Get Down With the Victim We Both Know You Need Them
The Victim Mentality – What It Is and Why You Utilise Information technology
By: Walter Watzpatzkowski
by Andrea Blundell
Had a tough life? And sometimes experience like y'all tin't get ahead, no matter how hard you endeavor? Because the world is just besides terrible and dangerous? You lot might be trapped in the victim mentality.
What is a 'Victim Mentality'?
When we have a victim mentality, we come across the world through a lens of adept versus bad. We are the innocent person, and the bad things are exterior of ourselves.
And, near importantly, we believe we are powerless to practise annihilation in the face up of all this 'badness'. That life happens TO us, rather than the thought that we are choosing and creating information technology in any fashion.
This means you blame your challenges in life on others effectually you, even if you can't prove their negative actions. Y'all might also blame many things on circumstances, which you see equally always unfair.
Being a Victim vs Self Compassion vs Victim Mentality
Bad things can certainly happen in life. You lot might feel a crime, such as fraud, or even sexual assault. Or live through childhood trauma. Y'all are avictim.
In such a example y'all take every right to feel that things were out of your command, because they were. Any idea that it'due south somehow your fault and you are responsible is plain erroneous thinking.
It's also perfectly normal to experience sorry for yourself every once in a while. Or feel powerless in the face up of a challenge similar a bereavement or divorce. This isself-pity.
A victim mentality, on the other mitt, means you place with your status of a victim and become reliant on pity. The trauma didn't merely happen to you, it becomes who you are.
Y'all don't move on from the trauma but you hold onto information technology, making it part of your story that you tell again and again. And you become stuck in this mindset.
A victim versus a healthy person
At its middle, victim mentality is a misunderstood coping mechanism. Frequently information technology is from childhood trauma.
And as a child we really were helpless. Feeling pitiful for ourselves was our only style to cocky soothe. But here we are, powerful adults. We tin can brand unlike choices, we can walk abroad from things, and we are deciding, in many cases, the life and relationships we are living out.
A healthy person sees that they are choosing what is happening to them and sees their power to take accuse. They chose to be in a relationship with someone critical. They chose a bad job. And they tin cull to quit the relationship or the job.
But the victim mentality blinds us to this. We even so play that helpless kid. Nosotros are paralysed, unable to take responsibility and make decisions that would motion us forward. Deep downwardly nosotros might fifty-fifty believe nosotros deserve to endure, or that the only way to get attention and love is if others feel sorry for us.
Why would I cull to always be a victim?
Constantly acting a victim tin actually have a lot of perks. These tin look like the following:
- you don't have take responsibility for things
- you have the 'right' to mutter and receive attention
- others feel lamentable for you lot and requite yous attention
- people are less probable to criticise or upset you lot
- others feel compelled to help you and do what you inquire for
- you tin can tell stories about the things that happened to you lot and seem interesting
- there is no fourth dimension to be bored because there is and then much drama in your life
- yous can avoid ever feeling anger as you are too busy being lamentable and upset.
The Secret Ability Behind Being a Victim
Despite the learned helplessness, victimhood does mean a certain type of power. And that is through attention and sympathy.
Having others feel sad for you lot is an unconscious way to manipulate them into meeting your needs and wants. This tin be something pocket-sized, like someone always going to the shops for you. Or can exist deeper and more than insidious. Your 'poor me' act tin can exist used so another is forced to treat you nicely and never yell at you, even if you aren't being fair. Or keep them so guilty they are unable to walk away from y'all even if they want to.
Codependency and victimhood
An instance of victimhood as a form of power is a codependent relationship, such as the 1 betwixt an alcoholic and their partner. The 'caregiver' can play a victim, putting up with the alcoholic's terrible behaviour and sacrificing their ain needs to treat them. Only so they tin can also use guilt, complaints, and 'poor me' tirades to and so attempt to control the alcoholic.
Why am I the sort of person who plays the victim?
Y'all could have learned to play victim because you watched the adults around you doing so. It your female parent or father, for example, ever felt the world was out to get them? And complained daily about all the people who wronged them? Y'all would take on board this was the way to gain personal power and attention.
Information technology'south possible you had a codependent relationship with one of your parents and felt responsible for their wellbeing. This could have been taking care of a sick (mentally or physically) parent. Or beingness led to believe y'all are in charge of their happiness.
Or, you lot might take learned to be a victim because information technology was a way to survive your childhood. As a kid, nosotros all crave attention and love. If it'south not offered freely past our caregivers, nosotros are left to observe ways to receive information technology. Perchance, in your family home, the only manner to receive attending and care was to be ill, or to human action weak, or to allow bad things to happen to you.
But again, many people who live life from a victim mentality were sufferers of corruption equally a childhood. This is often sexual corruption. The helplessness a kid feels, combined with the deep shame abuse causes, can hateful you grow into an adult who has no self-esteem and who sees the globe equally a dangerous place they are lost in.
What should I do if I recognise that I suffer from victimisation?
On a good annotation, considering a victim mentality is a learned behaviour, you can indeed 'unlearn' information technology.
It is, however, a process which takes time and can be quite intense, especially if information technology is continued to childhood trauma like abuse or neglect.
And dealing with victimisation ways you must then confront the anger, sadness, shame and fear that playing the victim protects and hides you from.
It is therefore recommended to seek support when dealing with facing your victim mentality. A trained and experienced counsellor or psychotherapist can create a prophylactic, not-judgemental space for you to explore why you deed a victim. CBT therapy, for example, can help you challenge your perspective on yourself, others, and the world, and find new ways of seeing and behaving.
Do you have a question about victim mentality? Ask below, we honey hearing from yous.
Andrea Blundell is the lead author of this site. With preparation in coaching and person centred therapy, she worked through the victim mentality herself, and knows it's a game changer.
Source: https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/victim-mentality.htm
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