This is a dangerous mindset to get into. I was reminded about this yesterday and by a strange coincidence was also reading a biography about a politician who learned to use this mentality to his advantage. Victim mindset is something that can creep into your thinking and you need to watch out because it kills relationships both with yourself and others.
First off, everyone has this mindset. Everyone has built in defense mechanisms that look for sources of discomfort to identify them quickly. Consequently we are always looking to shift blame for our problems on to others. Children are really good at doing this. They are constantly making sure you know how victimized they are. They learn over time what is an acceptable level of this blame shift by constant instruction from parents and other people.
I would argue that your ability to take control over your own life and your own destiny is in direct contention with the amount of blame that you assign to others for your challenges, miseries, and problems. Psychologists say that this relationship between taking responsibility for your own action versus assigning blame to external forces creates a belief system that forms your self image. The stronger your belief that you are in control – the stronger your self image. The more responsibility you assign to outside forces – the weaker your self image.
Probably one of the many dangers that teenagers get from being glued to social media all day and night long. They are in a constant feedback loop with many others and the tendency to start to believe that your image is based on the reaction of others, or how others feel, or what others think is an easy trap to fall into. The individuals with a stronger self image, tend to dominate the narrative and the people that are still in development of this self image belief system easily fall into the victim mindset.
Once you have conditioned your belief system to label your self image as a victim then you reinforce this with several techniques. We have seen them all. It is addictive behaviour in a way. You start looking for sympathy and attention, you have a million excuses why you cannot take action and get out of your comfort zone, you are always right and you just cannot accept advise or criticism, and finally you never accept responsibility, easily assigning the blame to others for any challenge or failure.
So if you find that you are constantly finding evidence of how bad it is, finding yourself repeating the same challenges over and over again, finding that it is fun to talk negatively about everyone around you, and are constantly worried about what others are thinking about you – then you may have inadvertently let the victim mindset set in. Do not worry. You can get out of it quickly and easily. I will give credit to Hari Nair for his thoughts on this subject.
First accept accountability into your life. That is what the 365 commitment has done naturally for me. Every morning and every night I am reviewing what I am going to do and how well I did it. This constant review process has made me highly accountable to myself. I have also learned to forgive myself or failure. Every night, when I complete my commitment and review my day, I am forced to acknowledge failure. I just simply do not succeed at everything. I am forgiving myself every evening before I close out the day.
The best advise for avoiding this mindset, is to live in the present moment. I think meditation has helped me with this the most. A simple thing really, but just a few moments every day has taught me how to avoid oppressive thinking and allow myself a few moments to remove myself from the past, or worries about the future and only think about right now. I always thought this was a bunch of hokey, but now I think I understand what it means to be aware. When you see reality for what it is, and make no judgement on it, you can see clearly when you are playing the victim. You can also develop a future vision of your self. This goes a long way to creating a better self image. Another recommendation is to focus on what you are grateful for. I have heard people creating a gratitude journal, that may work. Or perhaps just simply acknowledge that gratitude is probably the polar opposite of being a victim.
The important point is that this victim mindset is not a on or off concept. It is very gradual. You can slowly fall into the trap, and you can slowly work your way out. However, I think we all need to recognize the symptoms so that we can work on making sure we are taking responsibility for our own lives, our own course of action and having confidence in our own self image.
Guy Reams (562)
