Victimhood - Part 1
If you follow along on Pivotal Pain, or if you’re reading this post, I’m guessing that you can identify with the word victim. You’ve been through something, or multiple things, in your life that victimized you. You’ve been lied to and backstabbed by a friend, you’ve been used and manipulated by someone you thought cared for you, you’ve been abused by someone you trusted.
Let me start with this: I’m so sorry. I’m sorry that you had to go through any of it. I’m sorry that it brought you pain and sadness. I’m sorry that it destroyed relationships. I’m sorry that your mind is now consumed with “how to survive” instead of “how to thrive”.
I know that me saying sorry doesn’t fix anything. I know the real apology you need is from the offender. I also know that, even if they did apologize, it still wouldn’t reverse time or erase what they did. I know it’s not easy to carry the weight and the memory of the experience.
I know I haven’t been through what you’ve been through; but I am truly sorry, and I’m here to lend a helping hand. I’m here to hold on to hope for you, because I know that there can be better days ahead, even if you can’t see it or believe it yourself yet.
Now, I’m going to say something that may cause you to want to fight me, but here it is… If you’re looking to find complete healing from these circumstances, it will never happen as long as you are living in victimhood.
Do you hate me now? 😬
I know it sounds insensitive and feels like a “get over it” statement, but I assure you I say it with your best interest in mind. See, there’s a point in everyone’s healing journey where we have to own what happened to us so that we can take back ownership of our lives.
**Some of you have very recently been a victim and are still living in, or reeling from, the effects of it. You are most likely not at the point in your journey I’m referring to of needing to take ownership. Right now you need to grieve, process emotions, and find a place of physical or mental safety. Go ahead and stop reading here, it’s not worth the risk of pushing you to a place you aren’t ready for yet. You can always bookmark this post to read later on.
For the rest of you, stick with me and keep reading!
The suffix “hood” means a state, condition, character, or nature of a person. Victimhood, then, is a state of being for someone who has been wrongly and unfairly treated.
But it’s not just a physical, or circumstantial, state of being. In the previous post (“Stuck in Limbo”) we talked about how being stuck in life is a reality but it can also be a mindset. We may be physically or financially stuck in a job or a town, but we are more often mentally stuck in a situation or season of life. The same applies here in victimhood.
Being victimized has to do with the reality of being hurt at a specific moment. But victimhood becomes a mindset, or a lifestyle, that we adopt even long after the offender has stopped hurting us. Victimhood has to do with a mental and emotional state of being of a person.
Victimhood can become so ingrained in us that it affects our thoughts, beliefs, perspectives, motivations, and actions. It forms our lifestyle and directs our worldview. Victimhood has us stuck in a mental loop believing that we deserved what happened to us, we are worthless, we are helpless, and we are hopeless.
We feel trapped in our past, our present tainted and our future blurred. Someone, or something, has hurt us so bad that we could never be normal or whole again. And we begin to live as such. We aren’t able to be open and vulnerable in relationships because we’ve been a victim in a previous relationship. We can’t trust people anymore so we live a lonely life in seclusion. We give up on our passions and calling because we’ve been marginalized or oppressed in some way. Our days are filled with a revolving door of hopeless and helpless thoughts.
We can go on living this way forever if we choose. But that’s not going to be you, is it? Because you’re here reading this post, and I’m here to help you crawl out of the victimhood mindset by reminding you that you still have a say in your own life!
This is your life and your story and you get to choose how you live it.
Our circumstances, or other people’s actions against us, don’t have to rule our lives. We don’t have to label ourselves victims any longer. So will you choose to continue to be the victim in your own story? Or will you accept and own what happened so that you can move forward in healing?
I have no doubt that you’re reading this because you long for healing. You desperately want to leave victimhood, you just don’t know how to get out of it…
There’s a few reasons we struggle to find a way out of victimhood. We may experience all of these or just one of them:
1. we feel stuck
2. we get comfortable
3. we feel a sense of control
Feeling stuck is the most common, and the most debilitating, reason we stay in victimhood. We’ve been hurt in such a way that it brought us to the end of ourselves and destroyed any semblance of hope or healing. We stay in harmful, or otherwise unhealthy, situations because we genuinely believe that we have no options and no way out. We feel like we will forever be a victim.
To help us get unstuck, we HAVE to start by changing what we believe.
There is not a single person on this earth that is beyond help or hope. You might feel stuck but you are not, and it’s time to change that feeling. Start by telling yourself “I am not helpless or hopeless.” However many times you need to repeat it, do it until you start to believe it and embrace it. As you realize that you don’t have to be stuck in victimhood you also begin to notice all of the available resources around you.
Therapy will do wonders to help you process what you’ve been through and then assess all your options on how to move forward in a healthy way. Friends and family can help us see our worth and encourage us towards healing. There are numerous books that give practical tips for working through negative cognitions, behaviors, relationships, etc. Podcasts, church sermons, blogs, and Bible verses are all free, easily accessible, and helpful.
Some resources will work better than others. Learn to recognize the one’s that truly help, and use them often. Whatever you do, do not let your situation make you feel, or believe, that you are helpless. Because, as long as you believe you are a helpless victim, you will remain a helpless victim.
And that is why I said earlier: “a person will never be able to fully heal as long as they live in victimhood.” It doesn’t mean that someone who has been a victim at any point can’t find healing. It means that if someone continues to live in the mindset that they are always a helpless victim, they will never be able to see a way forward towards healing and wholeness.
But if we can believe there is hope, even in moments we feel stuck, we can take steps out of victimhood and back into ownership of our own lives.
To give this topic adequate coverage (without making you read an overwhelmingly long blog) I’m splitting it into 2 parts. In the next blog post we’ll cover the 2nd and 3rd reasons we struggle to leave victimhood. We’ll also address owning the things that have happened to us-moving from victimhood to ownership-and what “ownership” actually means.
I’ll leave you with this thought for this week-some lyrics from an old Switchfoot song:
“This is your life. Are you who you want to be?”
Do you want to be the victim in your story? Are you, right now, who you actually want to be? Because this is your life, and you get to make the choice on who you become and how you live out your story.
-Stephanie Lauren Auman
