Are You Ready to Stop Being a Victim?

A victim, according to Webster’s dictionary, is a person who has been attacked, injured, robbed, killed, cheated, or fooled by someone else, or harmed by an unpleasant event. Everyone gets attacked, injured, cheated, fooled, and harmed during their life — if not physically, then emotionally. And everyone gets harmed by unpleasant events. We’re all victims, in moments, to life’s challenges and difficulties — life’s lifeness.

It’s psychologically healthy to acknowledge the suffering and feelings of powerlessness that accompany such experiences. And yet, there are those people who feel like victims all the time, regardless of their circumstances. Those with a victim mentality are always being victimized, at least in their own mind. They maintain a consistent victim identity and see life through perpetually victim-tinted glasses.

We all know people who seem to be constantly commenting on some injustice done to them — how others are denying them what they need, want, and deserve, controlling them against their will, and making them do what they don’t want to do. Or how life is against them and the universe is designed to punish them, personally. Perhaps you yourself are someone who experiences life this way.

Neither feeling like a victim of life, or loving someone who’s convinced they’re the victim of life, is easy. Both are painful. Consider these cases in point:

Case 1

Mary and her husband, Phil, are leaving on vacation. Mary has done all the booking but has asked Phil to confirm the taxi pickup time. The morning they’re scheduled to leave, Phil (who knows the flight time) nonchalantly mentions that the car is confirmed for a time that's too late to assure making the flight. Mary asks Phil if he corrected the time, to which he responds that she must have booked it at the too-late time, because it’s what the company had in their log.

Mary is frustrated, confused, and angry. In response, she decides to do nothing about the car pickup time and instead opts to stew in rage and fury at her husband. She spends the remaining three hours before the car comes constructing a victim narrative in which Phil is controlling her and stealing the vacation she booked, earned, and deserved. As she sees it, Phil’s decision to not change the car renders her powerless to get what she wants. She decides to take the chance to keep the pickup time as is, potentially missing her flight and giving up her vacation — all this to hold true to her victim identity and prove that her husband is out to destroy her happiness. 

Case 2

Peter’s narrative is that he’s always being controlled by others' demands, and that his life is never his to decide. One recent morning, his adult daughter expressed feeling cold in the house (while wearing a t-shirt), and asked Peter if he knew of any way to raise the heat, because it appeared to not be working. This sent Peter into full victim mentality and its accompanying rage. He was certain that he was being intentionally controlled by his daughter, and also that he now had to spend the day figuring out how to fix the heating system so that she would not have to feel uncomfortable. He was convinced that if he didn't immediately attend to her problem, he would be punished and blamed and held responsible for her unhappiness. He was, as he saw it, a victim to her needs with no say over his own life. Just the previous day, he had fought with this same daughter about his having had to clean her room, because she wasn't doing it herself, and the fact that she was ungrateful. She responded that she didn't care if her room was clean: That's why she wasn't doing it, and that if he was doing it, he was doing it for himself. Peter screamed back, "I have to do everything for everyone in this house, and everyone else gets to do what they want to do."

Case 3

Lisa has not had a day off work in a month, in part because of her own choice and in part because of the company’s busy season. When her much-awaited day off finally comes, she awakens to the pitter-pat of rain on her roof. Lisa spends the first two hours of her first free day in a month torturing herself with thoughts about how God is always punishing her, and the universe is against her. All she wanted was to lay outside on a blanket. Was that too much to ask? Obviously. 

What's Missing

For Mary, our friend about to miss her flight, victim mentality stems from an inability or unwillingness to take ownership of her own wants and needs. Regardless of the poor choice her husband made, Mary wanted to catch the plane. She wanted to feel relaxed on her way to the airport. She wanted a vacation. She also wanted a husband who would make sure the time of pickup took care of her wants. Three of these four wants were possible; one was not. But instead of taking charge of getting what she wanted, which would have been as simple as picking up the phone and changing the pickup time, she used her energy to fight (in her own mind) with her husband about why he was doing this to her, and why he was taking away her vacation. 

In the case of Peter, who has to drop everything to correct his adult daughter’s chill and clean her room because she won't do it for herself, victim mentality is caused by a sense of powerlessness unrelated to the situation at hand. Someone like Peter starts off feeling powerless and then projects that onto the other, who becomes the one intentionally disempowering him. He lacks the ability to tolerate his daughter’s discomfort without feeling responsible for fixing it. What’s absent, too, is an awareness or curiosity about the root of his real powerlessness, the powerlessness that’s already there before he creates the story of who’s controlling him at the moment. And, similar to Mary, he’s missing an ability to respect and take responsibility for his own needs and wants, which include not wanting to spend the day fixing the furnace.

In the case of Lisa, her victim mentality is a kind of negative narcissism — that is, she has a belief that the universe (and other people’s behavior) revolve around her. Everything happens for, against (mostly against), and in relation to her. And she simultaneously thinks that God, and other people, share a primary intention to punish her.  

How to Break Free from Victim Mentality

1. Take ownership and responsibility for your own needs and wants. Determine what you want and what’s important to you. Name it, and do what you need to do to make it happen — for yourself. Don’t waste time blaming or getting angry at those who don’t want or need the same things you do, don’t wait for them to come on board or help you get what you want. Get busy taking care of what’s important to you, and leave the others out of it.

2. Practice saying “No.” If you don’t want to do something and don’t (realistically) have to do it, don’t do it. Remember that you are allowed to have needs, just like other people.

3. Stop blaming. When you hear yourself going into blame stories, whether against other people, the world, life, whomever... say “stop” to yourself out loud, and actually turn your attention away from your blaming thoughts.

4. Become aware of the root of your sense of powerlessness. Before you construct the next narrative on who’s stealing your power, get curious about the underlying feelings of powerlessness that precede all situations.

5. Be kind to yourself. When you’re blaming the universe and life for your suffering, you’re not actually attending to your suffering or helping yourself feel better. By claiming the victim role, you are intensifying your pain. With victim identity in play, you’re not only suffering because of whatever happened, you’ve now added to that suffering the fact that you don’t get what others get, because you’re cursed, life and everyone in it is out to get you, and basically the universe hates you. (Feel better?)

6. Turn your focus to helping others. When you’re in victim mentality, the whole world is about you and your pain. Acknowledge your suffering with kindness, and then consider how you can help another being. As counterintuitive as it may be, the more you feel deprived, you more you need to give. Offering kindness is the surest antidote to “Poor me.” 

7. Practice gratitude. Victim mentality focuses you on your suffering, specifically what you’re not getting. Try flipping your perspective and focusing on something that matters to you, that you do enjoy, and that you do "get." Shift your attention from what you’re missing to what you have.

8. Write a list of the ways you can change the bad situation. When you feel like a victim, you convince yourself that there’s nothing you can do to change your circumstances, but that’s almost never true. Get busy with how you can try and improve the situation, even if it feels impossible.

9. Practice empathic listening. When listening to other people, try listening with the intention of feeling what they’re saying from inside their heart. Stop focusing on what you need to do about what they're saying, what you think about what they’re saying, or anything else that has to do with you. Listen as if you were just ears hearing, without putting yourself in the way.

10. Practice forgiveness. When you play the victim role, you’re deciding to hold onto bitterness and anger and the certainty that you’ve been wronged — often without even investigating what the other's intention may have been. Instead of poisoning your own experience with resentful thoughts, try practicing compassion and understanding for the other. Start a new habit: make dropping resentment and trying out forgiveness a daily practice! 

There's nothing good about living as a victim, or with a victim, but with awareness, a desire to change, and new habits, you can outgrow the mentality. A life lived with gratitude and kindness is far better than one of resentment and bitterness at the short end of the universe's stick. Empowerment and self-command are available to everyone, and with a new attitude and new behaviors, they're yours for the taking. The first step is simply to decide that you're ready to stop being a victim. Are you?

Copyright 2018 Nancy Colier

When We Need an Apology But Are Never Going to Get One

Why is it so hard for some people to say "I’m sorry"? It’s remarkable how difficult these two simple words can be to say out loud. I’ve been gifted with my share of never-sorry people over the years. I say gifted, because not getting the "I'm sorry" I’ve craved and (I thought) deserved has forced me to investigate the psychology of apologies, as well as my own relationship with apologies and the absence of them.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why some people refuse to say I’m sorry even when they know they’ve done something that caused harm, and even when the offense is small and seemingly not a big deal to take responsibility for. Recently, I was confronted with a friend who refused to say she was sorry for having misplaced an object she borrowed. It wasn’t there when I needed it, so what? A simple "I’m sorry" would have put the whole thing to bed in the number of seconds it took to say those two words. But those two words were never going to happen, and I, in my less-evolved incarnation, kept at it until I was exasperated, angry, and demanding an apology for something I didn’t really care about. 

Boiled down, to say I’m sorry is to say that I did something wrong. For some people, admitting that they did something wrong is not possible, even when they know it was wrong, and even when they feel bad about doing what they did. It’s odd to witness, but this never-sorry person can actually be sorry and still refuse to utter the two words that would both acknowledge their remorse and right their wrong. 

To be able to admit that we’ve done something wrong requires a certain level of self-esteem or ego strength. People who are deeply insecure can find it challenging to say I’m sorry in part because a single mistake has the power to obliterate their entire self-worth. The idea that they could make a mistake and still be a valuable and good person is unthinkable for someone whose self-esteem is severely lacking. An apology is an admission of fallibility, which can trigger the vast reservoir of inadequacy and shame they carry, and thus threaten the fragile narrative they’ve constructed about themselves. For a person with a damaged sense of self-worth, acknowledging error can be tantamount to annihilation.

So, too, there’s the person who was blamed relentlessly as a child, who from a young age was told they were responsible for every problem that arose and punished accordingly. As adults, such people tend to go in one of two directions. Either they apologize for everything, even things they haven’t done, or they refuse to apologize for anything, even things they have done. For those that end up the latter, they decide, consciously or unconsciously, that they will never again accept blame of any kind. They’ve closed the door to anything that holds a whiff of it. For this sort of person, saying I’m sorry puts them in touch with the feelings attached to their early experience of being deemed inescapably guilty and bad. Having been unfairly and indiscriminately held responsible for everything wrong, there simply isn't any psychic space left for responsibility, even when it’s appropriate.     

And then there are those who refuse to say I’m sorry, because they lack empathy and don’t actually feel sorry that you were hurt by their actions. They believe that an apology is only appropriate for situations in which they purposefully caused you harm. There’s no sorry deserved or indicated when the pain you felt was not intentionally caused, and thus not technically their fault. Your hurt, in and of itself, has no particular value.

I’ve touched on only three aspects of the never-sorry individual, but there are many more reasons why some people cannot or will not offer those two important words to another human being. To be able to say we’re sorry is to be able to be vulnerable, which is too scary, sad, dangerous, or any one of an infinite number of too's for some people. To say I’m sorry is also to acknowledge that I care about how you feel, care that you were hurt. I care enough about you, in fact, to be willing to put my ego aside, stop defending my version of myself for long enough to hear your experience at this moment. I care enough about you to be willing to admit that I’m imperfect.

To receive a sincere apology is an incredible gift. We feel heard and acknowledged, understood and valued. Almost any hurt can be helped with a genuine, heartfelt I’m sorry. When another person looks us in the eye and tells us that they’re sorry for something they did that caused us harm, we feel loved and valued; we feel that we matter. 

When someone apologizes to us, we also feel validated and justified for being upset. The apologizer is taking responsibility at some level for the result of their actions, intended or not. And when that happens, our insides relax; we don’t have to fight anymore to prove that our experience is valid, that we are entitled to our hurt and that it matters.

I recently told a dear friend about something she was doing that, for me, was damaging the friendship and making me not want to spend time with her. I was nervous to tell her given that I’ve been around more than my fair share of never-sorry people, who react to hearing anything negative about themselves by attacking the one bringing it. But this friendship is important to me, and I couldn’t just let it go; I needed to express what wasn’t working. I had to take the chance that telling her my truth, kindly, might lead us to a better place. 

What happened was deeply healing. I told her my truth, how her behavior was painful for me. She listened, and then she said something amazing; she said I’m sorry. She was sorry she had caused this hurt, even if it was unintentional, even if she didn’t know it was happening. She went on to say many other love-infused things, but she didn’t need to, she had me at I’m sorry.

This is not an essay on how to make the never-sorry person say sorry. For the most part, I’ve failed at that task so far in my life (I'm sorry to say). What I've gotten better at, however, is accepting the things I cannot change and putting less energy into the fight for an apology from someone who doesn’t have the capacity to offer it. And I’ve gotten better at honoring my craving for an apology when it arises and providing myself with the kindness and legitimization I’m seeking. The more I practice awareness in the absence of apology, the less I need the apology to validate what I know to be true. 

When hurt by another, our bodies are hardwired to need an I’m sorry in order to relax, move forward, and let go of the hurt. But sometimes when we can’t get the I’m sorry we think we need, we have to learn to relax on our own, without the other’s help. Trusting and knowing that our pain is deserving of kindness, because it is, and that our truth is justified and valid, because it’s our truth, is the beginning of our independent healing process.     

In this season of giving, receiving, and gratitude, consider the profound value of a simple and sincere I’m sorry. When you’re lucky enough to receive a genuine apology, take it in, feel the majesty of what this other person is offering, receive their willingness to be vulnerable and accountable, to take care of you instead of their own ego. That’s big stuff. So, too, when you recognize an opportunity to say I’m sorry and mean it, relish the chance to give that experience to another, to step up and perhaps out of your comfort zone, to let go of your me story and be generous. And when you can, honor the profundity of the gift you’re giving. I’m sorry and thank you are really two sides of the same coin.