“You’re acting like a victim, Michael.”
“Fuck, there I go again,” I said to myself, as I stared at the WhatsApp message from my most influential mentor. There’s something about male coaches that just cuts through the bullshit, and sometimes the necessary truth cuts right to the bone.
Oftentimes I hate myself for this identification, but even that is a venture into victimhood.
When I leave the door open for toxic people, caretake those in codependent ways, cling to fantasy and expectations, blame others for my feelings, and believe that “this time it’ll be different,” I contribute to my self-victimization.
I don’t want to live like that anymore, but if I’m not mindful I’ll slip back into my old “poor me” pattern. Like a car that needs an alignment, if I don’t keep my hand on the wheel I’ll drift into the ditch.
You could even say I have an addiction to victimhood, so if you do too, I suggest we both take the needle out of our arm ASAP.
Injecting large quantities of HOW-COULD-YOU-DO-THIS-TO-ME is not a good look.
. . .
Signs You Play The Victim
You constantly need external validation
There’s a difference between wanting to date and form relationships and needing validation.
What I mean, is that people who need someone to validate them will typically go for unavailable, addicted, or abusive people, and think that if they can somehow win them over or get the other person to change, they’ll be valid. These people grew up with inconsistent parents and a predisposition toward fantasy, anxiety, and the idealization of others.
People become the source of validation when “winning” the relationship game becomes the primary goal.
Unfortunately, once they’ve “won” and the other person becomes available or attached, this once sought-after person loses that idealistic quality and thus their ability to validate. The pursuit then turns to someone else who’s unavailable or unattainable, so the quest for validation can continue.
Of course, this need for external validation doesn’t come from just people, but from accolades, awards, achievements, money, power, status, or likes on social media.
All of this promotes a victim stance because there’s always an underlying feeling of lack that can’t be filled. The victims in these situations say, “I don’t have enough and the world owes me.” Or “This is what happened to me, therefore I can use other people as validation vehicles.”
The worst thing for people of the victim identity is to get what they want, because that’s the moment when they can no longer call themselves a victim.
You blame your partner for your feelings
Another tell-tale sign of the victim identity is the blaming of others for your feelings.
Giving someone the power to make you feel something is like giving someone a stick and saying “Here, beat me.”
A lack of ownership is a feigned sense of helplessness, because while we can indeed get triggered around someone’s words or behaviors, it’s our wound and our unmet need that’s the culprit.
Of course, this doesn’t mean we should put up with demeaning or abusive behavior, but how we feel and how we respond to a situation is on us.
It’s the victim that declares, “You made me do it!” or “You make me so angry!”
Phrases like “I feel x when you say x. Did you mean it like that?” will turn the ownership back to you and give the other person a chance to clarify. This will also keep disagreements and conflict out of the escalating blame game, where nothing gets accomplished.
Google “nonviolent communication” for more on this.
You have a hard time setting boundaries
This is a big one for the victim, because an inability or an unwillingness to set boundaries is a sure-fire way to be victimized.
Often times, people don’t mean to cross our boundaries, but they do it because we failed to set them. If you don’t show someone where your property line is, how will they know what’s yours?
Furthermore, when someone in a relationship is unwilling to walk away if a bottom line behavior is crossed, then it’s not a boundary.
Boundaries come with specific consequences that both parties are aware of, and if set properly and consistently, can maintain a victim-free environment.
However, this is scary for the victim, because they’re typically afraid that by setting boundaries, people will leave them. Conversely, by not setting boundaries and sticking to them, it’s even more likely that the relationship won’t survive. That’s because someone’s always getting stepped on, or the partners get so enmeshed it becomes toxic.
Setting clear boundaries creates an environment of trust, respect, and differentiation — three essential ingredients in a healthy relationship.
The victim perpetuates their position by not only letting their own boundaries get crossed, but inevitably crosses the other person’s boundaries with their blaming, emotional meltdowns, or desires to merge with their partner.
You focus more on your defects than your attributes
While I’m obviously a big fan of self-improvement, being inundated with negative self-talk doesn’t improve anything.
In fact, all it does is perpetuate a sense of victimhood. Why? Because you’re basically giving the other person reasons to leave you.
The victim wants to be left, eventually.
That’s right. How else can a victim stay a victim if there’s stability? Like I said before, the worst thing a victim can get is what they want, so by highlighting their flaws they’ll all but guarantee that they’ll stay disempowered, and ultimately, undesired.
By focusing on our positive attributes, we not only become attractive to the other person, we become attractive to ourselves. Psychologically, whatever we focus on grows, so we have a choice — focus on the negative or focus on the positive.
We’ve been hearing the “glass half full” metaphor on repeat, but seeing it half full means you have something to drink. By seeing it half empty, you’re in that perpetual state of lack, and require a constant need for someone else’s beverage.
The victim loves a sense of lack because it’s safe, familiar, and requires little action. It’s the quintessential “do it for me” stance.
. . .
Steps To Get Over It
Make yourself big
Imagine a person is standing in front of a wall. The wall extends above the person’s head, and at the bottom of the wall is a small mouse hole.
Victims think that the only way to the other side is to make themselves small enough to fit through the mouse hole. While it might be possible to get what’s on the other side, if they choose this method then they’ve shrunken themselves down. They’ve chosen the miniaturization strategy.
The more favorable approach is to make yourself so big that you step right over the wall. Metaphorically this means that we identify what we want and become the person who can get it. It stops the reliance on others to do the work for us, and allows us to “grow into the unknown.”
Miniaturization is an attempt at staying in the known, because that’s been the strategy growing up. By making yourself big and stepping over the wall, you’re venturing out of your comfort zone.
While this can be scary at times, growing into the unknown is the best way to stop living out the same patterns, and get what you want in sustainable ways.
Embrace your mistakes and move on
Since victimization starts in the mind, there’s no better fuel for the fire than dwelling on mistakes. In fact, those mistakes tend to play on repeat, leading the victim to think that if only it played through one more time, that mistake would never happen again.
What I discovered recently, is that I was ruminating on mistakes or beating myself up because I wanted guidance. The voice I was hearing was an abusive one, but now I’m making a conscious choice to hear a different voice.
Why would I listen to an ineffective, punishing voice over a one with useful information?
The useful voice says, “Ok, you fucked up. You’re human — congrats on being normal. What needs to happen now?”
Do the inner child work
I wrote an entire story about the benefits of inner child work, and I believe this is an essential step in recovery.
A tectonic shift occurred for me when I realized that behind my victim strategy was self-rejection. The “self” I was rejecting was that of the imperfect child. Subconsciously I was holding onto a feeling of being defective.
It was during a recent session where I was being coached, that I realized I had not embraced a part of myself I had abandoned. Coincidentally, the part I had abandoned was the child who originally claimed that victim strategy, and became disassociated with his masculine, “can-do” self.
In essence, by not forgiving myself for adopting the role of the victim, I wasn’t able to separate myself from it.
Identify and accept your feelings — all of them
It’s almost guaranteed that victims are dissociated from certain emotions. We usually grew up in households where it was not ok to be angry, sad, hurt, scared, or even ecstatic or joyful.
We heard things like, “Don’t cry or I’ll give you something to cry about!” or “Settle down, you’re embarrassing me!”
When we learn to accept certain emotions and reject others, we lose certain parts of ourselves — ones capable of setting boundaries or being fully in the moment. We associate certain feelings with punishment, and therefore we feel anxious or numb when we encounter them, even if they serve us.
We can become rigid, convert unacceptable feelings into acceptable ones like anger, or become crippled by fear of upsetting other people. Identifying and feeling these buried emotions is a powerful process not to be taken lightly, because our bodies are essentially warehouses that store them. They need to be released.
Without processing the feelings we’ve repressed, we’ll likely be controlled by them throughout our lives.
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This post was previously published on Medium.
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Photo credit: arash payam on Unsplash