The Victim

A couple of blogs ago, I talked about the power of story-making ending with the question “Who would you be without your stories?” In that regard, one of the most powerful stories that can keep us stuck in life is the story of feeling like “The Victim”. The Victim archetype is very powerful and can sometimes become the central core belief about ourselves around which we weave the stories of our lives. The Victim archetype is born early in life and is one of the survival adaptation archetypes that all of us possess. All archetypes are impersonal energies with both light and shadow sides depending on how we manifest it in our lives. The Victim can be born early in our development when we first experience a sense of powerlessness. Children often experience very little power in their lives. The adult caregivers very often make all decisions for them about the what, when, where, how and why of their lives. Many children feel that parents have “power over rather than power with” them. When they first experience this sense of powerlessness, children will often use the words, “it’s not fair”. This is the first sense of feeling like a Victim. When children do not get their legitimate needs met; when they are bullied; abused; or often unfairly punished; the victim archetype is strengthened. While these examples are overt displays of Powerlessness there are also other more covert ways that children lose their voice. This happens when they experience a very intrusive parent; overbearing parent (tiger-mom); a fused family dynamic where individuality is not allowed any expression and/or punished; emotional blackmailing and using shame as a parenting tool. In addition, children do as they see not as they are told. So, if they see the adults in their families play out the Victim archetype in how they perceive their lives, they also learn to model that behavior as adults.

The medical intuitive Carolyn Myss says that “the core issue of the Victim is whether it’s worth giving up your own sense of empowerment to avoid taking responsibility for your independence”. Whenever we feel like a victim, it maybe because of a few fundamental reasons: boundary violations, lack of personal integrity, power/powerlessness mix-up all of which leads us to not finding our voice. Finding your voice and speaking your truth can be an extremely daunting task for many of us, especially for women. In families where speaking your truth had very negative consequences, children learn very quickly that the best way to survive is to silence that voice, ignore your inner intuition, accept your learned helplessness and blame your failures on others, fate, karma, conspiracies and so on. In some adults, the Victim archetype becomes the central commanding voice in their lives and guides their entire life narrative. The social groups they interact with, books they read, occupation that they might have or not, support groups they attend, religious groups they might belong to, political leaders they follow all feed this story of “it’s not fair and it is somebody else’s fault”. For some of us this identity is so strong that even if there was a way to break free of it, we hesitate because if “I am not a Victim then Who am I?” This fear of losing our identity can be terrifying that we choose to keep this story alive. Afterall, we may have invested decades of time and energy into keeping this autobiographical narrative activated.

So, how does one break out of this story? The fundamental issue with the victim story is to challenge your relationship to power. Feeling like a victim is the first indication that there has been a power/powerlessness mix-up, meaning either you feel you are powerless when you do have power or you assume you have power in situations where you actually don’t. So, I would invite you to take a closer look at evaluating where you have power and where you don’t and in situations where you do have power, taking that power back and owning it. Another indication of feeling like a victim is that there has been some sort of boundary violation. According to the shame researcher Dr. Brene Brown, boundaries means knowing what you like and what you don’t like and communicating that consistently to self and others. Setting boundaries is an act of self-love and will involve disappointing others. Brene says, “Daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to choose loving ourselves even if we risk disappointing others”. It is this risk of disappointing others that terrifies most people about finding their voice. In the short term, it maybe easier to silence our voices, avoid taking responsibility for our independence and hide behind shame and blame. In the long run, this pattern of the Shadow Victim destroys our life energy and keeps us feeling stuck in our victim stories.

Bringing our Shadow Victim to light requires us to practice a lot of self-compassion. Understanding that the victim story is a maladaptive coping strategy, developed by a young child to survive its environment, may help us evoke the feelings of compassion towards our inner child victim. It is imperative that we do not shame this victim voice but with courage, compassion and kindness find ways to gently guide it into the light of self-empowerment. May we be kind to ourselves.

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