7 Characteristics of Victim Consciousness Reveals Itself

Don’t think you act like a victim? Think again

Victim consciousness is the fundamental belief that life just happens to you — that something outside of you is “doing something to you” and can determine your destiny.

It’s anytime when you feel your happiness is determined by something outside of you.

It’s most evident anytime when you are unconsciously complaining and blaming.

There are times we all slip into victim consciousness — even the most awakened people have their moments in which they feel victimized or have unconscious fits of complaining.

It might feel that you live your life “victim free” but there could be areas or aspects of your life that you think, feel, and act like a victim without realizing it.

Here are seven common ways in which victim consciousness shows up.

1. Your Personal Blame Story

This is our unique story of victimhood we have been telling ourselves for a good part of our lives that stem from past incidents or events. It’s what we define as “what happened to us” either from someone or something. This story is an aspect of our identity as it serves to justify our anxieties, fears, and limited behaviors. It’s also the reasons we point to as to why certain things are not working in our lives and why our life is not the way we want it to be. We all have a blame story whether we’re aware of it. Identifying it is the first step to becoming a conscious creator of your life.

2. Ceaseless Mental Chatter

These are the habitual, oftentimes unconscious thoughts, inner conversations, and outer projections that plague our minds and steal us from our presence. It’s when we regurgitate the same useless mental content day after day. This is not real thinking — it’s the random meanderings of the mind running on auto-pilot. It can be recycled negativity from reviewing the past and worrying about the future or it simply shows itself as the useless information or content we consume from TV, celebrities, the news, and social media that we find ourselves randomly drifting off to.

3. Compulsive Behaviors and Addictions

These are any behaviors we engage in that prevent us from feeling unpleasant emotions such as fear, doubt, shame, anger, and guilt. This is can be overeating, working extremely long hours, abusing alcohol and drugs, consuming too much TV and media, constantly checking social media, etc. These are all addictions that serve to suppress our unpleasant feelings, escape our problems, and keep us from being within ourselves.

4. Collective Beliefs

These are the beliefs and ideas perpetuated by society that cause us to live in a state of fear and separation. It’s the ideas put out by the media, corporations, religion, and governments that shape our belief systems and the way we view the world. These outside entities can hypnotize us into believing there’s something out there in life that is going to get us and that we should be scared of. As a result, our attention becomes hijacked by the fears projected by these entities and leads to emotional contagion (see #5)

5. Emotional Contagion

This is when we unconsciously get caught up in the emotions, behaviors, and attitudes directly from other people. Much like the prevailing beliefs touted by the larger collective in society, these are the direct feelings and viewpoints from our family, friends, co-workers that influence our perception. It’s when the fear and worry of the people we are surrounded by is so strong, it becomes contagious and sure enough, we find ourselves joining in and experiencing those emotions. Welcome to the pity party. (see #6)

6. Pity Party of Blame

When we get so caught up in that contagious negative energy from others, we can’t help but join them down in the mud. Unconsciously, complaining is a way for people to bond and we can be drawn to this negativity. You ever have a friend or co-worker in which your conversations always seem to become a complaining session? A gossip fest? Or you start playing the who has it worst game? Sometimes we find ourselves complaining just being in the presence of these people even when we don’t actually have anything to be negative about. Sharing our grievances and blame stories invokes sympathy and gets others to listen to us.

Feeling self-pity? This Native American saying just might lift your spirits.

7. Worst-Case Scenario Narrative

This is the narrative we tell ourselves of all the possible negative outcomes for any situation or aspect of our lives. It’s the tendency to evaluate a life situation solely from the standpoint of “what’s the worst thing that can happen to me?” It’s the rabbit hole of negativity. You make a mistake at work and immediately think “what if I get fired?” That thought leads to worrying that you won’t be able to pay your mortgage and the next thing you know you have yourself homeless living on the street. By continually focusing on these negative outcomes, we start vividly imagining them in our minds which causes us to experience those emotions in the present moment without them even happening.

👉 A Powerful Exercise To Slam the Door on Victim Consciousness: Identify Your Blame Story

The first step to moving out of victim consciousness is identifying and releasing your blame story. You can do that with this simple exercise and worksheet. When you get yourself out of blame and victimhood you move into step more into your essence as a conscious creator. 👇

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