The Light and Dark of Living Like a Victim

The Light and Dark of Living like Victim

Many people suffer abuse as children. Abuse can be acute, such as rape, physical beatings, death of a parent, surviving an earthquake or flood. Abuse can be chronic; living with an alcoholic or mentally ill parent, benign neglect (often of the wealthy or career driven), growing up in a war zone.  As children, you have to make any decision you can to stay alive, to survive both physically and emotionally. This can range from learning to become invisible, to becoming “loveable” so you do not attract any “unwanted” attention, to becoming violent yourself (kill or be killed) and a million other defensive variations in between. As a child, there is no blame or shame in choosing survival at any cost, with any behavior. However, if you choose to continue these behaviors as an adult, you pass on the legacy of dysfunction.  Choosing opposite behaviors, such as “I was beaten” so I will not beat my children or I was ignored so I will not ignore my children, “I feel horrible, so I will not feel” or “I will control my feelings,” is not enough. That is avoidance, not healing. At some point, as an adult, you can choose to heal, and break the ancestral and genetic (yes some of this behavior is handed down in DNA) chain of dysfunction, the repetitive patterns of victim and perpetrator, drunk and survivor, narcissist (alcoholic, emotional abuse) and abused audience etc. It is never too late to heal. As you heal yourself, it will reverberate and change the orbits of everyone, EVERYONE, connected to you genetically, or emotionally.  Change the orbit of an electron and the entire substance changes form. This is science. You are an electron. Change your orbit and change your world and all that touches your world.

Sadly, most people do not recognize victim behaviors. If you grow up the survivor of any kind of abuse or dysfunction and have never been in recovery work, meaning you have never learned or been taught or seen healthy emotional choices, all you know is victim responses. And to you, that is normal. And you never question normal, you just assume it.  You assume that hiding your emotions is normal; in fact you don’t even realize that you are hiding your emotions. Waking up is just the first step and many will not even do this in a lifetime. Waking up begins by acknowledging you do not like the quality of your life. It begins by actually starting to feel your feelings, for real, without trying to “get over” them, live with them, or constantly work on being positive (another opposite behavior that is avoidance, not recovery).

What does it look like to live like a victim? It is an attitude…..not an action.  Someone called me about taking care of her aging mom. I told her she was enabling and being a victim. She got mad and told me she was being a dutiful daughter. No I said. If you were being a dutiful daughter you would be relishing the opportunity to care for you mother, and taking good care of yourself while doing so which would ensure giving your mom the best care. Instead, I told her, you gave me a description of “poor me” suffering with exhaustion and despair while caring for your mother at your own emotional and physical expense. That is enabling—helping someone else in order to soothe your own feelings (say of guilt), or to control the other person (I am helping you, so you owe me)…. just to mention a few of the many internal scenarios that victims create for themselves. If you take care of your mother from a healthy place, while caring for yourself, you will not give into unhealthy boundary violation, you will not make rash decisions, you will not use your “helping” to subtly manipulate. Now you are the dutiful daughter, and can get a sense of joy and accomplishment from your choice.There are many many other "signs" and symptoms of living like a victim, too many to address here.

It is hard to stop being a victim. First of all, it is habit and you are used to it. Second, there are so many benefits to being a victim. It is easy to “get” friends as many reach out to help a victim. You do not have to be accountable for your actions. “Poor me, I did the best I could, gave all I could, and I am still”: a failure, not good enough, not appreciated…. on and on. You do not have to take responsibility for your decisions or actions or even worse, your feelings.  If you are a victim, everyone feels sorry for you and no one will question your actions or decisions as being dysfunctional, controlling or manipulative which is what victims do to everyone. After all, you learned to be a victim to control or manipulate an adult when you were a helpless child or when the world around you as a child went crazy (war, earthquake, etc)  If you are a victim, no one will ask you to do anything, or to step up, or get  honest. If you are a victim, you do not have to feel any other feelings than those of being a victim. You can bury your depression, your lack of self-esteem, your fear of failure, your anxiety.  If you are a victim, you are IN CONTROL. You can control how people react to you, keep them from attacking you (or your perceptions of being attacked), and best of all, make them do things for poor little ole’ abused neglected suffering overworked etc. you.  Ugh. No wonder it is so hard to give up this behavior.

What is the cost of being a victim? You use your considerable intelligence to constantly construct reality to portray you as a victim and actually at times lie (to yourself as well as others). “I cannot afford say: therapy, meditation, to eat healthy, join a gym because I don’t have enough money…. when in fact you instead bought a new car, or spent a fortune on jewelry or a vacation. A non-victim approach: I spent my money on:  say what it is:  and that is my choice over the gym, organic food or whatever.  People never get to know the real you as you have to keep your victim stories in place. Hard to expose you are doing well, or being happy, when you are busy keeping your victim realities (conscious or unconscious) in place. You will not be able to truly enjoy sex, joy, nostalgia, passion, or your own intelligence as your mind and attention is diverted to maintaining your victim persona and stories. This becomes such a habit you will no longer notice you are even when doing this. Your immune system will start to react. As a victim, immune diseases can develop: lupus, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue, IBS (this is not the only way these immune diseases manifest, just one way). After all, being sickly fits right into living your life and controlling others, as a victim. Your children learn the same behavior, after all, you model behavior for them; you are their teacher. No one can help you; after all, you are a victim. Poor you.

It helps to see the ugly side of something we usually want to see as pure and sad, like abandoned animals or children. And those are truly victims. However as an adult, once you move out of the victim circumstances that actually happened for real, but are no longer in your life, you have choices. You can choose to wake up, to learn new skills, new behaviors and therefore have the ability to make new and different choices.  Typically people wait until their life, or relationships, or health are falling apart before waking up.  Often people who meditate and cultivate Spiritually open themselves to enough Guidance to wake up without having to be in extreme pain or having to wait until their life is falling apart… again.

This is a blog—barely touching on the subject presented. Reading about this will not be the path to recovery; it might however unlock a door.  I have never seen anyone able to do this alone… learn new skills and new behaviors. One needs to be mentored and encouraged to have the courage to learn  to make and practice new choices. A Spiritual Teacher, therapy, counseling, support groups, along with reading and real work (writing, studying, actually practicing new behaviors) are needed. If this material struck a nerve, consider opening the door and not waiting for the pain or dysfunction in your life to become extreme.

Journey On.