We all know someone who has mastered having a victim mentality. People who hold this mindset tend to be pessimistic, and wallow in self-pity. They are borderline addict to gaining sympathy and attention from others. Often the ones who express victim mentality are in reality sabotaging their own life. They blame others for their misfortunes. In this mindset, they feel powerless and hopeless. They do not want to accept any blame, nor do they feel empowered to take action to change the outcomes of their life.
Initially, people who encounter someone with a victim mentality will sympathize with their plights. After a while of hearing about and witnessing similar occurrences, then they catch on that this person may actually be “sick” with the victim mentality. When they try to offer words of encouragement or motivate the “victim”, they ultimately are faced with someone who lashes out with logic as to why and how they’ve been victimized by others, society, the economy, and life in general. They find almost every excuse to remain in the victim role along their path in life. Perhaps they complain that their boss is out to get them, or their lover is cruel to them, or that they can’t catch a break. Life is always happening TO them instead of FOR them. Everyone and everything are out to get them in the end, at least in their mind.
Friends and family of those with a victim mentality find it frustrating to try to sway them to perceive the situation in a more optimistic fashion. They will relentlessly attempt to strengthen, uplift, and motivate the victim minded individual. All of this effort is met with a desperate justification as to why they are and will continue to be a victim in almost every situation. The victim minded individual refuses to consider their status in any other fashion than being the victim.
If only we could get the victim minded to understand that life is not happening to them, but rather it is happening for them. Everyone experiences positive and negative situations in life. The trick is to be and feel grateful for the positive experiences, and to express our gratitude every time life blesses us. When we go through a negative experience in life, we are supposed to ponder and reflect on the situation. Negative occurrences are intended to expand our understanding and teach us something valuable. We should think about what our role was within that negative experience, and what we could do in the future to avoid a similar situation and outcome.
Life is happening for our greater good. We don’t always recognize or understand the good that is hidden within negative experiences, but if we take the time to focus on it all, we usually can find at least one positive aspect. Retraining our brain to stop jumping to a victim, pessimist, or cynical mentality is the key. We have to start taking ownership of our mind and its thoughts. We must feel empowered enough to redirect our initial negative frame of mind to a more positive one. We can do this by acknowledging the negative thought and then forcing ourselves to think of its complete opposite. What would the positive outcome be in that situation?
Having a victim mentality is a choice. People choose to have a victim mindset. They don’t want to accept responsibility for the outcomes of their life, particularly if they’ve made poor decisions that led to those undesirable outcomes. That would mean them facing the fact that they’ve done something erroneously. It’s much easier to point the finger at something or someone else. It’s the lazy human’s easy way out. It is always significantly more challenging to admit one’s own errors, faults, poor judgements, bad choices, etc. than to point the finger outward. Most people choose ease over challenge.
The main issue with the victim mentality is that it renders the person helpless. They feel completely disempowered to change the outcome or their future. The victim mentality offers people an excuse to not have to put forth effort into their life. Again, life is happening to them rather than for them.
The truth is that life is happening for us all. Based on our choices, actions, and attitudes, we can have a fulfilling life that we lead or one that leads us straight into misery. People who feel in control of their life and destiny tend to vibrate at higher energetic frequencies than those who feel victimized by life. The lower energetic frequencies of the victim minded can be very powerful and may bring down others who are at higher vibrations. This is tied to the saying that “misery loves company.” Those who vibrate at a lower energy want others down there with them. So, they will work hard to get others to lower their energy to match their own. The victim minded almost purposely resist having their energies uplifted to match those around them who have a positive perspective on life and offer love, hope, and reassurance. It is incredibly challenging to turn the “tide” in the mind of someone who holds tight to their victim mentality.
For those who suffer from a victim mentality, the first step is to recognize this pattern of thought within yourself. Next, make up your mind to start changing that mental pattern. Once you’ve decided to change, then you can start to take steps toward retraining your brain to think differently. You can do this by writing down each of your negative thoughts, and then write down their complete opposite next to them. Ask yourself if the positive outcome is a possibility, and if your mind instinctively wants to “shut down” the optimistic outcome as a potential, then dig deeper asking yourself why at each excuse your mind proposes. This will force you to start to untangle your conditioned victim mindset.
For those who get frustrated with a friend or loved one who suffers from a victim mentality, then be sure to protect yourself by offering your words of hope and assistance, but then distancing yourself when you feel that your higher vibration is being pulled down the victim vortex. High vibration individuals must protect their high vibration from being depleted and drained by those vibrating at much lower energies. Think of the mind of someone who usually has a victim mentality as a bucket with a large hole in it. No matter how much positivity (water) you put into the bucket, it can never fill up nor overflow because of the hole within it. You are basically expending your own positive energies trying to fill their mind with positivity to uplift them, but the truth is they don’t want to be uplifted and so the large hole remains, and their mental bucket continues to drain your positivity until your own bucket starts to get empty. Don’t allow your positive energy to be drained by a victim minded individual. You can offer them some positive vibes, but don’t continue to pour positivity into them when it becomes obvious that they don’t care to elevate their own thinking. Set a limit on how much of your positive energy you are willing to pour into their mental bucket with a hole. You cannot patch the hole in their mind nor give them a new bucket, they must be the ones to do this. When the victim minded decides to patch their own negative mind or to embrace a new mindset altogether (a positive one), then and only then will your positive energies be put to good use when you try to help them. The shift and fix must occur within them.
Whether you have high positive energies or low victim energies, the truth is that life happens for us and not to us. We are to learn and grow from each and every experience/situation, both positive and negative. When we embrace growth and expansion, then we are on the right path in life to live well in a healthy and balanced way.