This topic is highly relevant for millions of people—nothing any of us goes through is unique to us—and relevant to me in the context of having thought the dragon had passed and then getting caught and thrown temporarily off balance by that final flick of its tail.

The ones who demand forgiveness after hurting you; the ones who criticise you for having boundaries—who tell you said boundaries harden you; the ones who project their unintegrated anger onto you in the form of poisonous verbal and emotional abuse and then tell you it’s your fault for not being ‘spiritual enough’ to keep taking it … they are the ones who benefit from your always having been the scapegoat; the ones who benefit from your resilience to not react; the ones who rely on your not having boundaries.

The ones who tell you ‘I just want you to be happy’ are guilty of gross manipulation sending the ambiguous verbal message that they are entitled to use you as a punching bag and make you the guilty party for your not being happy for it … because all that passive aggressive message says is that you are responsible for their happiness … the double whammy of gaslighting!

They are so lost in their own cognitive dissonance that they need to make someone else responsible for their unresolved shadow. And the longer you remain in the scapegoat role—because, honestly, it can take decades of sucking it up to keep the peace before recognising you are perpetuating the dysfunction—the deeper into all the layers of your being the disease will sink … until you have to choose to heal or die.

And when—or if—you choose to fully heal by removing yourself as their scapegoat and to instead tell the truth, it’s going to get a whole lot worse before it gets better. 

The less you react the less justified they feel to maintain the abuse. The vitriol will increase and the accusations of your so-called instability will increase. Because they need you to react so they can use your reaction to justify their behaviour … because they really can’t accept any kind of blame—that’s your role, remember.

Remember—please!—that you have done nothing wrong. You are not responsible for making them feel better about hurting you. You are not even responsible for forgiving them—because that would require them admitting fault, being accountable, and changing their behaviour. You are not responsible for making them understand this. The ONLY thing you are responsible for is healing.

It’s ok if it’s taken so long to recognise you have enabled this; it’s ok to be angry and indignant and to want it to be different. If there is any place for forgiveness it is in forgiving yourself … and to keep forgiving yourself. You are the only one responsible for your own changed behaviour and the only one who can live your own life with your own true self. Mostly the abuser is perpetuating their own cycles of karma and abuse … mostly they are emotionally inept and incapable of integrating their shadow self. Mostly hurt people hurt people. 

You have been made to feel you are helping them heal by being the scapegoat for all their own wounds. You are not responsible for fixing them. You can only fix yourself. You are the only one who can stop the abuse by removing yourself from the abuser.

While they turn you into the perpetrator for not taking responsibility for causing them to hurt you; while they create stories to make you the crazy one, the broken one; the mean one; while they spin the cycle of their own personal drama triangle and blame you for their self-inflicted crisis of the soul (which they obviously don’t recognise as such while they are still in the echo chamber of their own delusions)… while they shame you for not ‘taking the spiritual line’ that enables them to continue being abusive … it is up to you to: Stop the cycle of hurt! 

All these things they perpetuate are not yours to heal in them.
You can only heal those parts in yourself that they are karmically activating.
It’s up to you to break free of the drama they have staged.
It’s up to you to not be a hurt person who hurts.
You are the hero of your own story.
Take your own shadow.
Get off the stage.
Step into your light.