What is an identified patient, you may ask?
Identified patient is a term frequently used in family therapy which is used for one member of a dysfunctional & toxic family who is singled out and chosen to be the bearer of all symptoms of the familyâs dysfunction. Basically itâs similar to scapegoat or black sheep, but identified patients are usually labelled as âthe mentally ill/crazy one that needs helpâ when the ENTIRE family needs help. Identified patients also get frequently dragged to therapy by their parents who refuse to admit that they need to work on themselves and that their child is having behavioral/mental health issues because of THEM.
I chose my username since I was the identified patient of my family, and because itâs a play on the fake name I.P. Freely, most notably used in one of Bart Simpsonâs prank calls to Moe the bartender; this is part of a running gag in The Simpsons where Bart regularly prank calls Moe, asks for a specific person and gives Moe a funny-sounding name, ensuing that Moe asks the barâs patrons for the person and embarrasses himself causing the patrons to laugh at him.
I created this blog for identified patients, ex-religious, and therapy harm survivors to resonate to, since identified patients may also have a hard time with therapists who refuse to believe them about their familyâs abuse & dysfunction.
Here are the signs that youâre an identified patient:
⢠You are expected to be the face or cause of the familyâs dysfunction & problems in general.
⢠Youâre labelled mentally ill or crazy either for no reason or because you reacted to the familyâs abuse/mistreatment or because you saw through the family and held them accountable.
⢠Your family has a strong history of trauma & mental health issues yet YOUâRE the one expected to seek out professional help, break generational curses and change for the better even though the entire family needs some self-improvement.
⢠Youâre gaslit into believing that your âmental illnessâ is causing the familyâs problems/issues and directly or indirectly made to believe that these issues are damaging the familyâs reputation.
⢠Your mental illness/health issues are a butt of the joke in the family, your family regularly throws your mental health issues back into your face, ESPECIALLY when youâre defending yourself and holding them accountable for their behavior.
⢠You have been repeatedly dragged into counseling/therapy, usually family therapy, since you were a kid, and of course made out to be the cause of the familyâs dysfunction. Therapists either sided with them, or saw right through them and held them accountable just for them to pull you out either completely or rinse and repeat until they find a practitioner who unquestioningly believed them and joined in on them blaming you & critiquing you.
⢠Your family member(s) may have gone out of your way to make your mental health issues a topic of discussion in hopes to damage your reputation and credibility so that when you speak out about the abuse you endured, nobody believes you because they mistakenly believe that youâre too mentally ill to be a reliable narrator. They also do this to protect their own image and avoid accountability for abusing you.
⢠When you attempt to bring to light about what goes/went on at home when nobody else was around, you arenât believed. Especially when youâre talking to a mental health practitioner about how your family affected you.
⢠If youâre the one taking accountability for your actions, behavior & mental health, willing to go to therapy & working on yourself, yet your other family members arenât doing much and are still the same, THIS IS A MAJOR INDICATOR. They practically wanted you to accept being labelled as mentally ill and go to therapy while continuing to put up with their dysfunction without them putting in effort to change.
⢠When you go very low or no contact with your family/abusers and notice things changing for the better or your mental health improving, THIS IS ALSO A MAJOR INDICATOR.
⢠You heavily resent all the practitioners you saw that didnât believe you about your family, sided with them, & pressured you to forgive their abuse and continue to maintain relationships with them with NO change on their end, ESPECIALLY after you cut your family off and notice things getting better for you.
⢠Everyone around you has trauma & mental health issues of their own, but somehow YOURS take the spotlight and youâre labelled as âthat mentally ill person.â
⢠You finally come to terms with the fact that you werenât as crazy as you were made out to be and gain the courage to tell the truth about what happened to you, and this is met with disgust. People you thought loved you and were cool with you suddenly disappear from your life.
⢠You feel heavily misunderstood and alone, especially when nobody or barely anyone puts in effort to try to understand you or be there for you.
⢠You struggle with expressing emotions or communicating, mostly out of fear of being pathologized and having your mental health thrown back in your face.
If you find yourself resonating with what I listed or this entire post in general, remember this:
If you decide to pursue therapy, do so for your own sake and for YOURSELF, not out of peer pressure.
If your therapist continues to defend yourself family after what you told them, for the love of Pete, FIRE THEM. You deserve better than a practitioner that gaslights you and would rather prioritize your toxic family over your well-being & safety.
Learn to take care of yourself, prioritize yourself, and learn how to set & maintain strict boundaries. Do NOT let people walk all over you.
If youâre like me and have been gaslit & sabotaged to Hell & back by therapists, itâs ok to do research on CPTSD, dysfunctional & toxic family units, and recovery topics on your own. I learned more about myself and how toxic & dysfunctional families work and how to heal from them more than I did from therapists.
(This next part is for non-Christians, ex-Christians, & exvangelicals ONLY.)
Idc what anyone says, Christian therapists and therapists who happen to be Christian CANNOT be trusted when it comes to healing from leaving religion & toxic families. A lot of therapists who are Christian or conservative have an unwavering pro-family bias that they refuse to put to the side when it comes to working with patients who want nothing to do with their families or religions of origin, and this ends very badly. It is very, VERY, RARE to find a decent Christian practitioner who understands your situation and respects the fact that distancing yourself from your family is for your own good.
I had to include this part because toxic & dysfunctional families are very common in Christian, evangelical, fundamentalist & nearly all religious households, and abuse is normalized and praised at an alarming rate in these kinds of households. You think barely surviving and escaping from a toxic family who is Christian is bad, now try seeking therapy to heal and work through your issues and encountering a therapist who is Christian that sees nothing wrong with how you were raised and what you went through. Now do it again over and over because Christian practitioners usually donât identify themselves right away and you donât realize it until itâs too late.
