Scapegoat Healing Journey - Part II

Reconnecting to your feelings & understanding your scapegoat role

The first part was learning about your scapegoat role. It was food for your rational mind and meant to give you a smooth start into the healing journey. Today's part is about fully reconnecting with your feelings and emotions to gain a deeper understanding of your role.

For people who live mostly in their heads, this phase is the most challenging. Connecting with your feelings can sound like a very abstract concept.

You may think you can feel deeply and are not aware of your limitations. However, feeling something is not the same as being fully connected to your body.

I used to be a very head-centered person myself. To me, this “connecting to your body” and “getting grounded” sounded like esoteric woo-woo—until it finally began to make sense.

In this part, I will share some methods to help reconnect with your body. But before we get there, let's first look at why typical family scapegoats often struggle to access the full range of their feelings and emotions.

image by Pezibear

Why the Scapegoat’s Capacity to Feel Is Limited

Many scapegoats were accused of being too sensitive during their childhood, or their feelings were invalidated in countless other ways.

My father liked to punish me and often gave me a beating. The worst part was that he did not want me to cry or seek cover. If I tried either he would give me an extra beating and demand that I take it like a man and not show any weakness.

That's just one example to show how you learn to suppress your feelings as a child.

If you do that for long enough, you will have a hard time remembering your full capacity to feel.

At some point, you learned that feelings are painful and overwhelming. Trauma mechanisms make sure things stay below the surface so that you can at least function in life and survive.

What Does the Capacity to Fully Feel Mean?

I was once asked where in my body I feel anxiety. I had no idea what that question meant. I literally couldn’t point to any area of my body where anxiety was located.

Anxiety, for me, was more of an abstract concept. I thought I could feel it and probably did in some way. However, it was more like a general sense of discomfort, something that urged me to escape.

Fully feeling also means feeling yourself. Yes, it may sound like an abstract idea, but the very fact that you just may feel empty inside and disconnected from the world around you—as if you were somehow an outcast—shows that connection is not there.

Imagine taking a walk and feeling as if you belong exactly where you are. Like an animal in its natural habitat, feeling safe. There is no place you would rather be than where you are right now.

Sounds a bit romantic, but it’s something you experienced as a young child. So you have the capacity—you just buried it.

Just as you can train your muscles after wearing a cast for a broken bone, you can also reopen the channels to your feelings and let them flow freely again.

Your feelings are always there; you simply learned to block the signals.

How to Reconnect With Your Body

There are many ways to ground yourself and reconnect with your feelings and emotions. What they all have in common is that it takes time before you start noticing any changes. By that, I mean it could be weeks, months, or even years before you experience a real breakthrough.

There is no silver bullet or shortcut either. I will share what worked for me. You will probably have to try several before you find something that works for you. Often, it is the combination of methods that finally cracks the channels open.

In other words, be patient and trust the process.

Meditation & Breathing Exercises

From my experience, this can help a little, but mostly works to calm the mind. Breathing exercises provide the advantage of teaching you to shift your attention into your body.

They make you more aware of your breathing patterns, which often reflect your emotional state. In that sense, they can help to open doors.

Healing Work Like Reiki, Qi Gong, Yoga, Etc.

My first Reiki course actually gave me a small breakthrough. A few days after I finished the course, I suddenly could feel my hands even when I was not using them. The sensation is best described as some subtle tingling—as if there was an energy moving through my hands.

This made me curious about how other parts of my body felt. I began focusing my attention on here and there, pleasantly surprised to discover that my body was energetically connected to what I would have called myself.

Yoga can have similar effects. If you are not very flexible, stay away from the traditional styles like Hatha yoga. I tried it once and felt sore for days. Luckily, there are many gentler alternatives.

There are many other courses in the healing world. Some of them sound like spiritual voodoo—and probably are. Reiki, for instance, fell a bit into that category for me. I never believed in any of its supposed healing powers. Nevertheless, it helped me a lot to start feeling my body again.

One advantage of such courses is that you meet people who tend to be more sensitive and empathic. That alone can often do more for you than the course itself.

Spending Time With Empathic People

Spending time with empathic people shows you that human warmth and genuine connection are real—not just something from the movies.

The more warmth you experience, the more you begin to wonder why strangers can be so much kinder than your own family. That’s where you start to understand, on an emotional level, that there was something deeply wrong within your family system.

Why can strangers be warm to you, while your family cannot?

I literally had to travel to the end of the world to realize that people generally like me and treat me as someone of value. They saw a human in me and treated me as one of their own. In other words, there was a connection between us— a connection I had always longed for.

Music

Music can be truly moving and go deep under the skin. By this, I don’t mean the feel-good kind that makes you smile or want to dance. I mean music that stirs something inside you—where you lose yourself and may become so sentimental that tears start rolling down your cheeks.

It can also be music that opens the channel to release your anger and, by doing so, allows other emotions to come to the surface. For some, heavy or death metal can do the trick.

If music is already your thing, going to concerts can intensify the experience and give you a sense of connection with people who share your vibe.

Solitude and Nature

We live in a world that offers constant distraction. Whether it is social media, streaming platforms, or online and real-life shopping, there is always something trying to pull you in.

It not only works, but it is also tempting to use these things as an escape route when you cannot sit in silence and just be with yourself.

Even in earlier times, when distractions were fewer, people sought out silent monasteries or went on pilgrimages to reconnect with themselves. Being alone with yourself has always been a kind of medicine.

Spending time in silence is like going on an information diet. You start to crave stimulation when you are running on proverbial low sugar. That’s when the first feelings begin to surface, even if it’s just discomfort.

Practicing solitude at home may feel like being in a prison cell. A much better option is to do it in nature and make sure that anything that could distract you is switched off.

In the beginning, you may just hear angry little voices within you. But there is more to come. You cannot force it. The more you allow yourself to sit in silence, the easier it becomes for the process to work through you.

Personally, I enjoy long bicycle rides or full-day walks. The exhaustion that comes with them breaks down resistance for me. Or put in other words, the more you use your body, the less your mind will sabotage the journey inward.

Shamanism and Self-Medication

This is an ambivalent one. You will find plenty of information about people who travel to the Peruvian jungle to visit shamans and drink a sacred brew in the hopes of healing and feeling whole again.

Some people try to shortcut the process and use similar psychedelic substances that are easier to access. Many of them totally underestimate how powerful they are. Others spend months researching to get at least some idea of what they are about to do.

It should go without saying that self-medication is not a good idea, even more so when the substances are illegal in your country.

In recent years, psychedelics have gained attention in scientific research again. There is now solid material available, not just trip reports.

If you want to know more about psychedelics, check out the Tim Ferriss blog (yes, the 4-hour workweek guy) or the books from Stanislav Grof.

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