There is a difference between having been victimized and being a victim. To have been victimized is an event (or events) that happened in a specific period in the past. To be a victim is to take on an identity that affects how we interpret our current world and the interactions within it.
What happened to you is true, and it belongs in the record. The trouble starts when the record becomes the house. Every wall gets hung with proof, every room is arranged around the one night or the long years, and a person can live there so long that the house begins to answer to her name.
Any of us can wake up in that house on a hard week. Some of us have lived there for decades. From the inside it tends to look like this:
- Attention goes to the people or institutions who wronged us, and how. In an ordinary tangle, our own energy and behavior go unexamined.
- Things get personal fast.
- A difficulty stops being a single event and turns into proof: some version of “everything bad happens to me.”
- The mind goes looking for what is wrong, and the good in a situation gets hard to find. After a fender bender the first thought is “I can’t believe this! Why did this happen to me?” and the second is often the same thought again.
- There is little equanimity left for life’s inevitable difficulties.
- Powerlessness feels like a plain fact about the world.
- Defensiveness comes up fast, and it is a fence around something tender.
Read these as patterns of a wounded part, not as a verdict on a person. Underneath a victim identity there is usually a young part who was not helped when she was hurt. She learned that the only way to be believed was to keep the evidence in plain sight. She is right that it happened. She needs someone to witness it fully, and once she is believed she can put down the evidence. She is the one who hung the proof on the walls. She dusts the frames and adds a new one when the old ones begin to fade, because the last time the story went into a drawer, nobody asked about it, and the not-asking felt like it had never happened. She has been right about people before, and her wariness is earned.
A victim identity comes from victimization experiences that have not been healed. So, the cure to victim identity is to heal the wound. If you see some of the characteristics above in yourself, here are some suggestions on how to shift your experience of the world.
A person being harmed right now is in danger, and the first step is getting safe. These are for the long afterward. Nothing below asks you to take the blame for what was done to you.
- Tell the true story once, to someone who believes you. Tell the whole of it, the version with no argument to win, to a person who will not fix it or flinch. A witness is what lets the young part set her evidence down.
- Name what happened without letting it become your name. It happened, and it was wrong, and it is also a chapter. You are the one holding the book.
- Make small choices on purpose. Say one plain no. Ask for one thing you need. Power comes back in pieces the size of a sentence.
- Start by taking one place where you often feel the victim and make a conscious effort to shift your thinking. A certain phone call, say, or a certain chair at the family table. Practice one small shift there for a month before you ask it of the rest of your life.
- In everyday friction, ask yourself, “what was my contribution to this dynamic?” This question is for ordinary friction. Harm is a different matter: what was done to you was never your contribution. If you can find none, as often occurs with institution type conflicts, remind yourself that this is not about you personally. It’s just a messed-up system. In fact, balance taking responsibility for your contribution with an awareness that the difficult interaction may not be about you at all. Someone might just be having a bad day.
- Make a practice of looking for the good. Search for ways that the world – universe – god – spirit is supporting you. Make a practice of gratitude. Let it come after the hurt has been heard. Gratitude set on top of an unheard wound is a lid; set beside a heard one, it is a window. Orient to difficulties as a learning experience, once you have been kind to what it cost you.
- Find a therapist, counselor or healer to work through past traumas. Interview more than one. Ask how they work with the young parts as well as the story. A good one will not hurry you.
- Involve yourself in healing and mindfulness practices such as yoga and meditation. Let the body in on the work: a long walk, a slow stretch.
Getting out of a victim identity is all about getting into your own personal power. Try the sentence “I have the power to affect my life” and see where in your body it lands. Your feet may press into the floor, or your spine may lengthen a little, or the upper back may brace with a flat no. Doubt is welcome. It is a part, and it has a reason.
Some days the old identity will talk, and you can answer her kindly and keep walking. That is what taking your power looks like in an ordinary week.
May you be healed from your history of victimization.
May you claim your power and capacity to have a positive effect on your life.
May your own healing inspire the healing in others.
May you be at peace.