The Victim Quagmire

Posted on January 04, 2019 by Martin Theis, One of Thousands of Leadership Coaches on Noomii.

Right at the beginning of this article I would like to make a disclaimer. The topic I am going to discuss is not easy to address and is even more difficult to receive depending on the severity of the incidents leading to victim patterns in our behavior. What makes it so difficult are suppressed and locked away parts of us that tend to react to letting go and most of all the concept of forgiving a perpetrator or agent. What is often talked about by mental health professionals but seldom heard and understood by the people in pain: The process frees ourselves from the past. Otherwise it will continue to affect us in the present, stopping us from living an independent and very possibly joyful life.

I am talking about this from my point of view including my own patterns of adapting victim based behavior. Emotional abuse and narcissistic disorders in authority figures have lead to the negation of my personal power resulting in the perception of powerlessness and impotence. At a certain stage in my healing process I had to realize that I had given away my power and was afraid to reclaim it.

From the standpoint of the rational mind it can be agreed that other people can’t make us do anything…if we won’t let them. With emotional abuse there is no logical reason why we should be intimidated by someone in front of us. Just the other day I was present in a situation where a young lady was able to intimidate everyone involved in a conflict. She was clearly the person that was behaving in an inappropriate way but was still in charge of the whole situation. I myself felt my hands shake and my heart rate accelerate. The important part is to step into our own power that we have given away for so long and to set clear boundaries. In the beginning there will be some going back and forth between finding ourselves in situations where we perceive ourselves as the victim but it is essential to become the observer and to take back the authority and power we have been used to handing over. At times when a subliminally aggressive or encroaching person would come into the room I would get so insecure I’d give them everything without hesitation even though no demands had been made.

In the end forgiving and letting go of the past is applicable to all situations but what each and one of us has to do is a highly individual process which can best be addressed through therapy or professionals that can help to walk this path.

So why is the Headline for todays article the victim trap. Basically to be a victim or perceive ones self as one is a dead end that will give us sympathy and attention from others at first but will keep us from feeling autonomous and self determined. Depending on the degree of complaints and accusations we are conveying, the people surrounding us will stop empathizing and start withdrawing at some point because this state of mind is draining everyone in the long run. The only difference is that if I am used to being in that state I won’t notice the depletion because this is my “normal” mode of behavior. Others who happen to be going in and out of this kind of energy field will only realize over time that our energy pattern is making them feel depleted and drained after having spent time with us.

Trauma Therapy is a sensitive topic and I urge anyone to try to abandon bipolar or dichotomous thinking in terms of right and wrong, good or bad etc. This is one of the main obstacles to forgiving others and ourselves because we see ourselves as right and the other person as wrong. The truth is that everyone is right and wrong at the same time. If you have ever read a story in which the author is going to the trouble of narrating the story through the eyes of the protagonist and the antagonist, telling the same story only perceived differently, you will have an idea that we all see ourselves as the heroes or sufferer in our stories. This relates to the dynamics of the ego and eventually volumes are filled by contemplating the ego and it’s effect on the soul.

It is often said that forgiveness is setting us free from the negative emotions that would otherwise consume us and our whole life. From personal experience I can affirm that this is so. It took me almost five years of work to be able to really let go and to start taking responsibility for my own actions.

We often tell ourselves that all we want to hear is an apology from the person that hurt us. In other cases we want that person to have to go through the same pain that we did as payback for what they did to us. Sadly we don’t realize that in most cases this pain was what set the cycle in motion in the first place. Most if not all perpetrators have experienced traumatic events in their past. Often it is passed from perpetrator to the victim who in turn becomes the agent of the traumatic event for someone else. The only way this loop can be interrupted is through love and the act of forgiveness.

It takes time to realize that even though the confession of the person might be helping the process, we will still have to be able to forgive the person for making a mistake. So waiting for someone to come to their senses is something that is best let go as well because that day might never come. If it does we still have to do the same work and lost time we otherwise could have spent enjoying the moment and doing beautiful things.

The act of true forgiveness has by far been one of the most difficult things I had to do in my life. I am continuously experiencing moments where I need to let go of grudges that I am holding because I feel how they otherwise corrupt my every thought. Some years ago I decided to give happiness a chance and one essential tool in order to live a happy life is to be able to forgive.
I am not asking you to start to forgive the most traumatic event that happened in your life. Start with something small, a friend that kept you waiting or canceled an appointment on short notice and so forth. Most of all be good to yourself. Chances are you didn’t learn to forgive otherwise you wouldn’t be reading about it in the first place. No one I know really learned these things in school or with their parents. So be good to yourself and give your self time to learn something new. This has the potential to change your life because it is an important step in being in charge of your emotions and feelings. Deciding to only have loving thoughts and be compassionate can be compared to deciding to participate in the ironman triathlon. It all starts with an idea but it still needs a lot of practice and work to make it happen.

By the way the Hawaiians have a beautiful technique that is called Ho’oponopono. Wikipedia’s definition for the ritual is “a Hawaiian practice of reconciliation and forgiveness”.
I stumbled upon the technique some weeks before I travelled to Hawaii for the first time after having been on O’ahu ten years before. In a nutshell you state that you are sorry for what you did, ask for forgiveness for your part in the conflict, state your love for the person or being, and thank them in the last step.
This method is a beautiful way to resolve a conflict. It works in many ways, the most potent when it is used when all conflict parties have assembled but can also be done by ones self. If you are interested to hear more about Ho’oponopono send me a message or use your search engine of choice to find out more about it.
All I can say is that it works wonders for me and I am very glad I got the chance to resolve some of the conflicts in the past and all of my conflicts in the present with the help of this technique.

Ho’oponopono is really potent when it comes to conflict resolution and should be considered if you have the feeling that nothing really worked for you in the past.

I had let go and forgiven so many times in the past but the anger and rage would still persist. It might be all coincidental because so many things came together at the same time but I truly believe my visit to Hawaii and the techniques I learned have helped me to mend the relationships that had been deteriorating rapidly and that I got to be free from nightmares and bad dreams for the first time in ages.

If you have any questions or comments please let me know.

Aloha & Mahalo