**⏺️ With:** [[Family Enmeshment|Family Enmeshment]], [[Narcissistic Family]] **\#️⃣ Tags:** #Trauma #Relational > **🌱 Planted:** Fri 7 February 2025 --- ***When the problems of the collective family are displaced onto a single member***. ![[Identified Patient.png]] When a family system is unable to process painful truths or distress openly, the real issues (abuse, neglect, injustice, or whatever they might be) get swept under the rug. In this type of family, no one wants to take accountability for their actions or behaviours, so instead they shift blame, obfuscate the truth, and bend reality in order to defend themselves. While this happens covertly, the actual problems that need to be addressed remain hidden. It takes a lot of effort to keep this type of charade going, and that energy needs to be directed somewhere. That's where a single member of the family is unconsciously chosen to be the symptom bearer of the [[Publish/Elements/Dictionary/Repression|Repressed]], [[Denial|Denied]] and [[Displacement|Displaced]] emotions the individual members of the family are unwilling to acknowledge or take responsibility for. In family systems therapy, this person is known as the "Identified Patient" or IP, also referred to as the truth teller, scapegoat or black sheep of the family. The IP role is usually one that is assigned in childhood, often to the most emotionally attuned, sensitive and perceptive child within the family. These children don't often fit into the rigid norms or values of the family and they're often willing to call out uncomfortable truths that others don't want to hear. Because no one is willing to address what needs to be addressed, they'll often act out in overt behaviours which the family can then point to and say "look there! see, that's the problem!". In this way, the IP simplifies the covert issues within the family because all the problems can be [[Projection|Projected]] and [[Displacement|Displaced]] onto them rather than each member of the family consciously recognising the role they play in the dynamics of the family system itself. Although many sadly remain in their roles and go unsupported for the entirety of their lives, when the IP does get support it is often said that they are the ones who ends up bringing the entire family into therapy (or at least to greater awareness) when they're no longer able to tolerate the emotional burden and pressure of the role. While this can be a catalyst for their healing, this person often carries a heavy shadow of shame, criticism and guilt for burdens that were not theirs to hold in the first place, and this can have a huge impact on the quality of their lives. # See Also - The way family members essentially transmit unresolved [[Trauma]] onto these children speaks to many [[Defence Mechanisms]], particularly [[Projection|Projection]] and [[Projective Identification|Projective Identification]]. The child may also accept, [[Introjection|Introject]] and [[Identification|Identify]] with these projections. - [[Family Enmeshment|Family Enmeshment]] often sets the stage for this type of scapegoating through emotional over-involvement and blurred boundaries. - [[Developmental Trauma]] speaks to the physical, emotional and spiritual impacts to the person who is chosen as the IP or scapegoat. - #Later This is part of a broader, systemic issue. These family members are essentially ridiculing whatever doesn't fit with the perfectionistic and rigid inherited collective image, signalling that they too have once been scapegoats themselves.