Victim?

[shimmerz]

This came up in another thread and it gave me pause.

What exactly is a victim?

It is fairly easy to see what a victim of crime is .... if one breaches a law that has someone be the target of that crime, the target becomes the victim of that crime. What about psychological victimization, where no laws are in place? Verbal victimization? Can they still be a victim?

Is there a litmus test for this? Is there a way that we can (in our more lucid moments), go through a cognitive process that allows us to see that we are in victim mode? Is there such a thing as 'victim mode'?

Can we be a victim of ourselves? Is negative self talk part of the victimizing process? How do we stop being a victim? Are there behaviours that show others that we are easily victimized, opening ourselves up to further abuse?

noun
1.a person who suffers from a destructive or injurious action or agency: a victim of an automobile accident.
2.a person who is deceived or cheated, as by his or her own emotions or ignorance, by the dishonesty of others,
or by some impersonal agency: a victim of misplaced confidence; the victim of a swindler; a victim of an optical illusion.
3. a person or animal sacrificed or regarded as sacrificed: war victims.
4. a living creature sacrificed in religious rites.

Just wondering if we can come up with something that helps us understand a little better what this word actually means to us throughout the healing process.

 

[Changing4Best]

I thought about the way a victim puts their hands up to ward off a punch or a slap. In emotional victimization, we may get "that look" on our faces or we might express it in a tone of voice. There is a big difference between speaking emphatically and speaking in a questioning or doubtful of one's own value kind of voice. One can speak with dread in their eyes and voice too.

In the words we choose, there are positive words and there are negative ones, but there are degrees of this too. One can say "Are you planning to be there?" or "Will you be there?" or "You will be there and then I won't have to walk home."

One can speak nonchalantly in an offhand, bored kind of way or one can speak in an encouraging way, expecting that the other person will cheerily agree.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

I'll stick to the self-victimization aspect and playing the victim card. I found this blog post and whoa, it really puts it out there.

Link Removed

What I mean when I say re-victimize ourselves is we play the “recording” of the event again and again in our minds because it actually gives us some morbid form of comfort.

I can see this.

When we are somebody’s victim, we actually have a little bit of power over them.

Ding, Ding, Ding! We have a winner here! All of these plays at being the perpetual victim are simply power plays!

Control freaks love to play the victim, for example. If they are victims, they can control the person who hurt them because that person “owes them something now” and they can also control everybody around them by draining sympathy and attention from their community.

Many sufferers try to control their environments and this is just another way of doing so. Playing the victim here on the forum drains sympathy from others and is indeed a way of getting attention.

The truth is, though, when we play the victim, we are actually making partial victims of the people around us.

Whoa. Stop the presses! Can you see why playing the victim isn't just bad for the playER, but also the playEES? OMG! It is a continuation of the abuse cycle! By George, I think this guy is on to something! This is probably why I get so annoyed at the victim mentality. It isn't just about the person playing the victim, rather their attempt at manipulating everyone around them in an attempt to garner sympathy. And because these "victims" will always be "victims" they CAN'T be perpetrators, too, right? There is an unspoken rule about victims not being perpetrators and once a victim becomes a perpetrator, the sympathy for the victim bit in it all dries up pretty darn quickly.

In order to play the victim we need an oppressor. And when we manipulate by playing the victim we turn people who are otherwise innocent (or perfectly human) into a bad person in our minds. Instead of forgiving somebody who has wronged us and moving on, we demonize them in our minds and play them up as a villain so we can be their wounded victim. It’s an unhealthy game.

I'd say this accurately sums up what happened in that thread that sparked you to write this post. Demonization? Check. Unforgiveness? Check. Continuation of being the wounded victim? Check.

What is amazing, then, is the person playing the victim is often the real villain. What I mean is, by demonizing others and portraying them as oppressors, they themselves become the oppressors.

This bit will rock a few worlds.

 

[Upside Down Eagle]

I really like what you wrote Solara. I do think it depends on "how" you are being a victim, though. If you are "just" a victim, and you are not labeling yourself as such, or purposely acting as one, then it might be a different situation. Some people can even be a victim and not be aware of it themselves, and act as if they weren't!

 

[Eleanor]

I second what @Radise said. There are two senses to "being a victim." Obviously some people are objectively victims - of car accidents, assault, tornados... other people or forces that harm them without "cause." If you are injured in an earthquake, you are an earthquake "victim." This is an objective assessment and just true. It DOES NOT carry implications for who you are or how you treat other people.

The other sense of "being a victim" is when one is acting out a role in the pattern of relating that is called "The Drama Triangle." I find this such an... elegant and economical and straight to the point way of thinking. Because on this model, no one really ever thinks of themselves as the persecutor ... but when you treat others as if they are persecuting you, you can easily start harming them and feeling justified and self righteous about it. Every victimizer I've ever encountered thought they were "just defending" themselves.

The CONFUSING thing is how quickly we can move around the triangle... and how out of sync everyone else on the triangle is with each other and us. Suppose my little family is all on the drama triangle: I come home and my H is arguing with my daughter... he thinks she is taking advantage of him and she thinks he is unfair... they are both regarding themselves as victim and each other as persecutors... I come home and 'rescue" my daughter... (reinforcing her 'victimhood') and my H now feels doubly "persecuted." I'm persecutor to him, and rescuer to her. Lucky me. There are no happy endings if we all stay on the triangle.

If we get off however, then I can come home and ask some questions, and they can try to just solve whatever the problem is. Blame, shame, guilt don't really enter into it. No good guys. No bad guys.

When negotiation and communication is not an option - because the other person won't get off the triangle - then the best thing to do is get the hell out of the relationship. If that is not POSSIBLE, then one needs to do the really hard thing and deal with them while accepting that they are ON the triangle and keeping yourself OFF. Exhausting and unsatisfying as that is...

 

[joeylittle]

I'm always trying to remember that one is a victim of - not just "victim". Most of the time, when you fill in the "of", you learn much more about what's going on.

I think when we are the victim of our own actions, or thoughts, or words - when we victimize ourselves - that is when we "play the victim".

The tricky part is recognizing when you are actually doing it to yourself, it's not someone else doing it to you.

My favorite: "he/she made me feel bad". No. No one can make you feel anything. Stay with me here.
"He/she called me a loser and it made me feel bad". Ok.

In mental health lingo, this translates as "he/she called me a loser and I thought "they hate me", which in turn made me think "I am a loser" - and thinking that thought led to me feeling bad".

But yes, in that case: the person feeling bad is the victim of a cruel statement.

If the he/she was someone of real meaning to the person - father/mother, say - we could go farther and say that the child is the victim of parental cruelty.

The way to stop being the victim is to learn to turn it around to "he/she called me a loser and I thought, "wow. That's really mean, but I don't believe it's true".

After that first thought is altered, every thought that follows will change. And eventually you aren't the victim of those words anymore.

 

[Sandstone]

Isn't there an essential stage of being the victim, as we move from "it's all my fault" through "They did it to me" to "I will work on this"? It may not be a good place to stay, but it is part of the journey to acknowledge that I was a victim of abuse, of assault, of crime. It is part of putting the blame where it belongs - outside of me.

 

[scout86]

@shimmerz , another good topic!

The blog raises some good points. It sounded like he might be thinking mainly of relatively minor incidents, but like @joeylittle pointed out, if a person is a "victim" of parental cruelty, there are or were REAL "bad guys". We still have choices about where to go with that. If you've grown up believing you were worthless, that first step can be kind of a big one.

@stenni I think you have a point. I hate the word victim so much, and hate having it apply to me so much........I suppose that means something all by itself. What ever was done to me, I guess I refuse to buy in to the idea that those people own any part of me or have any claim to who I am now. They did what they did, it was wrong (IMO?) but I'm not "their" anything. This is a place that feels like some kind of dividing line in how we deal with this stuff. Maybe I'm wrong...... But it seems like a lot of people fiercely reject the label of "victim" and other seem to be comfortable with it. Myself, I reject it so strongly that, the more I think about it, there's probably some kind of issue buried there that I haven't noticed yet.

 

[moonbeam]

I was a victim while being abused. I made myself a victim by being stuck for yours in a self-harming cycle of shame, self-hatred and silence.

Now I'm a survivor.

Being a victim is more than just the trauma. Its also a mindset. Its hard to break free of but progress doesn't happen until we do.

 

[sun seeker]

Good points all.

Is there a litmus test for this? Is there a way that we can (in our more lucid moments), go through a cognitive process that allows us to see that we are in victim mode? Is there such a thing as 'victim mode'?

Can we be a victim of ourselves? Is negative self talk part of the victimizing process? How do we stop being a victim? Are there behaviours that show others that we are easily victimized, opening ourselves up to further abuse?

I'd say the answer is "yes" - to all but the litmus test!

I'll share a book that was helpful to me in working out these kinds of questions, The Verbally Abusive Relationship, How to Recognize it and How to Respond, by Patricia Evans. I happened to pick it up at a counselor's office when sorting out a safe house to get away from a nightmare roommate, and my jaw just about dropped to the floor. Whatever page I opened it to, there was my roommate, as if she had been using it as a reference text. I learned so much about what verbal abuse is and how to disengage from it.

 

[Nyssa]

Reflecting on the Karpman triangle and why it is so darn painful to play the victim and to admit it...

Here are some personal thoughts on the way I do it.

The tricky part is recognizing when you are actually doing it to yourself, it's not someone else doing it to you.

When I play the victim, I always see it the other way around. "It's not me, it's them." I get defensive and vindictive about it. It's like I need to prove myself I'm the victim.

Interestingly, when I am actually victimized, I don't feel that need to prove I'm the victim. I either know it and accept it, which makes me feel mostly sad and disappointed. Or I don't want to accept it and I will focus on blaming myself and making excuses for the person who hurt me.

So now, I try to see that as a red flag. If I feel a strong need to prove I am being victimized... there is a good chance I am doing it to myself.

Admitting it is a little hard to take for the ego. Mine hates to feel ridiculous, and it does feel ridiculed when I admit I have just played the victim. But sometimes, there is more at stake than this scratch to the ego. I have come to realize that playing the victim often leads me to feel as the helpless victim I was as a child.

In other words, I actually trigger myself in the process of playing the victim...

It's a terrible trap.

When I'm stuck in it, I re-experience some of the feelings of the victim I was. Betrayal, rage, despair etc. And once I'm there, telling myself I am playing the victim feels like insulting that wounded part of me -- let's call her "the real victim". At best, I will command her to shut up and get the f*ck away. As if she was some kind of evil part of me whose only purpose is to mess up with my life. It's painful and it feels very unfair.

When I deal with real emotional flashbacks -- by real, I mean caused by an external trigger -- coming back to the present doesn't feel like insulting the real victim in me or yelling at her. It's just that : coming back to the present. There's no bashing involved.

But when I "self-trigger", I do get a sense of responsability in the appearance of the emotional "flashback". I don't trigger myself consciously so the feeling of responsability is not clear, but it's there. Maybe it's because I deny this responsability that I end up insulting the true victim to get back to the present. I think. I don't know. I just found out about this.

 

[shimmerz]

Admitting it is a little hard to take for the ego. Mine hates to feel ridiculous, and it does feel ridiculed when I admit I have just played the victim. But sometimes, there is more at stake than this scratch to the ego. I have come to realize that playing the victim often leads me to feel as the helpless victim I was as a child.

This is good. I just got this too. I denied for years what was happening to me in so far as my being scapegoated by my family. It took me almost a year of intense therapy, just about this issue, nothing else, before I would accept it. I only realized this now as well. Thank you for this @Nyssa.

@sun seeker, Patricia Evans is awesome. Thanks for the reference.

But it seems like a lot of people fiercely reject the label of "victim"

I agree with this. I see people seriously go off the deep end with this word. Their contempt over it is tangible. I have to think there is something to that.