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Not A Victim – Commentary

Hello, this is A.J. and welcome to the Not a Victim Commentary. This is a bit of a tough topic. It’s tough to explain and it goes very much against our modern media culture. In our modern media culture there has developed a kind of cult, a cult of the heroic victim, I’ll call it.

The idea is that people who are victims of some abuse, of some neglect and of some historical, terrible tragedy or something, that somehow they’re heroic simply because they’re victims. This cult of the heroic victim is often used by the victims to gain sympathy, not surprisingly when we hear someone has suffered some abuse or tragedy, we feel sympathetic to them. That’s normal. It’s nice and we should continue doing that.

However, in the media this is often amplified and exaggerated greatly. Great attention is given to the victim and the media often directly or indirectly implies, suggests that the victim is somehow noble or even moral, simply because they have suffered a tragedy or some kind of suffering. This has gone even further sometimes where victims then use this sympathy and attention in the media to intimidate or block other people that they don’t agree with, that they can shut down and stop discussions, disagreements and arguments using this thing about being a victim.

We see this on and on in the media. It’s a strong media programming in TV and movies, constantly showing us this noble victim myth, mythology.

I used to be a social worker. It was my first real job, real career. As a social worker I worked with abused kids in a youth shelter. These kids had been taken from their families because of abuse. I saw again and again that many of these children would accept or create or adopt a victim mentality. Oh, I’m a terrible victim, I was abused. By having this victim mentality they would then use this victim status as an excuse for failure.

The reason I’m doing badly in school is that I was abused and I’m a victim. The reason I’m addicted to drugs and using drugs is because I was abused and I’m a victim. The reason I’m a jerk and unfriendly and mean to people is because I’m a victim. The reason I’m sad and weak is because I’m a victim, etc. etc.

They would cling and hold onto this noble victim idea. They would use it in many ways to try to get what they wanted, to get sympathy and to explain all of their problems and failures. At first, when I was just starting as a social worker I believed it all and I was like yeah they are victims, it’s so sad. It’s terrible what’s happened to them and indeed that was true. However, because I was truly interested in helping them I wanted them to be happy and more successful to achieve what they wanted and have better lives.

Very quickly I figured out that this victim mentality was not helping them it was hurting them tremendously. That by using this victim idea as an excuse they were failing to take responsibility for their own lives. The truth is, they were not failing school because they were abused they were failing because they weren’t studying, they weren’t disciplined many reasons, all of them easily changeable by their behavior.

Whether or not their parent(s) had abused them didn’t matter. How did I know this?

Because I could see that some children did not have the victim mentality, they suffered just as much, but they still did well in school. They were still nice kind people. They were not addicted to drugs. They also had suffered and had been hurt and victimized, but they did not choose to identify themselves as victims. They didn’t say I’m a victim and that’s the reason everything in my life is bad, that’s why I do terrible things, I hurt myself and make stupid decisions, it’s because I’m a poor victim.

The people who had those beliefs were not happy, not successful and the ones who said no, I’m not a victim. It’s unfortunate what happened. It was very sad and difficult what happened with my family, but that’s not who I am. The victim mindset is very dangerous. It’s very dangerous and it’s almost encouraged by our media. The reason it’s dangerous is that it weakens you. It destroys your power.

It’s very seductive and tempting when we feel weak and vulnerable. When you’re feeling sad as you certainly do when something bad happens to you, then it’s very tempting and easy to say oh poor me, I’m a victim. I was a victim of someone else treating me badly or of this terrible luck or horrible thing and it may even be true, but by holding that identity, by identifying yourself as a victim and taking this mindset you destroy all your power, you just give it away it’s gone.

You’ll get some benefits, some sympathy from people and some attention, but you lose much more, which is your power. We have another story. You all probably know of Oprah Winfrey, she’s quite famous. She’s an American woman and a billionaire. You’ve probably heard this story. Many people tell the story of Oprah because it’s a good example. She was sexually abused as a child and physically abused. She had a horrible childhood, suffering tremendously, but she refused to think of herself as a victim.

She decided that she was in charge of her life. She said I am not a victim. Something bad happened to me, but that’s not who I am, I am still responsible for my life. I decide how I react to what happened to me. I decide the meaning of what happened to me. I decide what I’m going to do now and in the future. As a result of not thinking like a victim, but instead taking her own power, she became very successful.

She was first a reporter on the news. Then a news reader. Then she was a talk show host and eventually started her own production company and now she owns her own network. She has tons of money and is quite powerful, etc. She is certainly not a victim, even though she suffered tremendously as a child.

So it’s very important for us to realize this danger and the importance of avoiding it, because in small ways or big, we can all be tempted to think of ourselves as victims.

Most of us have not suffered horrible tragedy’s, like horrible abuse or something like that. Maybe a few have, whereas most have not. Yet we have all suffered in some way.

Let me give you another small example I see all the time. From dating… so many people out there were hurt by one of their partners, maybe an early girlfriend or boyfriend who left them, cheated on them or treated them badly or abused them. No doubt it was a sad situation. I’ve certainly had that type of experience in my past, we all have. Sadly, some people decide to use that bad experience and decide that they are now a victim.

They’re a victim of women, of men or of that particular person and by doing it, what they do then is focus their energy on the terrible thing that happened or the bad things that happened in that relationship or the bad things that person did and they just keep focusing on it. As they do they use it to get sympathy, poor me, look what they did and they remember all the terrible things that other person did, but as they’re doing that and getting some sympathy from that, they’re also taking away their own power and responsibility, because what they’re saying is it’s not my fault I didn’t do anything. None of it was my fault it was all them.

That makes you weak. Then sadly what happens with people like this, usually, is that they then get into another relationship and the same pattern repeats again and they become a victim again and again. I saw this again as a social worker when I volunteered at a shelter for abused women for a while. This was such a common pattern, because most of the women had been abused several times, not just by one boyfriend by almost every guy they dated.

At that point then you think, are they really a victim, because they’re choosing these guys again and again and everyone can see it’s obvious the kinds of guys they’re choosing are not good guys, but they keep doing it and they keep telling themselves poor me, I’m such a victim because these guys are always treating me badly. That was absolutely true, but on the other hand, by focusing on the blame and the bad stuff other people were doing, what they didn’t do was to focus on their own mistakes.

You have to always search for your own responsibility, so let’s talk now about what you can do, the positive things you can do. Whenever a tragedy happens, when something painful happens, the first thought is always why me this is terrible and that’s fine, it’s going to happen you’ll think that. Then probably your next thought is to blame something or somebody, blame the world, blame the economy or the other person and maybe indeed the other person was bad to you. Maybe they did do something bad, but very quickly you have to move on to the next stage, which is to search for your own responsibility.

You have to be brutally honest with yourself and very persistent about this in finding out how you’re responsible. Almost always, except in crazy accidents, you were responsible in some way. We can use the abusive relationship example. Those women chose those men. They ignored warning signs. Usually those women, the guy didn’t just start beating them terribly the very first time he started by saying mean things to them and then started being more and more controlling. How was the woman responsible for that?

Well, she chose to keep seeing him despite all those terrible things.

Does it mean the guy isn’t responsible also? Of course he is, but that doesn’t help the woman to blame him. It doesn’t help the woman to think about him. It’s the same thing if you have a relationship that fails and breaks up. Of course you probably, in most cases, you both did things that were bad but it doesn’t help you to focus on the other person’s problems that their job let them do that.

What gives you the most power and what will help you the most in life is to focus on your responsibility and just pretend, imagine and play a game with yourself psychologically that you in fact, were 100% responsible and start looking for all the mistakes you made, which means bad choices or maybe it just means you didn’t have certain abilities or skills, but now you can get those skills.

Maybe something terrible did happen to you, even just a total accident. You can’t control that, but you have control over your choices afterwards. Will you choose to blame or take responsibility and make good decisions now? You can also change the meaning of events. See things happen and then we decide what they mean. That’s a choice, so for example, abusive parents. Obviously a kid has no choice in that. If their parents are hitting them they have no choice there’s nothing they can do about that, but what they can do when they get older is to decide the meaning of that.

Some people decide the meaning of that is that I’m worthless and therefore, I’m going to take drugs and not care about my life. But other people decide, my parents treated me badly that means I have to be a good person, I’m not going to become like them, so they decide the meaning is different and because of the decision about the meaning than their lives are completely different. Oprah decided the meaning was she was going to be different she was going to help people in life.

She was going to use that experience to understand other people’s suffering and that’s exactly what she did. So we can’t always control events but we can always control what they mean to us afterwards and therefore, what we will do afterwards and how we will react.

Here’s what I would like you to do this month.

Find some area in your life, I know you have one because we all do, where you have been playing a victim a little bit, where you have told yourself poor me, I’m a victim. It could be anything. It might be some past relationship that didn’t work out where the other person wasn’t very nice or it could be something involving your health. It might be something with your job or career. It might be something with your family. It might go back far into the past with your parents. It might be some accident that happened, it could be anything I don’t know, you know.

It might not be big even it may be quite small, but be honest with yourself. Be tough and honest when deciding. Pick that thing that you have been playing a victim at and then really examine the event, what happened and your feelings of being a victim. Decide that you’re going to change the meaning of that event, that no longer does it mean you were a victim. Choose a more powerful meaning.

Maybe it means that you need to make better decisions. Maybe it means you need to be more careful with certain kinds of people. Maybe it means you need to be tougher with people if they’re treating you badly. Maybe it means you need to react more powerfully when bad things happen. I don’t know, but search and search for your own responsibility, this is the hardest part. When something bad happens to us and we didn’t want it it’s really hard to say, maybe I caused this a little bit or maybe I contributed to this a little bit because I made bad decisions or I wasn’t aware or I didn’t have good skills.

Maybe I was too weak whatever it is, but try to find some of your own responsibility because the good news is when you’re responsible then you can change it. If you aren’t responsible and you’re just a victim than you’re totally powerless and you can’t do anything. You’re stuck. That’s why victim-hood is so horrible and that’s why people who go around thinking of themselves as victims usually have terrible lives. They’re usually unhappy, unsuccessful often have addictions, drug addictions and alcohol.

It’s not pretty. I saw this so many times in social work with adults, with kids again and again. It’s probably the reason I finally left social work, because I found it so depressing and so hard to change the victim mentality or to help people change it. This is why I’m passionate about this topic, even though it’s a complex topic and difficult to communicate, it’s powerful. It can be powerful in a very negative way if you decide to make yourself a victim and to think that way, even in a small way.

It can also be very powerful when you decide not to do that, when you decide to take responsibility for everything in your own life, even the terrible stuff, even the stuff you didn’t really do. It seems crazy, but that’s the path of power. It’s not an easy path, but it’s the path of feeling more powerful, more confident and long-term, having a more successful life.

So good luck to you. It’s a complex topic this month. It’s not easy, but give it a try. Find the area in your life where you’ve been playing the victim and take responsibility.

Change the meaning and make some better decisions. See you next time. Bye-bye.