alone... please read: Examining Victim Mentality

[lighter]

lighter
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     alone, please read: Exploring Victim Mentality
« on: June 07, 2008, 09:38:46 AM »     

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Here's the first thing I pulled up, easy to read, short.

::nod::

I'm starting with that.





Victim Mentality
By Barbara Baker
 
   
How would you answer this question: I am out of my abuse and have moved on with my life. There is something that I have been wondering about. How and when does the abuse stop playing a significant part of my life? I have seen others who have moved on and I would like to know how they did it.

The woman who asked this, asked a valid question. There are many men, women and children who no longer are victims, but feel like they cannot leave it behind. It stays as much a part of themselves as it did while they were being abused. The only difference may be there is no physical or emotional abuse happening in their worlds.

What is victim mentality?
A victim mentality is one where you blame everyone else for what happens in your world. (Another definition not as commonly used is one that says a person thinks the future only holds bad things for them.) If you do not get the promotion it is because Mr. Johnson was out to get you. Not because he found you playing on the Internet every day. Your best friend called and said she could not have dinner with you. She is always doing that to you; not showing. You'll show her. You won't invite her when you go out again! Instead of remembering she has just started school and you did call her at the last minute. Victim mentality.

Recently I spoke with someone who no longer lives with a victim mentality. She has gone on with her life and is free from some of the extra baggage that come with being a victim. We discussed forgiving our abusers and how in that process you also need to forgive yourself. With that came loosing the victim mentality.

When she was living under the victim mentality she found herself angrier. She found herself swirling in a sea of resentment towards her abuser. She stayed locked in that cycle and never seemed to move forward. If she got sick, she became angry at him. If the kids messed up, she became angry at him. He was no longer in the picture, but it was all his fault. It was not hers; he made things this way... Life is easier when you can play the blame game. The blame game makes it easy for your life not to move forward or for you to grow.

The day came when she tired of the mentality. She wasn't a victim anymore and the time had come for her to move beyond the victim mentality. I asked her how she stopped the self destructive cycle. The first thing she did is something many abuse victims may have a hard time doing. She forgave her abuser. She did not say that she forgave him for breaking her ribs, she acknowledged that he had a problem and that he needed to get help. Wishing him ill will kept him in her mind more then he should have been. By acknowledging that he had hurt her, that he did have a problem, she was able to feel some relief. There was more though. As important as forgiving him was, she needed to forgive herself too. She needed to forgive herself for exposing the kids to the abuse. She needed to forgive herself for not reporting him to the police all the times he had hurt her. She needed to forgive herself for being afraid. She needed to forgive herself for not having walked away all the times she could have. She needed to forgive herself..

She did all those things so she could mentally move forward. Forgiving herself allowed her to get past some of the more intense things she had experienced. The physical bruises had all gone away. The emotional had stayed. It had clung to her and kept the victim mentality alive.

Next week we will go into Part 2 Two on victim mentality. We will talk about moving into a non victim mentality. Something to think on until then:

The average child receives 432 negative comments per day versus 32 positive ones.
The average child in America receives only 12.5 minutes per day in communications with their parents/caretakers. Of that time 8.5 minutes are spent correcting, criticizing or arguing, leaving a whopping 4 minutes per day for the instruction of values, morals, ethics, attitude and self esteem. You were once this child. You also lived a life of abuse, so where do you stand?


Author's Bio



I live in Las Vegas with my husband and two labs, ATOM and Eve. I have 4 children and 8 grandchildren. I am the President of TEAMCares Inc. an online organization that provides support and advocacy for victims of abuse.

 

 
 
 
   
 
« Last Edit: June 07, 2008, 12:11:10 PM by lighter »  Report to moderator    67.33.160.35 
 
 
 
lighter
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     Re: Exploring Victim Mentality
« Reply #1 on: June 07, 2008, 09:40:32 AM »     

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Victim Mentality - Part 2
By Barbara Baker
 
 
 
In a previous article I talked about survivors who are unable to move on with their lives and/or having the attitude that everything that is wrong in their life is the result of another person. In that article it was discussed about how important forgiving yourself is so you can move on.

So where do you start? How can you find out if you are someone who has victim mentality? The first step is to listen to yourself. Are you blaming others in your life for all the distress in it? Are you not accepting responsibility for your actions? Are you giving some other person the power (by blaming them you are giving them the power) to have control once again in your life? Do you look at life as being unfair to you and that everyone else gets the breaks? Have you forgiven yourself? I mean REALLY forgiven yourself? Have you told yourself that was it was OK to be afraid, to not have gotten out sooner? To have fallen out of love with the abuser? Have you forgiven yourself for keeping the kids in that nightmare for so long? These things are just a start. If you have forgiven yourself you have lifted a heavy weight from your shoulders. That weight which is called victim mentality...

Have you decided to get back the power that is rightfully yours? Try this scenario: Jane calls Heidi a lot. Heidi always seems to be in the middle of 50 things when she calls, but stops to talk. After Heidi hangs up with Jane she becomes miffed at Jane. Jane always calls at the wrong time, Jane is inconsiderate, Jane is a rude old Bi**h. In order to rise above the victim mentality, Heidi is given a choice. A choice to stay in the victim mentality or use the power she has to take back control of her life. So how do we move away from the mentality? It took a long time to get settled in with the mentality. There is no overnight fix. There are a couple of different ways that Heidi can remove herself from the mentality.

It is a challenge for anyone with a victims mentality to remove themselves from this mentality. Heidi in the situation above could start the process by telling Jane that the times she is making the calls is inappropriate. That from now she will not be taking her calls late at night.

Some thoughts on removing yourself from victim mentality. Anyone who suffers from victim mentality has to come to terms with themselves. They need to look at them self and say, I do screw up at times. I am not perfect. It is not always everyone else's fault. I need to take responsibility for the highs and lows in my life. The other person can only have control if I allow them. By saying it is always them - and never me - I am allowing the control to be gone. Just like when I was in abusive relationship.

Along with getting control back, It is so important for the victim to free themselves by forgiving. Forgiving themselves and the person who abused them. It is understood that forgiving the person who abused you may be hard, but the abuser continues to win while the mentality is there. Releasing yourself from victim mentality means saying that you forgive yourself for having stayed in the abuse, for having subjected your children to it. For not turning your abuser into the police. For still loving him after all the horrible and mean things he has done. Releasing a victim mentality means that you have decided to move forward with your life.

I would like to end this article with a quote. It is a paragraph that I found and unfortunately has an author who is unknown. Maybe this paragraph says it better then I did in this article. You be the judge.

"The challenge is to move through a problem so that it is no longer a problem rather than remain stuck in feeling victimized. If someone in my life is doing something that causes me significant distress, then my challenge is most often not to stop them but to change my responses so that the next time I will not be adversely affected. Challenging? Yes! But I have retained my power (and part of the exercise of my power may be to move out of unhealthy circumstances). If my happiness depends upon them changing, then I have given away my power. When some discomfort or disaster arises, believing absolutely in its necessity for me will lead me to the new learning I need now. Then, when I have learned the lesson(s), the discomfort will ease."


Author's Bio



Barbara Baker lives in Las Vegas with her husband and two labs, ATOM and Eve. She has 4 children and 8 grandchildren. She is the President of TEAMCares Inc. an online organization that provides support and advocacy for victims of abuse. The site is located www.TEAMCares.org.

 

 
 
 
   
 
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Ami
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    Re: Exploring Victim Mentality
« Reply #2 on: June 07, 2008, 11:21:11 AM »   

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This is a great thread, Lighter.             Ami
 
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No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.


              Friedrich Nietzsche
 
 
Certain Hope
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    Re: Exploring Victim Mentality
« Reply #3 on: June 07, 2008, 11:28:00 AM »   

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This is sorta the flip side of something I've been wanting to post, which has been parked on my desktop for a couple days now.

Might as well add it here:

Casting the Villain



This is a phenomenon I've noticed and just wondered whether anyone else has seen/experienced it?

I know I've done it myself... assigned folks in various settings to various roles - - - all the world's a stage, yanno.

But what lies behind this perceived need to identify the villain and even plot a course around (or over top of) him?

Maybe the villain is simply another struggling, human being who doesn't see things the way I do or, for various reasons, rubs me the wrong way.

That's what I'm talking about here, by the way - - people with whom we may have personality conflicts or those whose views are diametrically opposed to ours.
Not talking about robbers and murderers and the like... just ordinary folks whom we encounter along our daily paths. People we don't like.

Okay, so I dislike her. I disagree with her worldview and I find her personal style obnoxious.
Maybe she reminds me of someone from my past. So what?
Maybe I can imagine her as the culprit in all sorts of dasturdly deeds, but does that really make it so?

What does it take - within me - to determine that this person is a genuine villain and that it is up to me to block her every attempt to exert her existence on this planet?

I say, it takes a monumental sense of self-obsessive pride and entitlement. I can say that, because I know that's a big part of what was at work within me when I'd  get to feeling that way about someone.

The moment I decide that I'm better than x,y,z -  when I decide that my thoughts and ways are soooo much higher than hers....
that's when all of this villainization becomes possible. Whether or not that's a word, I don't know, but I've surely done it and witnessed it being done. Usually, it begins by my deluding myself into thinking that I know someone else's motivation when what I should have been doing is keeping a tighter rein on my own heart.

And what is it that makes me feel superior to my self-declared villain?

My own denial and delusion of grandeur which I choose to nurture rather than getting down to the nitty gritty of sorting out my own mess.

A victim requires a villain, simple as that, so watch out when you rub a victim the wrong way.

Carolyn
 
 
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He put a new song in my mouth, a song of praise to our God, for the Lamb who was slain for me and for you! Jesus alone is the liberating, life-giving Truth.  ><(((((*>

When pride comes, then comes shame;
but with the lowly is wisdom.