Understanding Victim Mentality: How to Reclaim Your Agency
It was rush hour after work. I was on a fully packed bus trying to zone out so that I didn’t feel the push of bodies against me. When I got home, my wallet was missing. I called the police, who suggested I list all documents that were in there and get them replaced immediately. They also said it was very unlikely I’d find that wallet.
That bitter feeling of being victimized took a long time to leave my body.
That’s one common occurance of being victimized that most of us have experienced in some fashion. There are much worse experiences. Feeling like a victim can happen anywhere, including work, where you feel you have no agency.
You can develop a victim mentality if you end up being victimized repeatedly. This most often happens because the victimizer is bigger or has authority we don’t believe we have. It can (and often does) develop in childhood: you might be from a physically abusive home where there was no safety; you might live in a rough neighbourhood; you might have loving but very strict parents who you had to obey without question, and where your desires are discounted in favour of those of a parent. Whatever the way you developed the victim mentality, it left you feeling you had no agency and had no personal power.
When I feel victimized I feel helpless and powerless. Sometimes we won’t be able to avoid it, as in situations where we’re dealing with someone who is aggressive and has more physical power than we do. But most times we can overcome feeling or being victimized. When we do, we’ve developed victor mentality.
Developing victor mentality has a slow learning curve. After all, it took a lifetime to learn to feel powerless, so be patient with yourself as you learn.
The first thing is to identify the shock point. I’m not talking about the event, but rather how the shock felt like in your body. It might be ber a sharp breath in, followed by rapid heart beat. It might be something else, but it will be something that activates your stress system. Most often, you won’t have time to examine this until much later. Whenever you do have the time, bring the experience up in your mind so that you can feel that moment.
The next thing is to make some space, because in the moment you had no space to take alternative action. Making space usually involves some form of breathing long and slow, until you feel that stress move from your chest to your waist. If you do this, you will very likely feel calmer and more open to examining what happened for you.
That is when you can get curious about what thoughts or ideas you had about the event that caused you to feel powerless. It might be some belief, like “He’s the authority and knows more than me”, or “I need to stay on the good side of her”, or something that says the other person has agency than you do. My suggestion here is to question these beliefs or ideas, because while they might have some truth to them, chances are their truth isn’t absolute. For instance, it might be true the person has more authority, but that doesn’t mean you can’t speak up if something is important to you, or at least delay taking action until you’ve had an opportunity to think it through.
The experience I had of having my wallet stollen on public transit hadn’t been the first time but it was the last time: I stopped taking the subway, I converted my daytimer to an electronic one, and I found ways to protect my belongings while in public. One small step to moving from a victim mentality to a victor mentality.
Quote of the Week
I don’t want to be a victim. I want to be a victor.
― Mellody Hobson
The “I” in victim
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Maryanne Nicholls is a Registered Psychotherapist. To find out more, gain access to her weekly newsletter, meditations and programmes, sign up at www.thejoyofliving.co .