Outgrowing the Victim

Posted on March 10, 2019 by Philip Golabuk , One of Thousands of Executive Coaches on Noomii.

As a philosophical counselor, I work with many clients who are living as victims, who view every setback as a commentary on their life, who take it personally when things don’t go their way, who walk around ready to feel put upon or wronged, who believe that life or the universe or fate has singled them out for misfortune. The odd thing is, as they talk about their experiences, they seem to be right. In many cases, bad luck appears to be dogging them, testing them to their limits, making their life miserable at every turn. Relationships, finances, health—it’s one thing after another, and they wonder what they’re doing wrong, and how they can change the sad and demoralizing story in which they feel trapped.

There are giveaways in the narrative. Those who adopt the victim stance don’t describe an adverse experience as “this,” but as “this, too” or “this, again.” Because they keep score, with every loss or setback, they bear the accumulated burden of all losses, all setbacks. Pain is never merely pain, for they suffer their pain acutely. They will recount another’s hurtful act as though it were personal, its effect premeditated—not “she did this,” but “she did this to me.” Overreaction and a readiness to feel put upon are the hallmarks of such a stance. Keys drop from their hands, machines fail, even traffic lights conspire to do them wrong. In moments of clarity, they realize they are their own worst enemy, that the hands about their throat are their own, but they see no way to gain access to the levers of choice, particularly in the heat of the moment when life has singled them out and is once again proving their most pessimistic expectations. Sound familiar?

This tendency to take things personally is usually a sign of arrested development at an early age. Young children have a talent for believing that everything is about them, their responsibility, their fault. Because they have not yet developed a healthy will complete with boundaries, a sense of limitations, and the understanding that some gratifications have to be delayed, they feel entitled to have what they want when they want it, and feel aggrieved when things for one reason or another don’t go their way. Clients who are developmentally stuck in this stage need a way to resume their stalled development and grow up—and in far less time than it takes normally. They begin to shift out of victimhood and into a more spacious life when they accept that events are not personal, that no one wins all the time, that what looks like a loss or setback in the moment often turns out to have been good fortune in disguise, that as nothing in the great run-on sentence of our life is a conclusion, we do well to stop punctuating it with periods and exclamation marks that do nothing but ensure our misery.

A friend of mine once shared something she had heard: “When we’re 20, we care a great deal what others think of us. At 30, we don’t care as much what others think of us. At 40, we don’t care at all what others think of us, and at 50, we realize others aren’t thinking of us.” It may be in our nature to take things personally, to adjudge ourselves innocent for the same acts that we deem malicious when committed by others. We are all far more blameless than we may allow when we are living in the constricting coils of victimhood. Life may have brought us pain, and will again. When it does, it is saving to remember that we can choose to feel our pain without suffering it or carrying it forward, to acknowledge a hurtful moment, a loss, a setback without building a house there. Then, “this, too” or “this, again” can be just “this.” “She did this to me” can be “she did this,” nothing more, nothing worse.

What we dwell on, we dwell in. The ancient Stoics regarded the forces of fate and circumstance as “indifferent” to us, and advised us to meet them with the same indifference. One does not need to do this for long to see the wisdom in it.