Victim or Victimizer
Have you fallen prey to the victim mindset?
There are two roads we are prone to take if we are not ready to take personal responsibility for our life.
Those are the paths of victim or victimizer.
Passivity was inherent in my upbringing.
This encouraged a victim mindset.
I ended up in many situations as “the victim,” and I was never ready to take ownership of myself.
The victimizers were also afraid to take ownership of who they were.
Victimizers frequently have the excuse that once or often in the past, they were victimized.
Therefore, a pattern of “the victim mindset” emerges. The psychology of a victim mindset imprisons our mind.
The only way to escape becoming the victim or the victimizer, is to take a long, hard look at how you got there.
Please know that I’m not condoning victimization or referring to instances of abuse that happen when we are at our most vulnerable.
Take responsibility for your victim mindset
I’m simply talking about taking responsibility for our actions as adults.
We can learn to set boundaries. We can respect the boundaries of others.
“Own or be owned” is a dangerous mindset
I let “victimizers” own me because I couldn’t own myself.
They chose to own me, because they couldn’t own up to who they were.
At the root, are two damaged individuals whose intentions are the same – to seek temporary shelter in the identity of another.
Why is it so hard to take ownership of ourselves, to assume full responsibility for our actions and consequences?
For me, it’s because I didn’t want to see myself as capable of wrongdoing.
I wanted to believe I was a good person with pure intent. That I’d never harm anyone, take advantage of anyone or destroy anyone.
This escalated to the point that I was unable to draw a line in the sand when someone crossed a boundary with me.
Good intentions are no excuse for living with the victim mindset
I would do just about anything to hear someone say, “good girl,” but I did not feel good on the inside. I was always afraid of messing up, of doing something outside the lines.
Sometimes we blame a victim mindset on religion
In my case, I feared displeasing God and stepping outside the lines of Christianity—something that would ultimately send me to hell.
I attracted individuals into my life who would fixate on my behavior. In order to escape their own pain, they controlled me to be the good girl whose self-sacrificial actions would make them feel better.
They were unable to turn inward to face the reality of their own tendency toward self-denial.
A victim mindset cannot co-exist with forgiveness
A while back I posted the idea about a victim mindset as two roads diverged in the woods. An angry commenter went into a discourse to prove me wrong.
In response, I would offer that there are not just two options when it comes to processing our experiences in life.
There is a third option.
We don’t have to become the victim and our destiny is not to victimize others.
We have the personal choice to forgive and start accepting responsibility for moving forward as a stronger and wiser person, ready to stand on our own.
LoveLifeLinks.com believes you have the power to escape the victim mindset and lead with love.
Remember, you can feel love. Anywhere. Anytime. All the time.
