It is time to once and for all stop the glorification of victimhood!
Victimhood is a sense of moral elitism for the suffering, pain and grievances one has.Victims hold up their trauma as if it is a trophy that only they deserve. Rather than claim their status as one who has overcome great adversity, they instead ask the whole world to bow down to them as if they are kings and queens because they have suffered. They use their suffering as a form of competition with desperate pleas to say, "Look at me! My pain is worse than your pain. Only I am worthy of love and attention because I have been born without privilege. And, everyone else must make amends for my pain."
Those stuck in the victim consciousness feel threatened by those who walk fully empowered. They hold up their victim card as a sign of their worthiness and no amount of shared collective trauma can help to inform them that they are not the only ones who have suffered. And, no amount of examples of people who have overcome great tragedy can enlighten them to the place in which they must arrive so they can transcend the trauma from their past.
Victimhood is a mental illness. It is a disease of the psyche that leads to an overactive nervous system that causes the body to constantly attack even when there is no reason to be afraid. Victimhood causes people to see anyone who reminds them of their trauma as their public enemy 101. Victimhood is a cognitively conditioned brain response that gets cemented into the fabric of one's being through a series of life experiences, patterned messages and stories told from members of the tribe. Those living in a state of victimhood believe they are still chained to the past and someone else must let them out of bondage. The truth is that the mental illness of victimhood does not make distinctions of race, class, color or creed. Victimhood does not care what color you are or sex you are because victimhood lives in the brain. It is a function of the mind and not of the matter.
Those who live in a state of victimhood use their trauma as an excuse for their shortcomings in life. They blame their parents, their teachers, their schools, their government and in the case for women; they often blame the men they chose to date or the little girls that teased them on the playground.
All of these explanations of victimhood are not to say that there are no innocent victims. For most of us, and especially women, we have been the victims of crimes against our humanity. We have been bullied, not seen, devalued and treated by many as an inanimate object or a play toy to look at. Removing the hood of the victim does not mean that we ignore the wrongdoings or sins committed against our sex but rather it is a process of unveiling what has transpired in our life stories. Living in a state of victimhood is literally a hood that clouds the eyes from seeing clearly. It darkens the heart so no light can be let in.
No one is immune to the victimhood mentality. It can fall over the eyes of anyone who is not fully awake. The state of mind in which we live is a choice. When we are stuck in our trauma sometimes it does not feel as if we have a choice. The depression sets in, darkness takes over and we can continue down the path of despair but there is always a way out if we desire to find it but we must have the desire. Without desire to transcend there is no hope. And, though hope is not a plan, it is the seed that gets planted and from which a beanstalk can grow. We have to decide to climb out of victimhood. And, no one can make that climb for us. NO ONE!
How do you know when you are in the energy of the victim?
In an opinion piece from Behavior and Society, Scott Kaufman, writes about how to unravel the victimhood mentality. Here is a quick test to see where you are in your consciousness journey.
Quick: Rate how much you agree with each of these items on a scale of 1 (“not me at all”) to 5 (“this is so me”):
It is important to me that people who hurt me acknowledge that an injustice has been done to me.
I think I am much more conscientious and moral in my relations with other people compared to their treatment of me.
When people who are close to me feel hurt by my actions, it is very important for me to clarify that justice is on my side.
It is very hard for me to stop thinking about the injustice others have done to me.
If you scored high (4 or 5) on all of these items, you may have what psychologists have identified as a “tendency for interpersonal victimhood.”
The solution to overcoming the victimhood mentality is to become full of yourself. When I speak of "SELF," I am referring to the psychology definition of self:
Listen in as I discuss one way to remove the chains of the victimhood mentality and awaken to the fullness of who you are as an WHOLE woman.
Thank you for reading and for listening. If you would like some real life historical stories of people who have masterfully awakened to the path of liberation, I highly recommend Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl. Even though I am speaking directly to women, we can learn from our brothers' wisdom and learn not to walk against them but with them as a fully empowered and connected species of human beings.
Sending YOU love and FULLNESS!
“I shall never forget how I was roused one night by the groans of a fellow prisoner, who threw himself about in his sleep, obviously having a horrible nightmare. Since I had always been especially sorry for people who suffered from fearful dreams or deliria, I wanted to wake the poor man. Suddenly I drew back the hand which was ready to shake him, frightened at the thing I was about to do. At that moment I became intensely conscious of the fact that no dream, no matter how horrible, could be as bad as the reality of the camp which surrounded us, and to which I was about to recall him.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning
Comments