“If you didn’t want to die alone, maybe you should have treated people better.”

Breaking Codependency: Setting Boundaries to Heal Scapegoating

The content discusses the harmful expectations placed on codependent individuals, emphasizing the pressure to avoid setting boundaries and taking endless blame. It illustrates this through a personal anecdote involving a friend who absurdly blames the speaker for a bruise after a night of heavy drinking, reflecting misguided scapegoating.

What does this really mean when said to a codependent, people-pleaser, scapegoat?

It means, “You should never have stood up for yourself, never set any boundaries, never stopped bending over backward for others, and never stopped taking the blame for anything that went wrong in the lives of the people you know. And, smile while you continue to take it.”

Here is the most ridiculous, true, recent example of a friend trying to scapegoat me. This was no joke. He was absolutely serious.

“Did you put a hex on me?”

“What?”

“I woke up this morning with a bruise on my shoulder.”

“Ok.”

“Did you put a hex on me to make me fall down?”

“What?”

“I know you’re Wiccan. Witches sometimes cast hexes.”

“Oh my god, dude. First off, you were falling down drunk last night. I hung up the phone after you fell down and started snoring. 2^nd, The Wiccan Rede says to Harm None or suffer Karma. And, thirdly, do you really want to assign me THAT much power to be able to physically affect you from hundreds of miles away? You know what? Call me when you’ve been sober for a year.”