Reflections on Making the Invisible Visible

Moving beyond shame, secrecy, and silence. By Rebecca C. Mandeville

May 03, 2025

Why This, Why Now

Welcome to the quiet shores of my new Substack publication, The Inviolate Self.

The Inviolate Self is a natural extension of the content I’ve created over the past 20 years emphasizing our innate and perennial Wholeness, including while serving as Core Faculty at the world renowned Institute of Transpersonal Psychology.

It is also a natural extension of my introductory book on the insidious systemic phenomenon I named Family Scapegoating Abuse (FSA), Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed, for in it, I included chapters on The False Self and The True Self, and how these concepts relate to healing from negative family conditioning and abuse. Many people have written me since I published my book in 2020 wanting to know more about Transpersonal Psychology and psycho-spiritual development as related to FSA recovery. This personal (versus my more clinical Substack) offers me a way to share my own recovery journey while also expanding upon ideas related to healing and wholeness included in my book.

If you've found your way here, it's likely you understand, on some level, the weight of unspoken wounds, the lingering ache of a past that shadows the present. Perhaps you, too, have navigated the lonely, harsh terrain of childhood neglect, the jagged edges of trauma, or the bewildering isolation of being in the ‘family scapegoat’ role.

For too long, my own story felt like a closely guarded secret, a landscape where I wandered alone in the dead of night. The echoes of "something’s wrong with her," the sting of misplaced blame and shame, the accusations and distortions of my character, the confusion of a world that didn't quite see, positively affirm, or understand me (although my “intelligence” and “sensitivity” were frequently noted) – these were my constant companions. Feeling acutely vulnerable, ‘different’, fractured, confused, and shattered, I spent years trying to find a mirror in others - family, teachers, employers, lovers, friends - in an attempt to experience the truth of me through them.

Needless to say, my decades-long quest to find ‘home’ - a place within and without that felt safe, accepting, and welcoming - felt like an impossible summit, a distant, shimmering mirage I was destined to never reach. I know today that this search for ‘home’ and my drive to find (or create) a semblance of inner and outer emotional safety was likely rooted in traumatic childhood experiences, but I could not possibly know that then.

But through it all, I was aware of an unfathomable Presence within: Expansive and infinite, immanent and transcendent, me - yet not me. Non-split. Non-divided. Whole.

I was aware of this inner Presence because I had consciously become it in a dream when I was four years old (which I’ll share more about later in a future post). This dream likely saved my life, while also altering it irrevocably as I was introduced to a Consciousness so vast, so limitless, that it changed me - my self-concept and sense of identity - forever.

Over time, this ‘Greater Self’ (as I came to think of it) began to whisper its way through the flotsam and noise of my chaotic and anxious mind as I struggled to cope in a dysfunctional family environment and a world that seemed too bright, too busy, and too hard. I was comforted by the knowledge that this Greater Self was pure, vast, and true and existed beyond all distortions and lies. I knew also that this Greater Self was inviolate - Nothing could tarnish or stain it.

I also knew that this Greater Self, this Presence, existed within each and every one of us. Despite the storms we weather, the hurts we carry, the psycho-emotional pain we’ve endured, there is an inherent wholeness within us that cannot ever be blemished, broken, or compromised.

We are always and already whole. Regardless of how broken we may feel at times as we heal from wounds so deep and so raw they can seem impossible to name, contain, or explain. The experience of our innate wholeness might be buried, obscured, even feel entirely lost at times - but still, it remains: Ineffable. Constant. Always. And always there as an inner re/source we can draw from.

What I Hope to Share Within This Space

Some of you already know me from my Healing the Scapegoat Wound: FSA Education Support Community here on Substack - a community driven virtual space where I create content on the insidious systemic phenomenon I named Family Scapegoating Abuse (FSA) as a result of my original research on the family ‘Identified Patient’ (IP). Or you may have read my introductory book on FSA, Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role.

This new space (publication) allows me to temporarily step back from my clinical offerings so that I can begin to reflect on my own journey of healing through essays, prose, and poetry - a journey I could not have possibly made if I had not had a felt-sense experience of ‘the inviolate self’ from early childhood on.

It will be a raw and honest telling, a weaving together of personal reflections and insights gleaned through years and years of consciously focusing on healing from wounds, past and present, and through my work tending to the invisible wounds of others as a trauma-informed therapist specializing in Family Systems and psycho-emotional family abuse (scapegoating, specifically).

There will be moments of vulnerability, perhaps even discomfort, but always with the intention of shedding light and offering a hand to those walking a similar path. I’ll also be integrating my transpersonal experiences into these reflections, as well as my psycho-spiritual orientation as a psychotherapist, because this has been a key aspect of my healing and recovery journey as well.

Shame, Secrets, and Silence

It's incredibly challenging for adult survivors of family scapegoating abuse (FSA) to share their stories, whether publicly or even privately, due to a deeply ingrained fear of retaliation and/or a fear of not being believed, resulting in traumatic invalidation and toxic shame.

The potential for further emotional distress, coupled with the very real threat of familial backlash and the potential loss of remaining family connections, creates a powerful deterrent against speaking out, trapping survivors in a cycle of silence and isolation. I know this has been true for me, and this was also frequently reported by my coaching and therapy clients and via my FSA research respondents as well.

For those of us who do feel compelled to share the truth of what happened to us in our families, our stories are frequently delivered in a veiled manner via fictional pieces, private discussion forums, or (in my case) poetry, non-fiction books and/or original research that represents or explores situations and issues we experience, yet cannot safely speak about.

Making the Invisible Visible

For so many of us here, it’s been a long and lonely road carrying the weight of family dysfunction, trauma (including intergenerational trauma) and abuse as a result of being the receptacle for our family system’s ‘shadow’. Fear of being further invalidated and traumatized serves to render many FSA adult survivors mute. Hearing the stories of subscribers in my FSA Education Healing the Scapegoat Wound community has been nothing short of inspirational because I know first-hand the courage it takes to share one’s painful family experiences.

Slowly I realized that I wanted - no, needed - to share my story, too. And bit by bit, I began revealing more of myself and my story in our private community chats as I began to tentatively peek out from behind the clinician’s personae. And although this has been a positive experience, I did not feel my paid Community Education Substack was the best place for me to write freely for a myriad of reasons I won’t get into here. Hence, the creation of this new Substack, The Inviolate Self.

Releasing my story of wounding and healing within a community and experiencing relief reminds me of the dream that Black Elk had, as described in his memoir, 'Black Elk Speaks.' His apocalyptic vision as a boy carried immense energy, as it foreshadowed the destruction of the Lakota way of life. Black Elk became very ill after this dream and it was feared he would die. He finally shared the dream with his tribe’s medicine man, who advised him to share this dream with the tribe, to speak the dream and its imagery aloud so that its power could be dispersed and integrated within the community.

In a similar way, sharing my story within a supportive community feels like releasing a trapped energy. As we are discovering in my Healing the Scapegoat Wound community, the pain and confusion that felt so isolating and consuming begins to shift as we are witnessed and acknowledged by others who understand and do not invalidate or dismiss our painful family experiences.

It's as if the burden is lightened simply by being distributed and shared among the collective, and the immense energy stemming from invisible abuse and traumatic invalidation that was once directed inward can now flow outward, connecting us to each other and fostering a sense of belonging.

This connection, this feeling of being seen, understood, and believed, is what allows the invisible wounds of family psycho-emotional abuse to be made visible so we can begin to heal while offering a lifeline to others out of the isolating darkness of silence and shame.

And so I thank each and every one of you reading this for being that lifeline for me.

Redemption

There are some things

more dangerous than death:

A sudden loss of criminal lust,

or the blood draining from your vision,

staining your vacant soul.

I took a train to parts unknown

searching instead for a family of vagrants,

and there I found my home.

(From my latest book of poetry, ‘Inviolate’. It is an act of reclamation for me to publish it here. This is because I had originally published this book of poems under a pseudonym. I am now reclaiming my work - my story - without fear.)

Consider this first post a gentle hello, a reaching out across the digital sea. Know that you are not alone. Remember that abuse - narcissistic abuse and family scapegoating abuse, especially - thrives in silence and secrecy. Telling our stories breaks that silence, bringing what was hidden into the light. There is strength in our shared stories, and a profound power in acknowledging the resilience of the human spirit. We survived. We made it.

We’re still standing. We’re still here.

With warmth,

Rebecca C. Mandeville, LMFT, CCTP

I’d love to hear from you in the comments. Do you feel you can share your story freely? Why or why not? This is a public post, so your comments are also public.