Growing up is hard to do. We all know this. It’s ugly, messy, and honestly, I’m still doing it. The process doesn’t stop when you reach the magical land of your thirties as I had always assumed it would. I eagerly await the day when I wake up and find a real, live, functioning adult sleeping in my PJ’s, in my bed. I hope she is happy, I hope she is free, fulfilled, wealthy and I especially hope that she appreciates all the stuff I am currently working through to secure her a stable place in the grown-up world.
I often fantasize about my future self. I like to picture her floating through the day in the Yana Prydalna Butterfly House 2.0. I am wearing really cool high heels that miraculously don’t hurt my feet, and my natural 4C hair is full and way more than four inches long. My kitchen smells like fresh lemons. I have a few good friends and a fulfilling career where I am loved and appreciated for my written works and surrounded by people who generally believe I’m brilliant and ahead of my time. I imagine I will be kept busy by my family, philanthropy and all that, but maybe every once in a while, I will find time to look through my latest box of journals and read what my current self, this girl in her early thirties, is presently writing.
I hope my future self is amused by all of this, but has very little in common with me. I hope that by then I will have grown so much that revisiting my current beliefs and mindsets will make her cringe and promptly return the box to the walk-in closet. Maybe by then, I will do so with fondness, not fear, regret or anxiety.
In many ways, that’s what this blog, my journals and coaching practice is about. It’s about learning, and helping people to face the past and grow into the future. It’s about getting to know yourself—and loving yourself—well enough to stop unhealthy cycles and habits that aren’t serving you. It’s about taking your pain and turning it into something useful, and maybe even one day something beautiful.
Along this journey of healing and self-discovery, my biggest challenge, and that of my clients is the judgement we face from society whenever we admit, or even to suggest that we were victimized. We are accused by society, or even well-meaning friends and family of having a ‘victim mindset.’
"Don't be a victim. There are people out there with bigger problems than you."
"Don't choose to be a victim, be a victor."
“I am not the victim”, “I am not going to be a victim” have become our modern world mantras.
There is so much social pressure to adopt ‘positive thinking,’ without ever processing our emotions and the word ‘victim’ has become a sensitive one.
The idea of ‘victimizing’ oneself now gets demonized as being something unhealthy, weak and even immoral. Sometimes, just mentioning negative events, traumatic events, difficult times with our family is forbidden. It is as though using the word victim means we are accepting a lifelong sentence of passivity or defeat. It is as though acknowledging that our parents have hurt us means we are somehow ungrateful, narcissistic, or immature.
But none of the above is the absolute truth.
Let's talk about it.
When the rejection of victimhood is pushed to an extreme, combined with black/white thinking, we become stripped of the right to simply tell truth as it is.
What is wrong with admitting that at some point in our lives, under certain circumstances, we were victims?
The pitfall in refusing to acknowledge the truth is that we become unfair towards ourselves. We may resort to driving all blame onto ourselves, distorting our memories just to comply with what is allowed in our speech.
People who were abused, mistreated or neglected in some way as a child often have internalized guilt and shame. They may carry excessive responsibilities in all relationships, and tend to internalize their anger. They may even become chronically angry at themselves rather than rightfully directing their anger at external events.
While coaching firstborn daughters, I have noticed that instead of getting angry at those they once depended on, they would rather deny their experience, swallow their pain, erase their history and suppress any human emotions they might have. They may resort to rationalization or premature forgiveness.
They say things like;
"Feeling upset won’t change anything",
"My parents did the best they can".
"I had a decent childhood compared to many."
"They will never change, so what’s the point of revisiting the past?"
They say these, but without the necessary emotional process and release. This kind of self-abandonment or premature forgiving does not truly free oneself of pain and suffering. The stifled rage had to go somewhere, and often it morphs into physical ailment, addiction or misdirected anger.
Suppressing the word ‘victim’ entirely may mean we end up with a tendency to blame ourselves for everything, even things that are outside of our control. It may mean we look back at our past and act as though we could have controlled anything, or altered any outcome.
The healthier approach is to simply acknowledge that in certain circumstances, we were nothing but victims of our predicament, of fate, of a situation that we have no control over.
For example, when we were innocent infants, not out of our human will we were brought to a family that was abusive, neglectful, or violent. We could not run away, we were the victim. There was nothing we have done that was wrong to have caused that.
This might be controversial, but I think we must acknowledge that sometimes, we are the victim of a situation.
Of course, it does not mean we get stuck in being a victim.
Empowering people to transcend victimhood is probably the original intent of the whole self-help movement. Unfortunately, with some twists and turns, this sentiment somehow got contorted into toxic positivity, and morphed into a kind of blame-the-victim activity.
How can we heal, if we are not even allowed to be honest about what had happened?
Acknowledging that we were the victim of our parents’ limitations does not mean we ignore all the good they have done, or the gratitude that is there.
It is not black-or-white, nor is it an either-or thing.
We were the victim in some cases, but we might also be the recipient of much love, and we can hold both truths.
Acceptance is the gift we receive when we go through this courageous process of seeing and admitting how we were ‘once a victim. Acceptance may appear to be a passive act, but it is actually a highly proactive action that propels us towards truly resolving the problem. Because it’s not what happened but resistance to what happened that is the problem.
Once we have accepted our once-victimhood, we can stop resisting the truth, and we stop resisting the emotions that come from the truth. This way, we free up the energy that we had used to suppress our emotions. This gives us the power to take responsibility for our future.
We cannot alter the past, but we can be wholeheartedly accountable for our thinking, our mindset, and where we go from here.
For example, we can see that because we were once deprived of certain needs, we now project our paranoia and rage onto people who are in our lives today— friends, therapists or coaches, authority figures, loved ones. We can then redirect this mis-diverted rage to where it rightfully belongs and improve our relationships and lives moving forward.
We were victims of what happened and the circumstances but we will not be the victim of our own thinking and lack of insight. Through the painful but worthwhile rite of passage of glaring at our past truthfully, we can become fully accountable for our mindset and our reactions tomorrow. Isn’t this the true essence of healing?
We were once powerless, passive, helpless, but we now have the ability to make the best of what had happened, and summon resources we do have today to get out of the situation.
Admitting that we were once a victim certainly does not mean we are stuck there. Admitting that we were a victim simply means we shed light on the truth, and free ourselves of blame. As we do that, we are also giving other people permission to tell their stories and free themselves.
We could have chosen a life of denial, suppression and misdirected anger. We could have spent the rest of our lives lashing out unreasonably at those who love us without knowing why. We could have insisted that we were ‘never a victim’ and plough forward in life with false stoicism.
But we can also choose to not do the above.
We can choose to courageously see the painful truth, however glaring. We can walk through the ring of fire that is involved in true forgiveness.
We can also hold both anger and love in our hearts, and transcend to a more well-rounded, mature form of love towards our parents.
Perhaps, true love isn't saying ‘nothing bad happened and you were absolutely perfect.’
True love is saying ‘You have faults and I was hurt by them. But I choose to forgive, though I will not forget what happened,’ and ‘I still love you, but I cannot trust you fully.’
Or, if that is not possible, we say “I choose to honor myself and walk away.’
So. If I may, I would like to suggest that we all stop banning ourselves and others from using the word ‘victim’. It is okay to say we were once a victim. It is even okay to wallow in the sadness and feel sorry for ourselves for a period of time, so we can process the guilt and hurt before we let them go.
This does not mean we are stuck in victimhood and it definitely isn't a lifelong sentence. In fact, it is the doorway to true freedom. It is the most mature way to transcend our past, without per-maturely bypassing our wounds.
Beside, even if you choose to ignore your pain, it doesn't mean that the world is any better for it. Danger is still lurking, the cost of living is still raising, injustice is still so widespread. We don’t know if the bombs will explode tomorrow. We feel that we are on the edge of time.
But if you choose to address your wounds, the world just may be better for it.
Also, there is an estimated eight billion people in the world currently. If you wait to win the victim Olympics to get permission to be the main character in your own life, you are doomed. I truly believe that.
(If you liked this article, you might also enjoy Learning To Receive, It's Okay To Be Wrong and Is Being Delusional A Good Thing?)
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