When truth becomes unbearable, families create a villain: the scapegoat
La Bisbal d’Empordà, 3rd of September 2025
For years, my bond with my nieces and nephew was one of the purest parts of my life. I was the adult who listened, who played, who cared for them without conditions. They loved me deeply—and that became something my family couldn’t tolerate.
Instead of seeing it for what it was—children feeling safe and loved—they saw me as a shadow. In their eyes, I made them look less important. My mother, my brother, and my sister all reacted the same way: they couldn’t accept being overshadowed in their own children’s affection. But they could never say this out loud. Admitting it would mean acknowledging that the problem was theirs.
So they made the problem mine.
A Convenient Story
When I left an abusive relationship, I was at my lowest point—depressed, disoriented, living in a messy house with dishes always piled up. Instead of looking at that collapse with compassion, my brother found in it an excuse.
He began spreading a story: that I was unstable, that I had a problem with ADHD medication, that I couldn’t be trusted around the kids. He leaned on an everyday detail—a kitchen shelf where I kept painkiller blister packs mixed together, as messy as the house itself—to give credibility to that story.
It wasn’t true. I had my prescriptions. I was taking exactly what I was supposed to. But in a family already looking for reasons to push me aside, that narrative was convenient. Little by little, they stopped bringing the children. They stopped coming to my house. Always with excuses. Always quietly.
But there was another layer. After leaving the relationship, I began researching deeply about narcissism and emotional abuse. I read psychology books, watched lectures, and started sharing what I learned—even on TikTok, where thousands of people resonated with my words. I wasn’t inventing anything; I was drawing from real psychology and naming the patterns I found. For my family, this was intolerable.
They saw themselves reflected in the very behaviors I was describing. Instead of facing that reflection, they turned it against me. Combined with their discomfort about how openly the children loved me, this became the fuel for the story they fabricated: that I was unstable, unsafe, and the problem.
I could see what was happening, but I didn’t have the strength to confront it directly.
The Intervention
In December, I sent a message to my family saying I wasn’t sure I wanted to spend Christmas with them. The atmosphere had become toxic, and I felt unsafe. Their response was not to talk to me—but to stage what they called “family therapy.”
My aunt persuaded me to come. My parents picked me up. On the drive, my father immediately asked me about my medication. That’s when I realized something was wrong.
When we arrived at the psychiatrist’s office in Barcelona, I discovered the truth: it wasn’t family therapy. It was an intervention. My parents had told the psychiatrist they were “very worried” about me, that I had problems with my medicine.
I explained to him what was happening. I showed him the books and projects I was working on, proof that I was not unraveling but creating. I told him directly: “This is a setup. I am not doing what they want me to do.”
Afterwards, I walked out. I didn’t say goodbye. I blocked their numbers. I spent Christmas alone.
Leaving Everything Behind
Soon after, I sold my car, my cameras, everything I owned. I left town. I wanted to put distance between myself and their narrative (my ex was also stalking me at that time).
Even then, my brother found ways to use my lowest moments against me. When I shaved my head and recorded myself crying—a personal before-and-after ritual to mark change—he spread it as proof that I was “crazy.”
But I wasn’t. I was surviving. I was trying to transform pain into something new.
It’s been 9 months since I last saw my nieces and my nephew
Since December, when I left, I haven’t seen them again. For nine months I’ve had no contact with them at all—not even a single photograph. I’ve been completely cut off from their lives, as if I were someone dangerous.
Building Something Bigger
Out of that devastation, TEG-Blue is being born—a theoretical framework to understand emotions, manipulation, survival, and healing. While my family paints me as unstable, I am shaping tools that translate emotional confusion into something visible and understandable.
Now, 9 months after leaving, I am stronger. I know their tactics. I see their manipulation clearly. And I have returned home—not because I want to go back to their dynamic, but because I’m running out of money and needed a place to stay.
My presence threatens them again. They know the story they’ve been selling about me—that I am the problem, that I am unstable—cannot hold up. But instead of facing that truth, they avoid me. They disappear into silence.
The Real Story
What happened is simple. I loved my nieces and nephew more openly than my family could handle. They felt threatened. They invented a narrative that made me unsafe, unstable, unfit. They staged interventions, spread rumors, and quietly cut me off.
And when I refused to collapse into the role they gave me, I built something instead. I built a framework born from pain but rooted in clarity, honesty, and survival.
The story they told is theirs.
The story I am telling is mine.
And TEG-Blue is what I have created alone, in 9 months since I left.
—Anna Paretas
La Bisbal d’Empordà, 3rd of September 2025