Victim is a state of mind…
Victims believe that their feelings and their circumstances are all caused by something outside of themselves. They are ignorant to the fact that they are 100% responsible for how they feel. It should come as no surprise that victims have no interest in your life. They will blab on for hours about what so and so did to them without ever thinking that it might be appropriate to shut up and ask you about your own life, feelings, or struggles. When good things happen to you, it’s like a dagger in the victim’s heart. Success for you means jealousy and resentment for the victim, as they quickly dump their woes on you to divert attention away from your blessings. If you do not agree that they are victims, they will turn on you viciously. They will only reach out to you with charm or kindness when they want something from you. And you better give it to them to avoid incurring their wrath. They have no shame. They are desperate.
Victims believe that all negative feelings or events that happen to them are somebody else’s fault. They see their circumstances purely as a result of events acting upon them as opposed to causing the events themselves… unless it’s something good, of course. It is always what someone said or did. It may even be the whole world’s fault, as each and every one of us somehow owes the victim something. Whatever the cause, it is anything but themselves. Guess what? Victims are narcissists. The victim frame of mind and worldview is a narcissistic one.
Sure, there are real victims out there, but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about being a victim in your head. An actual victim is someone who is, say, randomly abducted, tortured and then killed. A fake victim is someone who thinks they are a victim because someone humbled them, or because of choices they themselves made. They somehow don’t believe that the consequences of their own actions are their fault. Yes, they actually think this way. A fake victim thinks they are a victim when they abuse someone and that person retaliates. A fake victim thinks they are victimized when friends and family give them some tough love by setting boundaries around their negativity and mental illness. They actually wonder why other people don’t want to be around them. They actually wonder why other people are freaked out by them.
I engaged in this sort of nonsense for years. Alcoholics and addicts can easily fall prey to such a childish and ignorant victim mentality. If an alcoholic or an addict thinks they are sober but still believes they are a victim, they are no better at all. Think Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. To recover, we must step out of the darkness and understand that we are not victims. Nothing outside of us makes us feel the way we do. Who we are, what we feel, what we do, and what happens to us are purely our own responsibility. My advice: Don’t be a victim. It’s unattractive.
God, teach me that I’m not a victim…