When You’re Scapegoated About Your Overeating

In a family system, it is often that the person who overeats is scapegoated about their overeating.

Does your family feel like it's your personal issue that you overeat?

Do they view your overeating and possible weight issues as a problem that you have, which is just based on a character flaw or willpower problem?

Many families do. In family systems where not everyone has overeating and weight issues, often the person/people who do are regarded as an anomaly.

The vast majority of parents are not humble to the fact that tendencies towards restriction and/or binge eating do not come from nowhere, rather that they are a result of other issues, most of which originate in how those parents treated their child.

Scapegoating is often defined as the act of blaming a person or group for something bad that someone else has done.

The sad truth is, most parents will be perfectly fine with their adult children blaming themselves entirely for their eating issues.

If this is you, then your parents will allow you to feel bad about yourself for doing it and to feel ashamed.

Here's an example of what your parents might say to you (and genuinely feel) if they weren't scapegoating you but actually being self-reflective and empathetic:

"Your eating issues have a cause. They are not part of your personality or nature. The origin of them is not your fault.

We are gutted because the truth is, we are at the root of why this has happened for you.

We treated you in ways that created pain in you; we harmed you directly with our actions, words and feelings.

On top of that, we taught you really damaging beliefs about emotions that have caused you to disconnect from yourself emotionally and we've encouraged you in betraying yourself.

This is not your fault. You have nothing to be ashamed of. You must not blame yourself because it is not your fault.

We are going to now put significant effort into coming to terms with how we created your pain and molded your emotional responses.

We want to help you heal, but mainly be looking at ourselves and changing ourselves. We are so sorry."

Anything less than this kind of feeling in your parents likely suggests that you are indeed being scapegoated about your overeating.

Your parents may never feel or say what is written above. But you can still heal if you can recognize the truth of where your overeating and emotional repression patterns came from, and feel through those emotions.

Photo by Evie S via Unsplash