Rambling Thoughts About the Toxic Allure of Victimology

Do you have somebody in your life whom it seems like always ends up being the victim of something in life? No matter what happens, it seems like they take on the victim role. Life happens to them; bad things happen to them; things don't work out for them.

We're often hard on these kinds of "victims" and perhaps we just look at them and go "oh don't be such a victim," and we insist that they pick themselves up and move forward, because we have essentially run out of empathy and sympathy for their eternally depressing plight.

And then perhaps we sit back and wonder why would anybody play the victim? Why would you choose to be a victim rather than strong and independent?

Less discussed is the fact that taking on the victim role can actually be alluring, albeit in a toxic sort of way, and perhaps we need to have compassion for those who do so because it can be a strange addiction.

Which isn't to say that we need to enable victim behavior, we just need to have compassion for it, and perhaps try to understand how people end up there.

Part of the allure of victimology is the fact that it can be gentle and kind understanding. It isolates people from the roughness, harshness and truth of much of the world.

We can sit back and declare that something that happened "wasn't our fault," and that we were helpless. Because we take on this particular brand of learned helplessness, the blame now lies squarely on the shoulders of the world; the world is mean, people are mean, life is too expensive, others just don't understand us, and so on and so forth.

All the reasons for our misery are external, and when people start talking to us about needing to change, we point back at them and say *"there's nothing wrong with ME, it's the world that's wrong, it's people that are wrong, it's people that are mean and so we can sink into this comfortable zone in which nothing is our fault and everything happens to us.

In a harsh world, that can feel oddly comforting.

The Dangers...

All this can leave us with this almost intoxicating feeling that nothing is wrong with us, all is as it is supposed to be... it's just the world that needs to change and people who need to change and then things will be all okay and rosy.

Except... there eventually comes a rude reckoning when reality starts biting, when our connections and the tangible world around us starts to collapse and reject us and there develops this growing gap between how we perceive ourselves (and our victim role) and how the world perceives and treats us.

Suddenly we're faced with the harsh reality of having to look at the inner voices that have been saying "what maybe if they are right? What if I DO need to get a new job, get a new partner, get a new life?"

And often coming out of the victim role can be very empowering because we discover there's actually far more support for us empowering ourselves than there is for us playing the victim. But it's a painful process that calls for some serious emotional courage.

But it's well worth it... because eternal victimhood is even more painful.

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great rest of your Easter Weekend!

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Created at 2024-03-31 02:08 PDT
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