Victimhood is Not a ‘Hood You Want to Live In
By Jenny Griffin
It’s okay to visit once in a while, but setting up house? Not a good idea. Not only is it hard to live there, but it’s even harder to leave. You can’t sell a house in Victimhood, it’s a neighborhood filled with abandoned homes and abandoned dreams.
Victimhood saps us of our personal power and allows us to stop taking responsibility for ourselves and the path we walk. It turns us into people who expect others to care for us because somewhere along the way we’ve lost the knowledge of what it takes to care for ourselves. In fact, we’ve traded that knowledge for the label of victim. Somewhere inside, that knowledge is waiting to be (re)awakened.
Let’s face it, life can suck sometimes, and it really does feel from time to time that we’re being dealt a dud hand. It’s the way we approach our challenges and the hands we’re dealt that moves us from victim to empowered participant. If you meet a challenge head-on and decide to find a way around it, you’re actively participating in creating the life you want for yourself. If you see the challenge, scream, ‘Why me?’ and curl up into a ball of helpless inaction, let’s just say you may not move forward as quickly as you’d like. Likewise, if you see the challenge and say, ‘Well, it’s my lot in life to be downtrodden,’ you will likely not feel things flowing as smoothly as you might have hoped. You might suddenly notice more challenges appearing, testing you further, offering you opportunities to rise up to meet them (hence the expression ‘rising to the challenge’), instead of cowering in fear.
Victimhood can become an all-encompassing habit, and it is rife in the Western world. The genesis of the role of victim is in a deep-rooted compassion for others – how can we allow others to endure something we wouldn’t take on in our worst nightmares? Somewhere along the way, that compassion (true compassion is associated with detachment) was overtaken by a kind of guilty pity, which led to the creation of the role of victim.
It’s tricky to explain the subtle difference, but imagine that each thought we hold has a golden thread attached to it. As we send our thought out to someone else, we are opening the opportunity for them to attach to that thread. Pity is attached to guilt in us, which then meets the object of our pity and is understood as such. In that moment, the thread attaches itself to the thought that arises in the other person, and if they accept the guilt-laden pity in that moment, we receive the thread back with the knowledge that they have become a victim. Now the understanding exists between us and the other that they have given away their power, and put it in the hands of someone else. It’s not necessarily us, but by perpetuating their definition of themselves as victim, we have not helped them to find it again.
Compassion is different in that it is rooted in a detached yet loving energy. This time, the thought we send out is more like ‘I love you and empathise with your pain, but I am choosing not to feel any guilt over the choices we have each made that have taken us on different paths.’ All of us are only ever a few decisions away from the possibility of being homeless and destitute. Some of us will take that path, and some of us won’t. If we do, we do so willingly (although possibly against our own better judgement) and in order to retrieve the gifts that we will no doubt find in the darkness of that journey.
With that understanding intact, we can return to the challenge of victimhood. It appears it is quite comfortable for people to remain there, partially because it means they can blame others for the way their life has turned out instead of accepting responsibility, which can be life-changing. An extreme example of perpetual victimhood can be found in the following anecdote from personal experience.
A former roommate and I were discussing the reason why I didn’t have any children. My main reason was that I didn’t want any. She had difficulty accepting this, and with tears in her eyes, she responded, ‘well, I didn’t want any either, but I have three!’
While that may sound somewhat unbelievable, this was a woman who lived her life as if it were just a series of events that happened to her, as opposed to being something that she willingly engaged with and co-created. (At the time, victimhood was obviously something I was clearing in my own consciousness, as some of the most extreme examples are reflected for us at times when we need to dig deep and heal ourselves. My gratitude goes out to her). In her mind, she had somehow ended up with three children that she felt she had no responsibility for. She had not been raped, abused or in any way forced to participate in their creation, she was educated about the use of contraceptives and had no religious beliefs that would prevent their use. In this case, her children may have been motivated by her need to hold onto the relationship she had been in at the time (which ended later).
Taking responsibility for our lives means taking responsibility for all the aspects of the decision, from the moment of the idea’s conception to its final outcome. All those ‘what-if’s and potentials are part of the whole package. And they can be painful to consider, but if we are to be whole and vibrant humans, we must accept responsibility in our lives as creative, engaged participants. In the previous example, not having children was within the realm of the woman’s possibility, but might have meant the end of the relationship. She was not willing to accept that outcome, and instead allowed herself to follow someone else’s needs and spiral into the role of victim somewhere along the way.
How do you avoid moving into Victimhood? It is as simple as not allowing yourself to accept the label of victim. We all have a say in how we define ourselves, and being conscious of the definitions we are reflecting is a part of living a life in line with our soul’s needs. Part of becoming a conscious participant is awareness of the old soundtracks that have played through our minds and bodies (in this and other lifetimes). Once we are aware of them, we can change the tape, and start playing ones that better match our own definitions of who we are.
Another example that springs to mind is from an article in the New England Journal of Medicine, about a young man (Paul) who lost a leg in the bombings in London on 7 July, 2005. While waiting for emergency services to arrive, he apparently said to another passenger that on the bright side, he could now enter the 2012 Paralympics. He was not willing to simply accept the role of victim, and by joking about his situation, he was making it clear that he wasn’t about to accept anyone else labelling him as such. Although it was not up to him to take responsibility for the act that caused his injury, it was up to him how he responded to the situation and how he defined himself in the aftermath of the event.
In every situation, remember that you have choice. Even in the darkest moments, the light that exists is powered by that choice. As you take responsibility for each decision you make and each viewpoint you choose to take, your sense of self-respect and self-worth grows incrementally. It is not always easy – you will have to let go of things along the way, sometimes things you love – but it is always worth it for the gifts that result.
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About Jenny:
Jenny Griffin, the ‘Catharsis Coach,’ is passionate about helping you to find the beauty, power and possibility in the midst of transformative experiences. She combines her skills as an intuitive coach and healer with her amazing organizational abilities to provide an environment filled with creative and enjoyable ways to move towards your own unique vision for your life. Her focus on the connection between Mind, Body and Spirit differs from conventional therapeutic thinking, and offers you the opportunity to use all the parts of your story as fodder for personal and spiritual growth.
You can find Jenny at: The Power of Change
