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Do you feel as if your failures are due to other people holding you back? You think it’s unfair because other people are always sabotaging your happiness, and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.
Sometimes life isn’t fair, and it sucks. Sometimes, you genuinely are a victim of injustice, and it’s painful. With that said, sometimes it’s not about other people at all, nor is it because you’re unlucky. You’re a victim because, on one level or another, you want to be.
Now I know you’re going to get defensive. “Daniel, it’s true! I am a victim. Stop taking the high road!” I’m not denying that. Perhaps you are a victim of injustice, abuse, prejudice, racism, or any of the many things that people can be victims of.
But before you bite my face off, maybe this reaction is exactly why you are still a victim. This is what we are addressing: the mindset that makes you stay a victim. We all are victims at times, some people worse than others, but if it has been years and you’re still the victim, you’re kidding yourself.
There’s a fine line between being a victim of a circumstance and victimizing yourself. If you’re a victim of circumstance sometimes, do your best to heal, let it go, and move on. If you’re always the victim, like it’s a perpetual life condition, then you may be distorting the situation to see it in a negative light. This will create bigger problems that we’ll get into later.
If you want to take your power back, it starts by taking responsibility for your life experience and overcoming the victim mentality that gets the best of so many of us.
Why the Victim Mentality Needs to Go
There’s a difference between being a victim and always being the victim. You will be a victim sometimes. Things may happen that were not asked for and certainly not deserved. When this happens, you need to acknowledge it but also be careful not to hold onto it.
The victim mentality is a limiting belief system where you believe that you have no power over what happens in your life. You feel like you’re always the victim of your circumstances when this is far from the truth, but it’s also not good for you because:
- Believing you are at the mercy of the world strips you of your sense of control
- You become increasingly disempowered
- You get trapped in states of bitterness or resentment and fail to move on
People victimize themselves because it’s the easier option. Think about it. Is it easier to take responsibility for your circumstances and believe that your decisions led you into this difficult situation, or to believe that you’re completely innocent and wash your hands?
Now, I’m not saying that you should always be responsible, because sometimes you truly are an unfortunate soul who didn’t deserve what happened. But your mentality plays a critical role in your sense of empowerment, and what you believe about the situation is in your control.
People who victimize themselves tend to blame external factors for their decisions. They shy away from responsibility under the guise that it’s never their fault. No matter what the problem is, it’s someone else’s fault, therefore, someone else must fix it.
But nobody else ever fixes it, leaving the person in a negative cycle where they believe someone else must be their saviour – becoming resentful and bitter because nobody comes to fix their problem.
When you have the victim mentality, you are always pointing the finger and believe that your life is the consequence of other people’s actions. This frame of mind will never push you to create a life that you truly want, and as long as you hold onto this mentality, nothing will ever change.
How Do You Develop a Victim Mentality?
For most of my life, I’ve been a victim. I had a difficult life growing up, people were generally cruel to me, and everyone took advantage of me.
This is one frame of mind I can be in, and to an extent, it’s true. But there’s another side to this story, of all the people who cared for me, of all the things that went well. On the one hand, I’m a very fortunate person.
The same objective reality can become two very different stories. One where I’m privileged, one where I’m victimized. The funny thing is that it’s not the objective reality that determines the story, it’s my interpretation of it.
Like everyone, I had my share of issues growing up. I let these disadvantages define me and blamed everything on them, whether they were related or not. I didn’t know how to be happy, so the best thing I could do was defer blame.
It’s much easier not to feel responsible for your failures.
So I blamed the world because I was born into the life I was. I blamed my teachers for not teaching me well. I blamed my parents for not doing a better job of raising me. My failures in life was always someone else’s fault. But surprise surprise, nothing ever changed. I remained as a helpless victim, and my life certainly didn’t improve.
It wasn’t until I had some major experiences that rattled my life that I realized my downfall. It wasn’t other people, it was me.
Personal accountability is crucial for the personal growth process. If you don’t acknowledge that you have a problem, then your life will never change. This is why the victim mentality is so dangerous because it strips you of power, which hinders your personal growth.
Victimizing Yourself Leads to Disempowerment
The term victim has become so overused nowadays that many people use it colloquially. There are times when it’s okay to feel victimized because sometimes we are victims.
This feeling helps us know when we’ve been treated poorly, allows us to recognize injustice, and tells us when to stand up for ourselves. But you shouldn’t let this feeling take control of your life because it generally makes you unhappier.
The victim mentality is a limiting belief system because it prevents you from taking control of your life. Self-victimization occurs when you hold onto the idea that you’re always a victim. It’s a low vibrational outlet that resonates with things like scarcity and misery.
When you believe that you are a victim, you can bet that you’re going to attract more negativity into your life due to your beliefs, resulting in poor conduct with the world around you. Because you feel like a victim, you perceive more situations where you are the victim. Because of these perceptions, you feel like more of a victim, and around you go.
People who have a victim mentality don’t learn from their lessons. They’re eager to defer blame on other people instead of looking at what they did to create the situation (or the circumstances for the situation to occur).
This means that people with a victim mentality often don’t reflect. They’ll believe that there was nothing they could do, learn from, or improve upon. Of course, it is not good to beat yourself up for everything that happens to you. Blaming yourself for being born isn’t the way to go either, but there is always something that can be learned from each situation.
Realizing this and seeking learning and growth for each unfortunate circumstance is your ticket out of self-victimization. This is why it’s crucial to work on this mentality so that you empower yourself to create a better life experience for yourself.
How to Tell if You’re Victimizing Yourself
- You’re overdramatizing situations or circumstances
- You may be oversensitive or drum up small issues or misunderstandings to be big deals
- You refuse to take accountability for any wrongdoing
- You believe that everything is outside of your control
- You tend to swap between blame and self-pity
- You like to feel sorry for yourself
- You’re always looking for sympathy or compassion
- You’re self-absorbed and often don’t see other people’s problems
- You avoid working on your difficulties or looking for a solution
- You feel like you’re constantly being taken advantage of
- You regularly feel powerless and don’t take action
Practical Steps for Self-Empowerment
Self-empowerment is the antidote to victimhood, but how do you empower yourself when trapped in this state? Feeling accountable for your own life and the events within it is a big step in the right direction. It’s easy to point the finger, but that doesn’t get you anywhere, does it?
The more aware you become when you’re slipping into the victim mentality, the more you can reinforce healthier actions and behaviors to take your power back. Here’s what you can do to stop victimizing yourself and reclaim your sense of power.
Think Critically About the Situation
If you have the victim mentality, you’re probably going to spin everything in a way that puts you down. If you get into an argument, you might think that you’re being treated unfairly, while there could be a good reason for it.
Likewise, if you’re left out of something, you might think that it’s because nobody likes you, whereas it could be for a genuine reason. This can be tricky because someone with the victimhood mentality will justify these feelings of being mistreated and may think that it’s their fault.
That’s why it’s important to think critically. Try to discern whether something is a real issue where action needs to be taken or whether you’re distorting the situation to suit your narrative.
Identify Why You’re Playing the Victim
What are you looking for? Chances are you want compassion and understanding, which is completely reasonable. Life has been difficult for you, but nobody seems to acknowledge just how hard you have it.
Let me be honest with you. Maybe they should. Maybe the world would be a little kinder if we saw what other people were going through and took the incentive to truly acknowledge them. But you know what?
It’s probably not going to happen.
Most people are so caught up in their worlds that they don’t open their eyes to others. But you can’t expect them to see what you’re going through because, let’s be honest here, you probably don’t truly see their struggles either.
So, instead of making this a game of finding a way to feel acknowledged and heard for the wrongdoings that have been done to you, realize that you’re probably not going to get it. Seeking sympathy is just going to make you more resentful, so you need to show self-compassion instead and work at letting it go.
Life Isn’t Fair, Don’t Take It Personally
There are two types of people. People who blame others when things aren’t fair and those who get on with it.
The fact is that life is not fair.
Things are going to happen to you that are out of your control, and sometimes life will suck. But what good does it do playing the victim? Who benefits from blaming and hoping the situation would be different?
The sooner you accept this truth, the better off you’ll be. Life isn’t fair. If you want to take the road less traveled here, you need to acknowledge that you might just be unlucky. If you’re blaming others, it’s not going to lead to anything good. It’s your karma that causes those uncontrollable circumstances. So, accept it and move on.
Take Responsibility for Everything That Happens in Your Life
If you want to empower yourself by getting out of the victim mentality, you need to start taking responsibility for everything.
This means that you need to even take responsibility for things that aren’t your fault, objectively, because they’re affecting your life, and you’re allowing yourself to be affected.
Shifting blame to responsibility is one thing that will make a major difference in your life. When you feel responsible for everything that happens, then you can start making better decisions that lead you down a better road.
Reframe the Narrative to See It in a Different Light
To break out of the victim mentality, you need to take accountability for everything that happens in your life. You see that people are caught in their programs, so instead of taking things personally, you realize that it’s from their narrative and not yours.
When you’re unfairly treated or hurt, you go inward instead of reacting. You observe and think about what action comes from your highest self rather than acting from emotion and impulse.
Ultimately, you have a mentality that what happens is supposed to happen. If you were robbed, it was part of your life story. If you end up in a narcissistic relationship, you realize that you made a mistake by trusting the wrong person.
Therefore, being empowered means that you learn from your lessons. If something goes wrong, you think about how it could be avoided next time. If you are taken advantage of, you think about why that happened and what you could do to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
Learn to Assert Healthy Boundaries
You need to have boundaries in life. It’s not okay when people push their will onto you or blame you for their failings. As someone who is seeking to be more secure in yourself, you need to get the message through to people when they are crossing a line.
This can feel daunting at first, but the more you start drawing and affirming boundaries, the easier it will be to see when someone is crossing a line or if you’re just perceiving them too. Think of it this way. How will people know when they’re crossing a line if there isn’t a line?
The more you assert your boundaries and prevent people from crossing them, the quicker you’re going to feel empowered by drawing boundaries and asserting yourself
Start Being Grateful for What Goes Right
One of the best ways to counter the victimhood mentality is to cultivate gratitude for your life. Gratitude is the ultimate trump card for the victim mentality because you cannot be a victim while you’re feeling grateful. They’re opposites of vibration.
As the victimhood mentality is associated with scarcity, learning to be grateful for the little things will help you see things in a new light.