How to Shift Away from Victim Consciousness
by Heather O’Neill
Overcoming Victim Consciousness through Forgiveness
Many of us may be on a path of spiritual and/or self-development and growth. However, we can still get caught up in victim consciousness without realizing it. We may be practicing deep awareness and be able to watch our responses to our life situations. Yet, we may still not be free of archetypal victimization patterns passed down through our ancestors.
Sometimes, we need to dig deep to realize. What is at the bottom of our limiting and false beliefs is a sense of being made out to be a victim. Further, this victimization served us in the past. So, our ego will still try and lock into this default setting with its deep roots to get sympathy. We seek love, affection, recognition, and a myriad of other things the ego may need to inflate its sense of self-worth.
Self-Love and Courage to Balance the Sense of Loss
Self-forgiveness, which is not a well-known practice to many of us, can be a wonderful way to release some of these ties to victim consciousness. As we are all energetically connected, self-healing through forgiveness can also heal ancestral and current victim patterns in those around us. However, letting ourselves off the hook for past mistakes is no easy task.
And it takes enormous work at times. We need self-love, courage, and the desire to remove the feeling of a being a victim, even to our own selves. It takes focus on our heart center, on the feeling of love, and the looping of that feeling through our solar plexus (our power center) and then back through our heart center. It takes filling our hearts with love for ourselves. We might choose to give ourselves the same love that we so generously offer to others. This puts us on a much better plane to offer ourselves forgiveness, as well.
Heal Victim Consciousness with Forgiveness and Boundaries
Another huge part of releasing victim consciousness is through the forgiveness of others. Colin Tipping’s Radical Forgiveness is a most incredible teaching on how to engage in this practice on a soul level. Colin talks about viewing the transgressions of others that we are so hurt and angered by as perfect interactions that our high-self sets up for us to heal ourselves. So that what happens “to” us is changed to what happens “for” us. When realize this, we can release the anger around what happened and release the feelings of needing the other person to “pay”, and thus we release our mindset around being a victim.
We must learn to say no to things that we don’t want to do. Start by accepting that we are going to disappoint people we love sometimes. They will recover from this are “tip of the iceberg “steps that can be taken in order not to develop resentment towards others that puts us on a train eventually bound for victim-land. It seems almost an ingrained, cultural and societal construct that we people-please and are afraid to say no to others.
Patterns that Reinforce Victim Consciousness
We don’t want to hurt the feelings of those we care about, so we say yes. By agreeing to ways we don’t want to be spending our time, this devalues what our experiences mean to us. Observe these long-standing patterns and take steps to turn the tide toward honoring our time. Being open and honest with one another can bring small steps that will help to heal the bigger picture of victim consciousness.
And once we start seeing the little things that make us feel trapped, we get more used to the inner exploration. This observance of our own patterns tells us how we get what we want and need. Most often we are unaware of just how frequently we might fall prey to playing the victim. We might tell ourselves “I am so alone” when we simply have a feeling of loneliness.
Ways to Refrain from Prejudicial Chatter
We may tell our self “no one understands me” after one conversation with someone who just wasn’t getting us. We may say “everyone is always screwing me over” after one colleague didn’t follow through with something they had promised. These events activate what Eckhart Tolle terms our “pain body.” It is that part that sees ourselves as a victim, and looks for ways to serve in that role.
We can look at it from a higher-self-perspective. Simply because we feel lonely, misunderstood or hurt, we are, in fact, not a victim. We are simply our spiritual selves having a human experience of the polarization of feelings. And if we can look at it that way, without judgment of it and making ourselves out to be a victim, there will be an immensely greater amount of room for learning and healing, both of which humanity is hungry for right now. And, thus, we establish ourselves as part of the shift away from victim consciousness.
About the Author
Heather is a personal life coach and Reiki Master Teacher. She helps clients throw out their head trash. Heather, an empath and intuitive, works on clearing energetic blocks to reclaim personal power through choosing our thoughts rather than our thoughts choosing us. As a certified Law of Attraction coach, Heather has a keen understanding of how to work with the universal laws to create lives that unfold as we truly want them to. Heather helps clients go beyond egoic reactions to life’s challenges and to see them from the broader perspective of the high-self, which enables us to experience the most growth. heatheroneillcoaching.com
