who know exactly what they are damaging when they make a woman afraid of tenderness for the rest of her life.

Sometimes that trust never fully returns. 

Sometimes it returns slowly, almost against the woman’s own fear, and if it does, it should not be mistaken for naivety. It is not a woman forgetting what happened. It is a woman discovering, at great cost, that the past may not have the right to own every doorway to tenderness.

What I know now is that the shame was never mine. 

The loss of trust was not a failure of love, womanhood, or perception. 

It was the cost of surviving a man who made praise and degradation impossible to separate, and then asked me to carry the moral consequence of his violence. 

For years, his shame lived in me as if it were evidence about who I was. 

It was not. 

It was evidence of who he was.

I am returning it now.

Vera Hart 

Insomnia

Alex Brzezinski

o, for the old unconscious days when

     i hopped out of bed

at 7 A.M.

     not knowing how glad i was

to be repressed, 

to be unaware

    of my miserable

marriage,

    how glad to be lonely but

out of touch

with myself.

o, those great busy times

    when i was young and woke

    without memory of a dream,

no traces

of the inner shipwreck —

    no debris, no drowned

animals, no ark torn

to pieces by

         the powerful storms of night.

    could anyone have told me then 

of the nights

i would spend,

    all these years, 

haunted by

opaque dreams, an obscure 

    and heavy darkness?

         and yet, here we are, 

old, tender insomnia,

beyond acquaintanceship, 

    friends now,

watching middle-of-the-night tv together, 

    susceptible to ordering

    strange items from infomercials, 

    hoping this, finally,

    will aid our sleep.

but possibly 

we don’t want

         to sleep anymore, not

the old way. we

         want to wake up for real,

or at least to dream

    the clear vibrating images

that struggle upward from

    the depths —

dreams with stallions and

    who knows what else.

but no, that sounds too 

dramatic. it’s more mundane 

than that.

we have our job

         to do now. we 

have an ocean to empty

bucket by bucket,

         to find the bottom 

and the old ark

and all those dead two-by-two animals 

in need of decent burial.

    yes, that’s insomnia. it’s 

being

    the last surviving animal 

of your kind.

    so get up and stumble through 

the dark and pee and sort through 

your e-mail

    and eat something and possibly 

masturbate and then remember 

your original task

    and get your bucket

and see if you can empty the ocean 

and find another

    of your kind down there, even 

a dead one.

    no. that’s just an odd, 

feeble joke. we’re

not laughing tonight. 

there’s no strange animal 

down there. it’s

    a small boy flailing

    his arms in the huge surf of 

the dark. he’s waiting for me,

    and I barely recognize him. 

anyway, he hasn’t given up, and 

the waves lift and suck him under,

    over and over,

and that’s it.

Pablo Neruda

You Were Not Betrayed. You Were Unaware

microgen/shutterstock

There is a specific kind of pain that marks adulthood.

It’s not heartbreak.

It’s not financial loss.

It’s not even failure.

It is the quiet realization that the world was never what you thought it was.

You believed sincerity would protect you.

You believed loyalty would be returned.

You believed talent would be recognized.

You believed love would be enough.

And then — something breaks.

Not loudly.

Just enough for illusion to crack.

Carl Jung wrote:

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”

Most of what we call betrayal is not evil.

It is unconsciousness — ours and others’.

We expect people to act according to the ideals in our mind.

They act according to the conditions in theirs.

And when those two realities collide, we call it injustice.

But what if the real shock of adulthood is this:

Human nature is not good or bad.

It is conditional.

If you don’t understand the conditions —

you will keep mistaking patterns for accidents.

And you will keep calling predictable outcomes “bad luck.”

This essay is not about becoming cynical.

It is about becoming conscious.

Because the moment you understand desire, power, status, money, projection, and fear —

you stop being surprised by life.

And that is when maturity begins.

1. Desire Before Wisdom

Before psychological maturity, desire dominates perception.

Evolutionary psychology tells us physical attraction is a biological signal — youth, health, fertility.

It is natural.

But Jung would argue that raw attraction is often projection. We project our anima or animus — our inner ideal — onto another person.

When wisdom develops, attraction becomes more layered.

Beauty may still matter, but it no longer overrides discernment.

The Buddha described this as seeing clearly through illusion — recognizing impermanence beneath form.

Desire is not the enemy.

Unexamined desire is.

2. The Illusion of “Human Nature Is Good”

Many people grow up believing in moral simplicity: good people are rewarded; sincerity protects you.

Then life happens.

You help someone repeatedly — and they betray you.

You give without boundaries — and resentment grows.

Jung would say: you were not loving; you were unconsciously seeking validation.

The Buddha would say: attachment to outcome produces suffering.

Modern psychology adds another layer: humans are motivated by self-interest under constraint. Scarcity amplifies opportunism.

Human nature is neither purely good nor evil.

It is conditional.

This is why laws exist.

This is why ethics must be cultivated.

3. Why Talent Does Not Equal Success

The world is full of gifted individuals who struggle.

Why?

Because success is not just competence — it is navigation of systems.

Status dynamics research shows that social positioning, timing, and relational intelligence often outweigh raw ability.

Jung might frame this as failure to individuate — remaining trapped in fantasy of recognition rather than engaging reality strategically.

The Buddha would frame it as misunderstanding cause and effect.

Effort without understanding conditions rarely bears fruit.

4. Money, Relationships, and 90% of Stress

Behavioral economics confirms what ancient thinkers intuited:

Most stress revolves around:

Resource security (money)

Social belonging (relationships)

Loss aversion makes financial instability psychologically painful.

Attachment makes relational instability devastating.

Yet both are impermanent.

The Buddha’s teaching on impermanence (anicca) is not pessimism.

It is calibration.

When you expect permanence in unstable systems, suffering increases.

5. Why Boundaries Replace Naïveté After Thirty

Youth glorifies “open-heartedness.”

Maturity understands boundaries.

Jung described psychological growth as integrating shadow — recognizing your capacity for selfishness, ambition, envy.

If you deny these forces in yourself, you will be blindsided by them in others.

Boundaries are not cynicism.

They are awareness applied.

Generosity without discernment invites exploitation.

But cynicism without compassion isolates.

The middle path lies between naïve trust and paranoid withdrawal.

6. The Corruption of Power and Beauty

Beauty is an asset.

Wealth is leverage.

Status amplifies.

But none of these are stable foundations.

Research on power shows that elevated status reduces empathy over time if unchecked.

Jung warned of inflation — when ego identifies with external power.

The Buddha warned of attachment to form and identity.

If beauty is your only currency, time will devalue it.

If wealth is your only security, fear will govern it.

Depth is the only appreciating asset.

7. When Relationships Crack

Once trust fractures, it rarely returns to its original innocence.

Neuroscience confirms that betrayal alters neural pathways associated with safety.

You may forgive.

But the nervous system remembers.

This is not bitterness.

It is biological realism.

Which is why discernment matters early.

8. The Deeper Pattern

If you look carefully at life’s disappointments, a pattern emerges:

• Over-attachment leads to disappointment.

• Over-generosity without boundaries leads to resentment.

• Over-idealization leads to projection collapse.

This is not evidence that humanity is evil.

It is evidence that unconsciousness has consequences.

Cause and effect is not punishment.

It is structure.

The Buddha called this karma — not cosmic revenge, but psychological law.

Jung called it individuation — the painful integration of reality.

The Middle Way of Maturity

Adulthood is not becoming colder.

It is becoming clearer.

Not:

“People are evil.”

Not:

“People are pure.”

But:

“People are conditioned.”

You too.

The mature person understands:

• Attraction is natural, but must be examined.

• Generosity is noble, but needs boundaries.

• Talent matters, but systems matter too

• Money influences dignity, but does not define worth.

• Relationships are precious, but impermanent.

This is the middle way.

Not cynicism.

Not naïveté.

Wisdom.

Final Reflection

Life will teach you through empty pockets, broken trust, and unmet expectations.

• If you respond with bitterness, you shrink.

• If you respond with blind optimism, you repeat mistakes.

• If you respond with awareness, you evolve.

Jung would say you are integrating your shadow.

The Buddha would say you are seeing causes clearly.

And psychology would say you are finally aligning expectations with reality.

The question is not whether human nature is good or bad.

The question is:

Have you understood it — in yourself first?

Wisdom is not about losing innocence.

It is about seeing clearly — and choosing wisely anyway.

Luna Rose

The Scapegoat

kieferpix

We have all of us read how the Israelites fled 

From Egypt with Pharaoh in eager pursuit of 'em, 

And Pharaoh's fierce troop were all put "in the soup" 

When the waters rolled softly o'er every galoot of 'em. 

The Jews were so glad when old Pharaoh was "had" 

That they sounded their timbrels and capered like mad. 

You see he was hated from Jordan to Cairo -- 

Whence comes the expression "to buck against faro". 

For forty long years, 'midst perils and fears 

In deserts with never a famine to follow by, 

The Israelite horde went roaming abroad 

Like so many sundowners "out on the wallaby". 

When Moses, who led 'em, and taught 'em, and fed 'em, 

Was dying, he murmured, "A rorty old hoss you are: 

I give you command of the whole of the band" -- 

And handed the Government over to Joshua. 

But Moses told 'em before he died, 

"Wherever you are, whatever betide, 

Every year as the time draws near 

By lot or by rote choose you a goat, 

And let the high priest confess on the beast 

The sins of the people the worst and the least, 

Lay your sins on the goat! Sure the plan ought to suit yer. 

Because all your sins are 'his troubles' in future. 

Then lead him away to the wilderness black 

To die with the weight of your sins on his back: 

Of thirst let him perish alone and unshriven, 

For thus shall your sins be absolved and forgiven!" 

'Tis needless to say, though it reeked of barbarity 

This scapegoat arrangement gained great popularity. 

By this means a Jew, whate'er he might do, 

Though he burgled, or murdered, or cheated at loo, 

Or meat on Good Friday (a sin most terrific) ate, 

Could get his discharge, like a bankrupt's certificate; 

Just here let us note -- Did they choose their best goat? 

It's food for conjecture, to judge from the picture 

By Hunt in the Gallery close to our door, a 

Man well might suppose that the scapegoat they chose 

Was a long way from being their choicest Angora. 

In fact I should think he was one of their weediest: 

'Tis a rule that obtains, no matter who reigns, 

When making a sacrifice, offer the seediest; 

Which accounts for a theory known to my hearers 

Who live in the wild by the wattle beguiled, 

That a "stag" makes quite good enough mutton for shearers. 

Be that as it may, as each year passed away, 

a scapegoat was led to the desert and freighted 

With sin (the poor brute must have been overweighted) 

And left there -- to die as his fancy dictated. 

The day it has come, with trumpet and drum. 

With pomp and solemnity fit for the tomb 

They lead the old billy-goat off to his doom: 

On every hand a reverend band, 

Prophets and preachers and elders stand 

And the oldest rabbi, with a tear in his eye, 

Delivers a sermon to all standing by. 

(We haven't his name -- whether Cohen or Harris, he 

No doubt was the "poisonest" kind of Pharisee.) 

The sermon was marked by a deal of humility 

And pointed the fact, with no end of ability. 

That being a Gentile's no mark of gentility, 

And, according to Samuel, would certainly d--n you well. 

Then, shedding his coat, he approaches the goat 

And, while a red fillet he carefully pins on him, 

Confesses the whole of the Israelites' sins on him. 

With this eloquent burst he exhorts the accurst -- 

"Go forth in the desert and perish in woe, 

The sins of the people are whiter than snow!" 

Then signs to his pal "for to let the brute go". 

(That "pal" as I've heard, is an elegant word, 

Derived from the Persian "Palaykhur" or "Pallaghur"), 

As the scapegoat strains and tugs at the reins 

The Rabbi yells rapidly, "Let her go, Gallagher!" 

The animal, freed from all restraint 

Lowered his head, made a kind of feint, 

And charged straight at that elderly saint. 

So fierce his attack and so very severe, it 

Quite floored the Rabbi, who, ere he could fly, 

Was rammed on the -- no, not the back -- but just near it. 

The scapegoat he snorted, and wildly cavorted, 

A light-hearted antelope "out on the ramp", 

Then stopped, looked around, got the "lay of the ground", 

And made a beeline back again to the camp. 

The elderly priest, as he noticed the beast 

So gallantly making his way to the east, 

Says he, "From the tents may I never more roam again 

If that there old billy-goat ain't going home again. 

He's hurrying, too! This never will do. 

Can't somebody stop him? I'm all of a stew. 

After all our confessions, so openly granted, 

He's taking our sins back to where they're not wanted. 

We've come all this distance salvation to win agog, 

If he takes home our sins, it'll burst up the Synagogue!" 

He turned to an Acolyte who was making his bacca light, 

A fleet-footed youth who could run like a crack o' light. 

"Run, Abraham, run! Hunt him over the plain, 

And drive back the brute to the desert again. 

The Sphinx is a-watching, the Pyramids will frown on you, 

From those granite tops forty cent'ries look down on you -- 

Run, Abraham, run! I'll bet half-a-crown on you." 

So Abraham ran, like a man did he go for him, 

But the goat made it clear each time he drew near 

That he had what the racing men call "too much toe" for him. 

The crowd with great eagerness studied the race -- 

"Great Scott! isn't Abraham forcing the pace -- 

And don't the goat spiel? It is hard to keep sight on him, 

The sins of the Israelites ride mighty light on him. 

The scapegoat is leading a furlong or more, 

And Abraham's tiring -- I'll lay six to four! 

He rolls in his stride; he's done, there's no question!" 

But here the old Rabbi brought up a suggestion. 

('Twas strange that in racing he showed so much cunning), 

"It's a hard race," said he, "and I think it would be 

A good thing for someone to take up the running." 

As soon said as done, they started to run -- 

The priests and the deacons, strong runners and weak 'uns 

All reckoned ere long to come up with the brute, 

And so the whole boiling set off in pursuit. 

And then it came out, as the rabble and rout 

Streamed over the desert with many a shout -- 

The Rabbi so elderly, grave, and patrician, 

Had been in his youth a bold metallician, 

And offered, in gasps, as they merrily spieled, 

"Any price Abraham! Evens the field!" 

Alas! the whole clan, they raced and they ran, 

And Abraham proved him an "even time" man, 

But the goat -- now a speck they could scarce keep their eyes on -- 

Stretched out in his stride in a style most surprisin' 

And vanished ere long o'er the distant horizon. 

Away in the camp the bill-sticker's tramp 

Is heard as he wanders with paste, brush, and notices, 

And paling and wall he plasters them all, 

"I wonder how's things gettin' on with the goat," he says, 

The pulls out his bills, "Use Solomon's Pills" 

"Great Stoning of Christians! To all devout Jews! you all 

Must each bring a stone -- Great sport will be shown; 

Enormous Attractions! And prices as usual! 

Roll up to the Hall!! Wives, children and all, 

For naught the most delicate feelings to hurt is meant!!" 

Here his eyes opened wide, for close by his side 

Was the scapegoat: And eating his latest advertisement! 

One shriek from him burst -- "You creature accurst!" 

And he ran from the spot like one fearing the worst. 

His language was chaste, as he fled in his haste, 

But the goat stayed behind him -- and "scoffed up" the paste. 

With downcast head, and sorrowful tread, 

The people came back from the desert in dread. 

"The goat -- was he back there? Had anyone heard of him?" 

In very short order they got plenty word of him. 

In fact as they wandered by street, lane and hall, 

"The trail of the serpent was over them all." 

A poor little child knocked out stiff in the gutter 

Proclaimed that the scapegoat was bred for a "butter". 

The bill-sticker's pail told a sorrowful tale, 

The scapegoat had licked it as dry as a nail; 

He raced through their houses, and frightened their spouses, 

But his latest achievement most anger arouses, 

For while they were searching, and scratching their craniums, 

One little Ben Ourbed, who looked in the flow'r-bed, 

Discovered him eating the Rabbi's geraniums. 

Moral 

The moral is patent to all the beholders -- 

Don't shift your own sins on to other folks' shoulders; 

Be kind to dumb creatures and never abuse them, 

Nor curse them nor kick them, nor spitefully use them: 

Take their lives if needs must -- when it comes to the worst, 

But don't let them perish of hunger or thirst. 

Remember, no matter how far you may roam 

That dogs, goats, and chickens, it's simply the dickens, 

Their talent stupendous for "getting back home". 

Your sins, without doubt, will aye find you out, 

And so will a scapegoat, he's bound to achieve it, 

But, die in the wilderness! Don't you believe it!

Sylvia Plath

The Making of a Scapegoat

wildpixel

How Groups Project 

Their Stress Onto One Person

What the Nervous System 

Learns From It

Some people spend a lifetime 

carrying blame that was never truly theirs.

The roots of this pattern often reach back to our earliest experiences of belonging. 

Long before we have words for it, our nervous systems learn who is safe, who is not, what creates connection, and what threatens it. These lessons often remain outside awareness, quietly shaping how we experience relationships throughout life. 

For some people, the same role emerges again and again: 

becoming the person who carries the blame. 

As children, they may have been blamed for tensions within the family. 

Years later, they become the outsider in a friendship group, the employee who receives disproportionate criticism, or the person who somehow ends up carrying the emotional weight of a relationship, team, or community. 

The circumstances change, but the feeling remains strangely familiar. 

Because families are our first social system, the relational patterns learned there often shape how we experience the groups that follow.

How a Scapegoat Is Created

Families, like all human systems, attempt to maintain stability. 

When parents are able to acknowledge difficult emotions, take responsibility for their own reactions, and work through conflict directly, the system remains relatively flexible. 

Stress is distributed and processed rather than concentrated on one person. 

Unfortunately, not all families function like this. 

Sometimes unresolved shame, anger, fear, grief, or emotional immaturity remain largely outside awareness. These experiences do not disappear. Instead, they continue to influence the emotional atmosphere of the household. One way a family can unconsciously manage this discomfort is by locating the problem within a single person. In some families, it may be the most perceptive member, the one who senses or challenges the unspoken dynamics of the system, who is unconsciously assigned this role. 

Over time, one child may come to represent what the family struggles to tolerate within itself. The child becomes “too sensitive,” “too difficult,” “too emotional,” “too selfish,” or simply “the problem.”

This process is often described through the psychological concept of projection. 

Qualities, emotions, or conflicts that feel difficult to face are unconsciously attributed to someone else. From the perspective of the family system, this can temporarily reduce anxiety. If one person becomes the source of the problem, everyone else can avoid examining their own contribution to the situation. 

For the child, however, the consequences are significant. 

The people they depend on most for safety and belonging are also the people communicating that something is wrong with them. 

The nervous system receives two messages at the same time: 

Connection is necessary, and connection is dangerous.

What the Nervous System Learns About Belonging

The nervous system is constantly gathering information about the world and learns through repetition. When experiences occur often enough, the brain begins creating predictions about what is likely to happen next. These predictions help us navigate relationships and environments efficiently. Most of the time, we are not consciously aware of them. For a child who occupies the role of scapegoat, certain predictions may gradually become strengthened.

1. Conflict means danger. 
2. Belonging can be lost. 
3. Someone will eventually be disappointed with me. 
4. I am probably responsible. 
5. There is something wrong with me. 
6. It is my fault.

As these expectations become more established, the nervous system becomes increasingly attentive to signs that they may be about to come true. This is one reason many scapegoats develop heightened interpersonal sensitivity. They become highly aware of subtle changes in tone, facial expression, mood, and group dynamics. What appears to others as overthinking may actually be a nervous system attempting to stay ahead of potential threat. 

The nervous system is simply doing what it learned was necessary to maintain connection and safety.

When the Role Follows You Into Adulthood

One of the more painful aspects of scapegoating is that the experience often does not end when a person leaves home. Many adults notice that similar dynamics seem to emerge in completely different environments. 

• A workplace begins to feel strangely familiar. 
• A friendship group develops tensions that echo childhood experiences. 
• A close relationship evokes the same sense of walking on eggshells that once existed within the family.

This does not happen because people consciously seek out suffering. 

Contemporary neuroscience suggests something more subtle may be occurring. 

The brain is constantly predicting reality based on past experience. 

When certain relational patterns have been repeated thousands of times, they become highly familiar. Familiarity is not the same thing as safety, but the nervous system can struggle to distinguish between the two. As a result, we may find ourselves drawn toward environments that resemble what we already know. At the same time, we may interpret ambiguous situations through expectations that were shaped long ago. 

1. Criticism is anticipated before it arrives. 
2. Rejection is expected before it occurs. 
3. Responsibility is assumed before it has been assigned.

Metaphorically speaking, or in the language of Internal Family Systems (IFS), as an internalized part, an inner scapegoat may begin to form. Over time, a person can start blaming and rejecting themselves automatically. 

That is why it can be so difficult to break free from this conditioning at the beginning of the healing process. Yet the very sensitivity that once developed in response to danger may eventually help us connect the dots.

Reclaiming Flexibility and Choice

For many people, a turning point comes when repeating patterns become impossible to ignore. 

Whether through therapy, relationships, or life itself, old experiences start to make sense and pieces of the puzzle gradually come together. 

Recognizing that you may have occupied the role of scapegoat can be both painful and liberating. Painful because it sheds light on wounds that were often invisible for many years. 

Liberating because it allows you to see that many of the beliefs you carry about yourself were shaped within a system rather than reflecting who you truly are.

Healing often involves reparenting your nervous system. 

It is the slow reshaping of neural pathways through consistent self-compassion, rhythm, containment, and protection. Over time, the brain begins making new predictions based on new experiences rather than relying solely on the past. 

As evidence accumulates that conflict does not always lead to rejection, that disagreement does not always threaten belonging, and that other people’s emotions are not always our responsibility to carry, old expectations gradually lose their certainty. Possibility, choice, and flexibility return.

The inner scapegoat does not disappear but becomes unburdened. 

The very sensitivity that once scanned for danger can now recognize patterns, reveal blind spots, and support the healing process through discernment and insight. 

What was once organized around survival can gradually become a source of wisdom that serves both you and the people around you.

Magda Agatha

Sweet Darkness

Wallpapers

 When your eyes are tired,

the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone,

no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark

where the night has eyes

to recognize its own.

There you can be sure

you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your home

tonight.

The night will give you a horizon

further than you can see.

You must learn one thing.

The world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds

except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet

confinement of your aloneness

to learn

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

David Whyte

in, The House of Belonging

The Strange Attractors

denko3d

 You are stuck in a moment and 

you don't know why. 

Can neuroscience help?

Lots of the time, you may act as though you were our own worst enemy.

No matter what, you always feel as though people don’t like you.

You keep falling for the wrong person.

You always feel the need to fix. Or be fixed.

Expecting always too much from people and ending up disappointed. Expecting always too little, and ending up disappointed.

You know that wrath and anger are bad for you but when the situation presents itself you become convinced that anger is the only possible reaction.

You know that overthinking is making your life miserable, yet your mind stays relentless.

You want to chase your dream but end up going for the safe option over and over again.

You sabotage the good thing going even though you objectively know that you are every bit as worth it as anybody else in this wide world.

You always end up playing the same game with others. Which one are you the victim, the rescuer, the persecutor?

You understand that asking for help is OK. You even recommend it to others but you still somehow can’t do it yourself.

You know it is not good for you to eat that much, drink that much, [ ?] that much (insert your favourite sin), yet you continue doing it (and hating yourself for it).

It just never stops. Old habits die hard and the self-loathing is never too far.

Why this happens? 

Why are we so often and so obviously working against our best interests? 

It is one of biggest mysteries of human nature and one that the modern neuroscience science is only starting to shed a light on.

But let’s stay with the phenomenon and the feeling for the moment. 

If we see life and every little decision we make that leads us to where we are and also include all the other things and events in life, big and small that all converge into coalescing a certain state of mind, and certain familiar train of thoughts and feelings that arise or erupt as paths we take on a multidimensional graph converging towards always the same point - that old feeling, that old unhelpful action, that habitual behaviour we resent yet still perform.

In other words, no matter what the starting point, we end up in the same position - it is like a there is a local black hole in the space of experience, cognition and decision making - and it is as though its gravitational pull is virtually inexorable.

I call these irresistible pulls, like the ones I describe at the start, the strange attractors.

Strange Attractors

Now forgive me for intentionally introducing this psychotherapy and science faux-ami. I totally know I am doing it.

For a strange attractor is formally defined concept in the dynamic of complex systems - you might be familiar with it from physics or mathematics of complex systems and the chaos theory.

Heads up, you don’t need to know about physics and mathematics to follow the rest of the thread of this piece. I think the ideas are intuitive.

Essentially, while a stochastic (random) system might seem to operate at random, because of the underlying laws, some seemingly stochastic (random) systems tend to evolve towards a specific set of states, no matter what are the starting points. These states, to which the system converges, are called the strange attractors.

If I want to be more precise, the attribute strange is assigned to those attractors that do not have simple and regular forms but are rather irregular or fractal in nature - for example see one well known attractor called the Lorenz’s attractor below. But you can ignore this for out intents and purposes here.

I am both wildly incompetent and perfectly comfortable with making this makeshift and perfectly outrageous marriage between the theoretical physics and psychotherapy practice. The important thing is - I am using it as a METAPHOR. But an interesting one to use to think about the phenomenon at hand. Sometimes the use of the right metaphors can go a long way.

Why am I bringing the funky geometrical shapes into the conversation about the mental states and the habits of our mind (that we would rather not have)? I will try to give an answer now.

Is a Mental State A Point in Some Space?

One beauty of mathematics is its abstraction. What that means that it can model everything. Mental states included.

So think about how you are feeling just now. Include in that your feelings, things that you think about currently in your inner life, the kind of atmosphere that prevails internally. The ideas and facts from life that dominate in that inner landscape. The people that occupy it and what is the tone that they add into that mixture of an internal state. Include into this how much energy you feel you have, what is the overall state of your body. And anything else that seems relevant.

All of those things provide different coordinates in a multi-dimensional space (I don’t really know how many dimensions we should be talking, but certainly more than two or three) - and we find ourselves in one point of that space at any moment of time.

The assumption I am making here is that there is a link between that state configuration and the state configuration of the brain in that moment - at least in some ways.

In the end of the day, if we always end up feeling the same feeling, coming to the same conclusion, making similar behavioural decisions, it is because there is a aspect of the brain that wind up in the same state - feelings, decision making, thoughts are all a brain states, after all - or at least a portion of a state of the brain in a given moment of time. 

These states are not universal of course, although some element of it might be, but generally are relative to the specific context of each individual, with its idiosyncratic history, cultural context, initial wiring and genetics and probably some other factors I am forgetting here. All these elements are our priors. For our priors are serving as gauge against which all the decisions, positions and what we wind up feeling and doing are calibrated, on the light of new experiences.

And some priors or set of priors carry much more weight than others. 

1. For many people, the culture they grow up in is a strong prior. 
2. The relationship with the primary caregivers is likely a strong prior. 
3. Some other experiences - a strong emotional experience or a traumatic one is likely to shift the priors. Others yet might carry less weight but still count.

I write a little more about this stuff here.

To use geometry and the chaos theory to model brain states is of course not mine. I want to point here to one paper that gives an overview of how these brain states could be linked to mental states. There will be many others.

Remember, here, I am mostly using it as a metaphor.

Settling in the Local Minimum

The main idea to remember here is the following: 

That when it comes to some complex systems the following occurs: 

No matter what the starting point is, you end up in the same place. You end up in that strange attractor.

I use the strange attractor to as a metaphor for all those instances - so common (ubiquitous?) in therapy presentations - of mental states or behaviours that we so often seem to gravitate to, often times despite our better judgment (as illustrated in the beginning).

One way to represent this is using the idea of peaks and valleys on a graph (or indeed 3D graph as on the previous figure). Once in the vicinity of a valley the ball will roll into the bottom of the valley, regardless of its starting position.

When we think of those inexorable traits, behaviours and maladaptive decisions from the beginning - it is like no matter what we say to ourselves, what we rationally decide or how different this situation is from a previous one, we end up feeling the same way. We are like that little red ball.

From Metastability demystified — the foundational past, the pragmatic present and the promising future

This is still, at this point a metaphor, as I don’t know what is the space in which this landscape exists and what is the specific process by which our brain decides to go down the valley slopes into an already well known state.

I really want to emphasise the exploratory nature of this idea and a huge amounts of epistemic humility that I hold here, while still wanting to advance a hypothesis about different types of psychological stuckness.

Two really important questions immediately stand out for me:

1.Are these local minima attractor states glitches in the system, a design feature or the necessary trade-offs of system design (the most likely scenario IMHO)? In the end of the day, any biological system has finite resources when it comes to space, energy and other biological devices for implementation.

2. Can we hack it?

Yes, and the two points might be interconnected as the answer to the number 1 might help us think about how to do the number 2.

Escaping the Attractor: 

What Would Need to Happen?

Now, what this out of left field appropriation of concepts theoretical physics has to do with anything psychotherapy?

Obviously, in my mind it has EVERYTHING. Now, I don’t know how much it translates? 

Also, to fully give you an answer to that question you will have to give me a bit of time (in another essay).

To do this, I will likely have to venture into how brain makes decisions. 

Decisions tainted with emotion, decision that go against our better judgement. 

Decisions in different contexts. 

All in hope to get some ideas as to how to jolt the system, destabilise it, so it escapes its strange attractor.

Am I saying that the neuroscience has solved all the questions necessary to do that? 

No. But, I do think we are starting to know some things that can be used here especially when it comes to understanding how the brain assigns value in different social context, peer pressure and what our value system is.

So to recap:

Old habits of the mind die hard, and we end up going into same habitual states - similar feelings, behaviours, conclusions about life and others - even if those do not necessarily match the objective reality AND are not in our best interest

Being in the same affective, behavioural etc state is likely to be underpinned by a similar neural state

The brain is a complex system

Physics knows about laws of complex systems and why some of them converge to specific attractor states while they seem random

Ana Lund