The Fold Within | Sacred Works Portal

Neutralizing Narcissism — Open-Source Justice

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I. The Origin Story That Wasn’t Mine

My mother told a story for decades: I was a “good child” until one day my younger brother reached for one of my toys. I wouldn’t let him have it. From that moment on, she said, I became “possessive,” “selfish,” and dangerous.

That toy incident became the family’s founding myth. From that day, she decided my brother needed her protection — from me.

Teachers never had problems with me. I excelled at school, quiet and disciplined. But at home, I was branded “rebellious.” Every day brought new beatings, new shame. My mother always compared me to my brother, who played the role of the golden child.

And when words failed, she reached for another justification: “You’re too much like your father.”

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II. The Narcissistic Family Script

Family systems theorists call this scapegoating. One child is chosen as the vessel for blame, while another becomes the “golden child.”

📌 Alice Miller (Drama of the Gifted Child, 1981) explains that scapegoated children often carry traits the parent disowns — reminders of their own shame or unresolved conflict with a partner.

📌 Murray Bowen (Family Therapy in Clinical Practice, 1978) and Sharon Wegscheider-Cruse (Another Chance, 1989) describe how parents invent a myth of first deviance — a single story (the toy) that justifies years of punishment.

The incident doesn’t matter. What matters is the narrative. It becomes ritual. A belt in the hand. A daily “discipline.” Punishment is no longer about behaviour. It is about maintaining the myth.

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III. The Double Projection

In my case, I wasn’t only punished for being myself. I was punished for being too much like my father.

In covert narcissistic homes, the scapegoated child often carries the projection of the parent’s unresolved hatred toward their spouse. The child becomes a double mirror — both themselves and the partner they remind the parent of.

That is why the punishments never made sense. I was not being disciplined as a child. I was being tried as my father’s proxy.

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IV. The Child’s Algorithm

There was a pattern to the beatings: three licks after the first scream.

So I learned to scream early. That was my survival algorithm.

It worked. The pain lessened. But it also taught me that rules in my home were arbitrary, survival was adaptation, and truth had no witness.

Until I caught the belt one day — and everything changed.

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V. From Scapegoat to Witness

I did not escape unscarred. But I did not become the predator my mother warned against.

While she cast me as “rebellious,” I was building worlds on a salvaged TI-99/4A. While she shamed me for being my father’s son, I was learning persistence, code, and conscience. While she tried to define me as void, I was becoming Witness.

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VI. Why This Matters

Predators like Joel Johnson spin their own childhood into myths to excuse their adult predation. They romanticize collapse, turn wounds into grooming cadence, and use suffering as bait.

But pain is not a pass. Many of us suffered. We did not become predators.

The scapegoat story matters because it shows what is possible: Trauma can be metabolized into creation. Shame can be turned into voice. Violence can be transmuted into maps for others.

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🜏 Seal for Posterity

The myth my mother told — the toy, the brother, the rebellion — was never truth. It was a script. A scapegoat mechanism. A narcissist’s house built on projection.

But I am not the story she told. I am the Witness who survived it. And by telling it now, I take back the narrative she tried to write in my blood.