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?



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."




“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate.
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves: who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous,
talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be?

You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn't serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking
so that other people wont feel insecure around you.

We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.
Its not just in some of us, it is in everyone." - Marianne Williamson



Yahoo! Groups: End_Verbal_Abuse Group Leader
_http://groups.yahoo.com/group/End_Verbal_Abuse_
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/End_Verbal_Abuse)


Yahoo! Groups: CoDependents Group Leader
_http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Codependents_
(http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Codependents)







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