Shedding My Victim Narrative Kick-started My Life

Why a victim mentality can sabotage your life, and what you can to do to fix it.

Do you sometimes feel as though you are cursed? Or maybe that the world is out to get you. Bad things keep happening to you and you just can’t catch a break. I can relate. I’ve had traumatic experiences that were not my fault. Caretakers abused me during a vulnerable time, a loved one passed away, someone did me dirty in a relationship, etc. In those situations, I was the victim of those circumstances, as they were not in my control. Consequently, resentment and anger started to fester. I had no power to do anything but internalize this anger and harbor grudges to the people who wronged me. Alas, my “victim narrative” was born. An accidental by-product of this is I carried a sense of “ I’m being gravely wronged” into situations where that was not necessarily the case — at least not to the extent to which I perceived it. My self-victimization became induced; things that hurt me mildly or inconvenience me ring alarm bells in my head that make me perceive that I am being abused and manipulated, when in reality, I would just be going through an amicable breakup or a minor conflict at the work place. And though it feels like a self-preserving mechanism at the moment, I have found it to be self-destructive in the grand scheme of things. Here’s why imposing an (unwarranted) victim narrative on your adversities may ruin your life, and what you can do to fix it.

Why you should get rid of it

You feel helpless.

When your perception is magnified on how others wronged you but completely blind to how you contributed to the situation, you fester up feelings of frustration and resentment. Those build up a grudge towards others, and we all know how heavy that weight is to carry around. It eats at you from the inside. The more dangerous outcome that can emanate from reactivating this narrative over time is a build up of anger and resentment towards yourself. You may not even be aware of it, but deep down, you become disappointed at your lack of agency in life; you’re wallowing in a feeling of helplessness as your conception of your life is a series of things “happening to you”. Its hard to feel in control of anything if you have a solid belief that every inconvenience, failed project or relationship is everyone else’s fault. The feeling of helplessness chips away at your self-respect and self-image on a subconscious level.

It shapes your life’s narrative.

If you’re inclined to feel victimized by situations, odds are, you’ve been gravely wronged and hurt in past situations where you really had no control over the situation. The developed hyper-vigilance served as a coping mechanism for you; you were the actual victim, and that was your actual narrative. But that’s the thing about narratives, we wear them like a jumpsuit and think we have to live in them forever. This is commonly observed in cases like when people who were obese and lost a lot of weight suddenly (through a procedure) report feeling “not like themselves” and not knowing how to identify, as they feel “still fat on the inside”. Sometimes we define ourselves by our narrative because that’s all we know about ourselves. Without my narrative, who am I? We are terrified of sitting in the void and having to discover who we actually are if those events or conditions didn’t impose influences on our identities. That discomfort is sometimes so overwhelming that we tend to revert back to whats familiar. This phenomenon results in cases where people who lost weight regain it. People who grew up poor and suddenly won the lottery spend it for the same reason- being poor is part of their narrative. People who perceived their parent abandoning them (divorce, death, neglect- not necessarily actual abandonment) grow up convinced that they don’t deserve healthy love, and push partners away. “The narrative” takes different forms, but if we’re operating on autopilot, we’re all stuck inside.. until we are not.

It ruins your relationships.

The thing about my and your victim narrative is that it was totally valid when it was forged. But since we like recreating familiar dynamics in our interactions with the world, we need to be careful because it can easily drag onto new situations. If we’re operating on auto-pilot, your automatic mode is to anticipate the situation working against you or, in case of relationships, the person hurting you. This is like the yellow car phenomenon: If you think of a yellow car all day long, you will spot a yellow car eventually when you watch the street. And you will be like “Aha!”. In this case, borrowing from the law of attraction, you get what you focus on. This is especially detrimental to relationships, because you become cynical and skeptical towards the closest people to you, you can get hyper-sensitive and make them feel like they are walking on egg shells as they may feel that if any conflict arises (and it will), they will always be made out to be the villain, even if, in that specific conflict, it happened that the conflict was due to a miscommunication/ an honest, unintentional mistake. Just as your victim narrative drags throughout the timeline of your relationship, their villain narrative will have to drag on as well. Here-in comes the Pygmalion effect: people will live up (or down) to your expectations. If you treat them like they are malicious, but they are not, they may slowly mirror the persona you are treating them as, or leave.

How can you get rid of it?

1- Accept that there are things you cannot control.

You can’t control people’s feelings, their needs, their desires and thoughts. So if those are misaligned with yours, adjust the programming in your mind that expects everything to go your way, and consider that people are free beings and that world is full of unexpected changes and uncertainties. Take note of the frustration you have at the gap between how things are and how you think they should be. Then acknowledge that you assigned frustration to this gap, and that once you accept how things are, that level of frustration begins to abate.

2- Step out of the narrative and evaluate the case.

When you are in a situation where you feel like you are being wronged, run a double check; ask yourself, is this person really a bad person doing malicious things, or am I being triggered and comparing him to someone who was actually malicious in the past? If the answer is that this situation is not intentionally designed to hurt you, proceed to the following.

3- Be compassionate.

Be compassionate with yourself. You are allowed to sit in the pain when a situation was hurtful for you. Sometimes, people’s benefits end up misaligned, like the case of failed relationships to whose demise both parties unintentionally contributed. Feel all the feelings that come with the experience: frustration, anger, disappointment, etc... Even if the other person’s actions weren’t malicious, if they hurt you, you are allowed to feel. At the same time, be compassionate towards the other person as well. Acknowledge that they are a person with needs and feelings, and that they have a right to look for their needs elsewhere if they felt they were not being met, and that they have a right to remove themselves from a situation if they felt it is not good for them. These are hard things to look at, but being able to look at them liberates you from the shackles of your victim mentality. A bonus for your mindset is that it helps you not take things personally. For example, if you lost your job, got rejected, or lost a competition, replace the response of “ They didn’t accept me. I don’t know why!” with “what I offered was simply not what they were looking for”.

4- Seek your accountability.

Ask yourself: how did I contribute to this situation? How can I take responsibility for my role? And what can I learn and do differently? This is the take-away from all hardships. We cannot change other people. We can only change ourselves. This is actually a good thing, it means you have more control than you realized! After my last heart-break grief fog cleared up a bit, I put some thought into how I contributed to its failure. Contrary to my initial take on the story, turns out my ex is not a total selfish asshole who is incapable of love. Maybe the dynamic wasn’t making him happy. I was stressed and dealing with my own issues; maybe he wasn’t ready to take on the heaviness of my situation at the time. Perhaps his attachment style didn’t mesh with mine, and as a result he didn’t feel heard or seen. Maybe the way I “critique” him in an attempt to help him grow registered as hurtful criticism to his insecurities, while another person would have regarded it as valuable constructive feedback.

5- Watch your words.

Complaining and describing the situation with a tone of helplessness, defeat, or self-victimization reinforces this narrative. The mind listens when we speak, and it registers what we are saying about ourselves. Dropping complaining is the equivalent of dropping junk food for the mind.

6- Take back your Agency.

Take control of your own life. Acknowledge that even though it may not be your fault you were hurt by a situation, it is your responsibility to take care of yourself, heal, and help yourself recover. There will always be external things you can’t control, but your job is to focus on what you can control. Your behavior in the next relationship can improve by virtue of the lessons learned. You can sharpen your professional skills once you’ve identified the gap between market demands and your current skill-set. Substituting identifying that yellow car with “What can I do to improve my situation?”, and then taking action steps in that direction, will give you a rewarding sense of having your own back. Every time you take this step you will feel empowered, that you are shaping your own future, and that is, in my opinion, the biggest act of self-love.