Anatomy of an emotional victim: changing victim consciousness to self-empowerment
March 24th, 2009 |
By Jennifer Lehr, MA, MFT
Click here to contact Jennifer and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
Sue and her husband Dave were talking in the morning before leaving for work. Dave mentioned that he had made dinner plans with a friend later that week. Sue immediately bristled. “You never make plans with me, everyone else is always first”, she hissed. Dave sighed. “Here we go again,” he thought to himself. He tried to reason with his wife, but she was already upset and angry. Dave got quiet and pulled back rather than get into a fight. Sue got angrier as she felt more and more abandoned. Dave said that he had to go and left for work. Later that evening when they were both home, there was a chill in the air. Neither of them brought up the morning’s fight. Eventually things went back to normal again, and although the dinner with the friend came and went, this dynamic between them would come up over and over again, causing distrust, resentment and fear, and over time eroding the bond between them.
Victim hood is a self-concept, a way of seeing ourselves. It is not the same as being a victim of real circumstances such as a natural disaster or a crime. We all know people who are emotional victims. Emotional victims look at the world through a lens of past injustices without seeing the link in all of the situations: themselves. It just happened to them; life treats them badly. “You can’t trust a man” rather than “I’ve never been able to pick a trustworthy man”. Because they believe that they are not responsible for what is happening in their lives, they feel entitled to act inappropriately towards the perceived offender. Some people create victim roles for themselves. Other people are pulled into a victim role by being in a dysfunctional relationship. We’ve all had times when we’ve engaged with somebody who reacted on occasion as an emotional victim, or felt that way ourselves. Moving from being an emotional victim to self-empowerment involves looking at, and taking responsibility for, our own patterns in relationships, or circumstances.
What is the payback of not taking responsibility for oneself? Why would someone ever rationalize and embrace their disempowerment? The reason is that being an emotional victim allows an avoidance of painful feelings such as shame. Often emotional victims have had difficult childhoods and are sensitized to feeling criticized, wronged, or “bad”. They easily feel unimportant or mistreated. Nobody wants to feel as if they are “bad”, unimportant or mistreated. Deep down, there is a little child in them that really does believe that they are bad, or that others don’t care about them. Emotional victims develop a habit of “explaining” why events happen to them, rather looking at their own role in the events of their lives. In avoiding their imaginary “badness” and the feelings associated with it, they are not able to be honest with themselves about the responsibility they have for their lives and the wrong they actually inflict upon others. They are caught up in believing that people are bad, rather than knowing that it is the behavior that is bad, not the person. Driven by an underlying and often unconscious fear of being wrong, they blame others for their problems and defend themselves as guiltless and innocent at all costs. As a result, emotional victims take little responsibility for their own behavior and the events in their lives.
The cost of being an emotional victim is high. It is painful to feel powerless over the events of one’s life and to feel continually wronged. The ensuing despair and anger is also painful, as well as the strained relationships that result. The price is relationships that do not function well, where the other person walks on eggshells and does not open up to vulnerability and intimacy.
Do you have a relationship with somebody who does not take responsibility for his or her own behavior? How is this impacting you? What “survival” techniques have you developed? It might be time to change them.
Are there ways that you do not take responsibility for yourself? What feelings might you be trying to avoid? Can you allow yourself to be imperfect, make mistakes and apologize? Can you acknowledge that each of us has an enormous amount of power to change our lives and that looking at ourselves is the first step?
©Copyright 2009 by Jennifer Lehr, MA, MFT All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jennifer and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile
11 comments so far
OMG I am this person! I constantly blame others for the things going on in my life and have it all boil down to they care for someone else more than they care about me. My life seems to have become one huge pity party but I am ready to make the changes that I need to make to stop the madness. Where do I even begin? I do not want to be a victim of my own warped thinking anymore!
Don’t you think that most of us form this type of image of ourselves from a very early age, some in part to get attention from other people?
I think most of us do this in the early part of marriage. Or when the kids are very young. Playing the victim is not right at all. I dont know if this is how every woman feels but most of my friends who have gone through parenting and marriage feel like a victim at some point in their relationships. I do think it is a way of getting or drawing attention. I think realising this trend early makes it easier to get over and get a grip of our lives.
Do victims of child abuse have this tendency. My wife is one and her victimisation of herself is affecting our lives very badly.
This sounds so much of what I go through. don’t get me wrong, my husband is wonderful and would do anything for me, but we always do things together. If I mention that a friend wants me to go shopping out of town with her, he often says, “are you sure you want to do that?” “I planned on going somewhere together.” Of if I have a meeting after work, he doesn’t like it because he wants me home with him in the evening, which is understandable… but when do I get time for me… My time with friends or just to have fun. I think he is insecure and wants to be included as I would to, but I feel guilty and tend to make execuses not to go when really I do.
Many of us have experienced wrongs as children. We often carry these wounds within ourselves as adults. This can cause insecurities and manifest as not knowing our own power. Unearthing and healing our past wounding can help us understand our feelings of being victimized and help us to change our way of experiencing.
I think I sometimes feel like Eliza. I can’t stand closed doors at work because I think it may have something to do with me.. If I make a mistake, I beat myself up over it and get mad at myself, then I think the people I work under may think I am incapable of doing things right. I know people make mistakes and I know I will too, but I guess I just want to be really good at what I do. This is just my way of thinking and I wonder if this thinking means it is a sign of this behavior.
Another excellent article, Jennifer. I look through a similar lens in my own therapy practice.
Very interesting piece here and it seems there may be many people who feel as if they are the victim. Whether it be from childhood tragedies, neglect,etc… I feel meditation, self help books and even therapy can help with a lot of this.
victim hood is a way to control others, so most of people uses it as a way to draw an attention. The problem is that such behavior dis-empowers you and if one constantly lives as a victim, he/she will always be dis-empowered.
Thank you for writing this article. I teach spiritual psychology and am a counselor. I gleaned some key perspectives from this article as I am just coming off of a group meeting in which I observed the destructive nature of the “victim consciousness” and I am trying to understand and assimilate the group dynamics of the meeting. After praying, reading, and writing my experience in last night’s meeting, my observations are as follows:
Taking the role of the victim in a group places that one above the perceived abuser.
The victim places blame places outside of the self.
The victim elevates oneself over the group and/or the accused.
The victim is a potential position of power and control.
Group members respond to the “victim consciousness” based on their own psychology and will either take a stand to defend the victim or not allow the victim to be a “victim consciousness.”
The “victim consciousness” in a group polarizes and fragments the groups into various camps.
The “victim consciousness” is a manipulative position in a group process.
The impact of the victim upon the group correlates with the health of the group.
The bottom line for me is that our social ills and the malaise of society are based upon the lack of knowing and believing who we really are–our divine self–our divine/spiritual anatomy. We each have a mission to accomplish in this life that no one else can accomplish. By accessing the power of our Higher Self through the Science of the Spoken Word and the violet flame, a spiritual flame that when invoked actually changes energy imprisoned and expressed in destructive behavior, we can change our circumstances in life. I have seen a transformation in my life and the lives of others by applying these simple spiritual tools.
Once again, thank you for sharing your insights.