How Committed are You to Being a Victim?

If you continue to see yourself as a victim, you will continue to attract in perpetrators. Why would any of us want that?

If the role of victim is something you choose to play in your life, then at some point in your early, formative years you made the discovery that playing the role of victim gave you power. Power to get what you wanted, whether that was love, attention, sympathy, importance, material possessions, acceptance, lowered expectations, the list goes on.

Now you are an adult and playing the victim is no longer getting you what you want, in fact it is bringing you lots that you don't want. It's funny sometimes, how much like a lab rat we can be. Remember in junior high science learning about conditioning?

A rat might learn through conditioning that every time he presses a lever, he gets food. Eventually if the positive reward only comes sporadically, he will still continue to press the lever.

Lets be smarter than the lab rat! Even if playing the victim does occasionally bring you something you wanted, it usually comes with many negatives. It's just not worth it.

So how does one go about releasing this pattern?

Be Accountable
Be accountable for everything in your life. If your boss refuses to give you a raise, be accountable for not being in a place where you were ready to receive a raise.

If your child yells at you and refuses to do their chores, be accountable for being in a place where your energy matched up with that interaction. (Side note: This example with the child is a little different because you are the parent and have stewardship. You can be accountable for everything that's playing out in your life while still holding the child accountable for their choices. Yes you still teach, correct, and discipline.)

So does that mean it's your fault that your child chose to do that? Did you make them behave that way because of the place you were in? No. You did not step in and suddenly take control of someone else's agency.

I like to think of it as a dance. This dance is a testimony to me of the omniscience of God because how else could everything line up with such intricacy? The behavior your child is displaying lines up perfectly with what you are attracting in at that moment. You have stepped into each others' path and begun a dance (or continued a dance you've been doing for years!)

Your energy has matched up, your needs have matched up. You have attracted in that dance. You always have the option of dancing a different dance, or if you were different and your child wasn't, he or she would dance that dance with someone else.

And therein, for some of us lies the fear. If I choose a different dance, will he/she still dance with me? Or will this person leave my life?

What a leap of faith to leave it in God's hands. To trust that if you 'dance the dance' God wants you to dance, the path of that child you love, or that spouse you love will eventually come back to you healthier and ready to participate in a new dance, a new role. And if they don't in this life, trust that all is in God's hands. Release the fear, the need for control, the need for the old and comfortable.

It has been my experience that the vast majority of the time, the people in our lives are very willing to learn a new dance. In fact, if it's your child, they probably already know it and are trying to teach you!

And so in these interactions with other people whom we have no control over, we can work on healing whatever it is in ourselves that has matched us up with the pattern in this person at this time. We can release the need to have this in our lives.

The deepest level of accountability comes when we accept accountability for the life we were born into. If on some level we believe that some higher power 'did this to us', then the whole premise of our lives becomes victim oriented.

Do we know for certain how much we participated in choosing the details of our lives? Most of us don't. But if we choose to believe that we at least played a part in this choice then we have taken full accountability for our lives. We have released this victim energy at it's core.

This is an exciting and at the same time a deeply peaceful feeling. To know that we chose this. That this life was exactly what we needed in order to progress to the next level of our growth. The fear leaves us as we realize that no one has power over us.

To use imagery, no one has backed us into a room and closed the door. The discovery that we ourselves walked into the room and closed the door is empowering because we realize that we then, have the power to get up, open the door, and walk out.

No one is standing out there holding a key. The key is in our pocket, and has been all along.

Anyone who's worked on releasing victim energy knows, however, that sometimes we reach for that key and find that the pocket's sewn shut. So we go looking for an unpicker, right? If that happens to you, trust that the journey of looking for the unpicker is a journey you needed to be on. Be patient. You'll probably find a lot more than the unpicker and do significant healing on the way.

(I know, you're thinking someone else sewed that pocket shut, again the victim/perpetrator cycle. Nope. You sewed it shut. And you'll get it open when you are good and ready. Be accountable!)

Being accountable doesn't mean self-loathing, either. That's just called being a passive victim. That way you are the perpetrator and the victim. (Boy, we can sure be crazy sometimes! Trust me, I've been there.)

There wouldn't be any purpose once you discovered that you locked yourself in a room in beating yourself up for it. There isn't time for blame and it takes so much energy. Forget the blame, get into solutions. Be accountable.

Remove the Payoffs, Meet the Need
Figure out as best you can, what your payoffs are for being victimized. What are you getting out of it? Why do you need it (see my post: "Why do I Need This?")

Once you have figured out the payoff, remove it. A plant with no light or air will eventually die. Payoffs are like plant food to your victim energy. Are you getting sympathy? Quit talking about it. Are you getting out of some responsibility? Don't let yourself off the hook. Face the responsibility.

Then find a way to meet the need that this victim-payoff cycle is attempting to meet. If you need attention and love, create that in your life in healthy ways, beginning with loving and attending to yourself.

If you need more rest, less responsibility, learn how to ask for help appropriately. Find people in your life you can rely on, they are probably already there and eager to help in healthy ways.

If you need admiration (the martyr game) remind yourself that you cannot control what others think or how they feel about you. Let go of the control. Reconnect with God, the source of love and individual worth.

Be Grateful
We are commanded to be grateful in all things. "And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things..." D & C 59:21. I think the next logical step to confessing God's hand in our life is being grateful for it. This attitude grows from a trust that He loves us and is shaping and guiding the masterpiece that is you.

When our inclination is to gripe and moan, choosing to stop and give thanks immediately takes us out of victim energy and into growth and accountability. It's trusting that no one is 'doing this to us'. We chose this and are grateful for it.

Be Response-able
Once we have chosen to be accountable and even grateful, we can then be response-able. In other words, always remember the meaning of that word, we are able to respond. Just as we learn in amazing stories like "The Hiding Place", we always get to choose our response. This is another way to take back our power. When we play the victim role, when we blame, we give up our power. Take it back by being accountable about how you choose to respond.

If you are entrenched in victim energy you might think, "But I can't respond this way and I can't respond that way." You might get 'others focused' and start noticing what everyone else has done to you to limit your options. Stop that. Be accountable. Be grateful that you don't have those options. Because of that you'll be led to better ones. You'll grow more, you'll heal more.

Repeat over and over, "I'm able to respond", until your thoughts are off the obstacles and onto solutions. Pray for help, you are powerful. You can do this.

Forgive
When we have been truly harmed by another, forgiveness is an essential step in letting go of victim energy. Stop thinking of people as perpetrators and of yourself as a helpless victim. See yourself as a powerful individual and think of them as people who created challenges in your life. Challenges you are grateful for, and able to respond to! Then remind yourself why you are grateful for those challenges. Where have they led you? What have you made of your life because of them.

Forgive yourself as well. Forgiving ourselves makes it so much easier to forgive others. Usually when we are stuck and unable to forgive someone else, it's because we have some forgiveness work to do with ourselves. It's amazing how quickly those walls can come down and forgiveness of others comes once we have forgiven ourselves.

Sometimes we aren't even sure what we need to forgive ourselves for, so start by just forgiving yourself for not being perfect, for not handling everything as well as you would have liked to, for creating these things in your life.

Press On
If someone has spent a lifetime committed to being a victim, the beginnings of change can feel as if they are trying to remove something that has reached it's tentacles into every area of their bodies. They heal one area only to turn around and notice five more problem spots.

The great news is that the process of removing and healing this pattern in our lives will progress almost exponentially. The further you get from victim energy, the more you will love being free from it and the less comfortable you will be in that negative place.

Eventually it will be a place you only fall back into occasionally, and when you do, you'll quickly identify it, learn from it, and leave it.

Every person I have known with a strong commitment to victim energy was an immensely powerful person, hiding behind a role of helplessness. If playing the victim is a role you are trying to change, trust in the knowledge that you are powerful.

Watch out for self-sabotage. My favorite story of self-sabotage was created by a good friend of mine. She came to my home and announced she was 'done being a victim'. She wanted to get started right away.

It turns out she wasn't really done, and she didn't really want to get started. What she wanted was some attention and some fixing. We spent an hour and a half poring over affirmations, typing them up and personalizing a program for her to start. We printed out the paper and she was so excited!

I walked her to the door and told her good-bye, so excited for her. After she left I went back to my office and saw sitting on my desk the papers we had printed out, her whole program. She wasn't ready. She'd played me well!

I called her and said, "Nice sabotage. You left your papers here." (You probably should know she's been my best friend since we were 6 years old and we can be pretty frank with each other.) She laughed and I laughed and I threw the paper away. She never asked for it. And that was okay because about 3 years later she really was ready. And now she's a new person. It was just part of her journey.

I tell you this story to remind you that victim energy is complicated. Be pleased with any progress you make. Just keep moving forward and know that things are changing. To use a mixed metaphor, even though you are fighting an uphill battle, you will find that your momentum increases and pretty soon you'll be flying down the hill enjoying the scenery!