Identifying As A Victim

[Amaranthine]

I find identifying as a victim very healing, I never allowed myself to for years but when I did I think that's when healing took place. I think you have to identify as a victim before you can view yourself as a survivor.
When people tell me that I am a survivor not a victim I find it invalidating now.
Anyone else?

 

[Bloomy]

Good post and will follow. It has become popluar not to say you are a victim but instead re place and say you are survivor.
I think you are onto something here. As a survivor it seems one need to be eternally strong. Never to back down and cry, be sad, be angry cause you are after all a survivor. And also that you are actually a victim of others crimes and misdeed. Im getting rather confused buy all these replacement of words to be honest on my own behalf.
Ive started to say Im a survivor. Also cause to say victim seems that others implicate that they should pity me.

Im just so tired of how dificult it is in this world to have gone through hell and still be alive. Im so God darn tired of the society and the so called experts opinion. Im so tired of word twisting and all that follows.

 

[Deleted member 35429]

Oh wow, very powerful stuff. Being called a victim gives me such a visceral response in the worst way. It makes me feel weak and vulnerable. Being called a survivor is almost as bad for me because it implies I was once a victim(weak). I honestly have a hard time writing that word. I'm a warrior and a fighter, even when I was being victimized with brutality. I do not identify as a victim at all, never have.

Very few people seem to feel the way I do. They seem to revel in identifying as victims and feel health and wellness from that.

I posted a poll on this topic not long ago.

 

[Bloomy]

On second thought - f*ck all these words - Im me - Bloomy!! Im not a victim, not a survivor, nor warrior, nor fighter. Im not strong Im not weak. I am me!! I dont want to be seen as traumatized. Im sick and tired of it. Not either a fighter. Aslo sick and tired. All this God darn words does not give me room to be ME! Bloomy. Im just like any body else who is them selves. Just with additional traumatizing experiences.
It all make me something Im not. It all make me a picture in others peoples eyes. Characteristic. And they all seems to forget that before they f*cked me inside out and even when and even after in bottom line Im ME.

 

[Amaranthine]

For me, I was always told I was a survivor but it lead to alexithymia. I see it as an invalidation that made me unsure of my own emotions. I felt like I had to keep strong but I never confronted my own emotions with that I just repressed constantly feeling like I had to battle these emotions as a warrior and survivor. Before I identified as a victim I never made any progress.
Honestly, I've had the type of life that I wouldn't mind people pitying, some pity can be healing sometimes we need that charity and community in our live. An openness rather than feeling at odds with the reality. I don't think many people who are not very well versed on abuse use the term survivor and that is human because we have been victimized.
I come at it from a perspective of truth. I think I'm strong for surviving although I am a victim and that makes me both victim/survivor. I can't lie somethings died in me through my abuse, but the ego dies and a phoenix rises from the ashes.

 

[Deleted member 35429]

On second thought - f*ck all these words - Im me - Bloomy!! Im not a victim, not a survivor, nor warrior...

Yes!!! Preach it! lol I love that attitude. This doesn't define me at all it's just something I deal with. The times I've had to tell someone what's happened I have said I deal with PTSD on occasion from when I was assaulted at a young age. Rarely I will give details like "strangled and raped," but never ever will I utter the words victim or survivor or any other title that would make this define me.
I am just me.

 

[Deleted member 35429]

For me, I was always told I was a survivor but it lead to alexithymia. I see it as an invalidation...

I do hear your point about "pity." Some compassion and support would feel nice when PTSD is at its worst. I've never received pity/compassion/support because I never projected a need for it. Pity seems to make this feel more real and a bigger deal than I want it to be. I see your point that for healing it might be wise to allow a little self pity and nurturing from others.

 

[Gs172003]

I guess you can say "I am a victim of somebody else's terrible choice (s) to harm me" but I am choosing to do what I need to do to survive the situation and refuse to let them win. ( or whatever situation put you here)

That sounds good to me anyway.

 

[Justmehere]

A nurse recently said to me, "one day, when you recover from PTSD and you are a survivor..."
I cut them off to say, "I'm a survivor now."

I personally don't like the word "victim." Victim means helpless and hopeless to so many other people... I'm not helpless, but I'm also not at fault, and that's what victim should mean. Not at fault.

Validation that it wasn't my fault was hugely important for my recovery.

 

[Amaranthine]

I guess you can say "I am a victim of somebody else's terrible choice (s) to harm me" but I am choo...

The best revenge to someone who hurts you, who has no concern for your well being, who didn't care how they affected you is success. Most of my surviving is kind of vengeful, I don't want to give my abuser the satisfaction. Once I actually told my family the full extent of what happened ( that I had been raped, many other life/death violences not just sexually assaulted) I was treated better by the people who actually cared for me they understood how many struggles I went through.
I do pity myself and encourage others to as well because its healthy as long as you don't loom in it. Create yourself with that pity, nurture yourself with that pity, be so caring/get so much caring to yourself that you reach for the stars with that pity.
It gave me a perspective of screw what is comfortable for others to hear, I will offend them because if they are not compassionate they are horrible people who I don't care about offending with my truth.
I was being too compassionate and empathetic to the people around me not wanting to hurt them.
I wanted them all to know at some point how much of a victim I was and how much I had shouldered for them.
Exactly how strong I was in admitting I am a victim but hesitating for so long. You know, it took more strength than almost anything to come to terms with the truth of it. To find the words to say it.
I am a victim and that makes me strong. I am forged in fire.

 

[Holdingontohope]

For me, it took a long time to be able to say the words out loud "I was a victim of abuse" or "I was abused". Being able to finally identify as a victim allowed me to start accepting that what happened to me was abusive, it was wrong, and it wasn't my fault. I found it to be empowering in a way. For so long I had tried to dismiss or ignore what had happened, that finally being able to say it out loud was a huge step.

It saddens me that the word victim is used in such a negative, even derogatory, way sometimes. "Oh she's acting like a victim" and things like that. So if I cry I am weak? If I hurt emotionally because of what someone else did to me, then I am not being "strong enough"? A victim isn't someone who is weak, pathetic, or looking for pity. A victim is someone who has been harmed, injured, or killed by a person, event, accident, etc.

Identifying as a victim is helping me to stop blaming myself for what happened. This wasn't something I chose to have happen to me, this wasn't something of my doing, this wasn't my fault. Being able to say I was the victim and he was the abuser is helping me to put the responsibility where it truly belongs. Does it make me weak? Does it make me less of a survivor? Does it make me someone to be pitied? No, I don't think it does. It makes me someone who has lived through some pretty shitty stuff, but is still here, still fighting, still trying.

I guess I am saying, if identifying as a victim is helping you on your journey to healing, then f*ck what others think about it. The same goes with identifying as a survivor. If it is helping YOU then it doesn'the matter what others think.

 

[Justmehere]

Here's another thought, about the difference between identity and identification.

For me, victim isn't part of my identity. It describes role, my lack of fault, the fact of real undeserved harm to me, in a traumatic event. But victim is not who I am as a person.

"Survivor" isn't even part of my identity. Do I survive? yes. Can I describe my relationship I the trauma s a survivor? yes. But not my definition of who I am as a person. I don't want my abusers to have that power to define who I am as a person because I survived what they did to me.

Survive is something I do, not who I am.

So I think that's another reason why I push back on saying I identify as a victim, it is easy to mix it up with saying victim is my identity, even though they are two different things.