Do you have a victim mentality? Do you know someone who does? Where nothing is ever your fault, the world hates you, and everyone is in a conspiracy to make sure your life is hell and every time you get to take one step forward you are knocked two steps back.
I was in that mindset for years. It is very hard to get out of. To retrain your thought process and over talk your immediate responses so you are not always just a reactive creature of habit. Change takes alot of work. Our innate sense of being is to just go with the easiest or the most comfortable. Even if we are miserable it is something we know, something we can hide in. Who has time to relearn the right way to behave when our lives are busy enough as it is. We muddle through. We run away if we get into situations we can't deal with, or we just curl up internally and go through our lives as mere shells of existence.
The following read talks more in depth of the victim mentality and ways we can overcome.
Owning Your Own Controls
Copyright 2005 Eldon Taylor
What makes the difference between two children raised in
the same environment with the same parents when one ends up
a neuro-surgeon and the other a hardened violent criminal?
What makes the difference between two patients suffering in
a hospice center from identical conditions when one
requires very little medication and is liked by all, while
the other suffers bitterly regardless of the medication and
no one really wants to be around them? What are the subtle
differences that seem to allow one person to live a certain
life style free of illness while another doing the same
things becomes ill as a result? What defines a stimulus as
stressful to one while the same exact stimulus is welcomed
with excitement by another? The answer is so simple as to
be overly obvious.
In my work, I have had the opportunity to work with a wide
range of individuals in differing settings, ranging from
the inmate incarcerated in maximum security to the terminal
patient in the hospice center. Over the years my
observations ultimately led to this hypothesis: the persons
who seem to suffer most consider themselves to be victims.
The classic victim scenario in the prison generally goes
something like this: all but for the grace of God there go
you. Translated by the inmate population, this means
something like, "What would you do? Where would you be?
After all, my daddy was an alcoholic, my mother was a
prostitute and the neighbor boy hung heroine on me when I
was only eight".
The fact is, our environment and circumstance do imprint us
in profound ways. Our very ability to cope depends in large
on our choices and they are predetermined in large by our
enculturation process. Thus, what else could the victim of
these tragedies do?
We all grow up with some substantially similar ideas and
notions about what is fair and acceptable. We all tend to
say things like "When I'm a parent, I'll do it
differently"; and yet, when our children act in some way
that meets with our disapproval, we respond just as our
parents did. Psychologist call this process imprinting. In
very simple terms, if you raise a duckling with chickens,
it will behave as a chicken. There is a marvelous story
that illustrates this point.
It seems one day that an eagle flew over a chicken coop. To
his amazement, pecking in the yard below, was a large
gathering of chickens and a lone, beautiful female eagle.
He swooped down for a closer look and the chickens together
with the eagle fled to the chicken house. For days the
eagle watched the chickens from a distance until one day he
was certain that he could stop the beautiful eagle before
she reached the chicken house. With the prowess of an eagle
he was suddenly in between the eagle and the chicken house.
She trembled. He spoke, "What are you doing living down
here like a chicken". She answered, "I am a chicken". He
argued, showing her the similarities between himself and
her. He told her of what it was like to be an eagle and
soar high above the earth. His stories only frightened her.
Finally she said, "Well if I'm an eagle then you will not
harm me". He responded in the affirmative. She said, "Then
step back and show me." As he stepped backed she seized the
opportunity to run into the chicken house. When the other
chickens questioned her about the encounter, she told them
all of how she had outsmarted the eagle. Of course, all the
chickens commended her for tricking the eagle.
Many of us are like the female eagle. We outsmart ourselves
with betrayals of who we really are. Our choices are
predicated on our beliefs and our beliefs have been adopted
from the same process inherent to the story about the
chickens and the chicken house. Here is another example of
how this kind of reason pervades who and what we are.
One day a man walking the streets of Manhattan passed
beneath a high rise complex that consisted of very
expensive condominiums. As he passed under the balcony of
one of the two story units a flower pot which had been
placed precariously close to the balcony edge fell and
crashed down on his head. Now imagine this man's choices.
What could he do? What would be the normal thing to do?
Well, he could take the broken pot back to its owners and
put it guess where. Administer a beating to the idiot that
put the flower pot too close to the edge, that's what most
people respond with as their first thought when I have
presented this scenario to audiences. What else could he
do? Well, he could be metaphysical. You know, kismet,
what's to be will be, after all, maybe the blow to his head
rearranged some neurons and now he will experience higher
consciousness. So just be metaphysical and act as if it was
supposed to happen and just go on down the road. What else
could he do? Well, he could be an opportunist. You know
that flower pot fell from a wealthy person's ledge. Whip
lash, concussion, something like that---sue the sucker!
What else could he do? What would you do? How about taking
the flower to a florist, potting it and returning it as a
gift of love? Could you just as well do that? Of all the
possibilities, which one do you think would produce the
best outcome for yourself in terms of happiness, wholeness
and even health?
The fact is, the normal person has been trained to behave
in a normal manner. Normal means that they have a right to
become angry and exact punishment. Robert Laing once said
something like "normal man has educated himself to be
normal and thus to become absurd" in his book THE POLITICS
OF EXPERIENCE. The emotional reaction termed anger is just
one such absurdity. What happens to the body when one
becomes normal is no less than a weakening of the immune
system and further, suspended states of fight flight, or as
we know it in more modern man, anxiety and depression,
literally produce chemistry that is toxic to the human
condition. As Dr.'s Steven Locke and Douglas Colligan point
out in their book, THE HEALER WITHIN, these hostile
emotions, victim, if you will, feelings, literally can
condition the body in the direction of disease as well as
produce certain diseases in and of themselves (1986).
The correct answer in our flower pot analogy is of course,
pot the flower and return it as a gift. The idea is not
foreign in terms of possible alternatives and yet it is
seldom ever considered. Our choices arise from our
definitions and they have been incubated all too often in
chicken houses, but let's stop for a moment and look at one
of the preferred enculturated choices from the human
chicken house. My work and research has demonstrated that
for every fear there is an anger response. Sometimes the
anger is withheld, turned in, and sometimes it is acted
out. Nevertheless, there is no such thing as anger without
some fear underpinning it! Now, what exactly is anger? My
examination of this cycle of fear and anger has given rise
to an acronym that I often use when describing anger.
A---a, N---nasty, G---getting, E---even, R---response. A
nasty getting even response. If fear and anger are
circular, what is it that gives rise to feeling frightened,
anxious or nervous, becoming angry and responding in a
fight/flight way when the stimulus is something like the
way my employer speaks to me, the way my significant other
looks at me, or just the stuff one feels when cut off in
five o'clock traffic and given the infamous bird. None of
these things are truly life threatening and after all,
isn't that what the fight/flight functions are wired in
for, the preservation of the species?
Dr. Carl LaPresch used to speak of the four "F's" in his
introductory lectures regarding basic psychology. These
four primitive drives were the basis for most behavior. In
fact, it was Carl who first suggested to me that perhaps
the highest act of human consciousness was cortical
inhibition---over riding the wired in responses that can
occur in the primitive brain. The four "f's" are easy to
remember and oriented to species preservation: fight,
flight, feeding and---well the propagation of the species.
Why then a fight/flight response to a synthetic
stimuli---that is a stimuli that is not life threatening?
What special lens do we attach to certain events in life
that give rise to a perception of threat when indeed the
threat is not a tiger in hot pursuit? My early hypothesis
regarding the fear/anger loop eventually led to the
conclusion that perceived threats were rejection oriented.
In other words, our individual intrinsic value was denied.
Interestingly though, for most of us, the normal strategy
for avoiding rejection is itself the ultimate rejection.
There are two ways to be tied up in the world. One is to
have someone literally bind you and another is simply to
tether oneself to a thread, refusing either to pull hard
enough to break it or to let it go. Many of our beliefs are
the product of the latter. We refuse to let them go. Like
the eagle raised by the chickens, we know what we are
expected to do and define our behavior accordingly. Thus,
to resolve conflict we establish strategies designed to
protect us from rejection. Among these strategies our
defense mechanisms function, as well as our attitudes,
toward everything we will encounter in our lives.
When I was a boy my definitions included labels and what I
have termed for years as the no-don't syndrome. In my many
lectures throughout America and Europe, the audience has
repeatedly verified that my experience was not unique.
Indeed, it was the rule. If this generalization applies,
then most of us were raised with statements like: "You're
not old enough." "You're stupid or that's stupid."
"Children are to be seen and not heard." "Don't do
this"---"you can't do that"---and so forth as well as a
host of labels.
It was not long before I was wearing glasses and one of my
best friends was black. My early definitions were in direct
conflict with my experience; still, various strategies for
coping with this conflict developed, albeit most
unconsciously.
It wasn't until I was in my thirties that I learned that
not only did I wear glasses and have black friends, but my
grandfather was Jewish and my great grandmother was Native
American. For years I had coped by demonstrating that I was
"tough enough" to wear glasses and not get called four-eyes
and to stand up for what just inherently seemed wrong and
later became known to me as bigotry and racism. In other
words, my defense strategy was compensatory---aggression
would align my inner with the outer---my experience with my
training as a child could avoid conflict by simply becoming
too tough for someone to challenge my behavior.
The result was devastating. Not only did I poison myself,
but the never ending quest to justify my actions produced
increasing needs for aggression. My relationships
deteriorated and/or were destroyed, and well, you can just
imagine the havoc wreaked in my own life. The method of
choice for conflict in my particular upbringing was
aggressive---and hostility was the norm.
What I have found over the years of life and work is that
once again, this was not a unique pattern. Oh, the
circumstances may vary from individual to individual, but
the essence of the lesson never did. The result for many of
us is a mechanism called blame. That brings us right back
to our inmate whose daddy was an alcoholic and so forth.
Alas, a light went on that set years of work and research
into perspective, at least for me.
Now here is the bottom line: as long as one blames anything
or anyone they are effectively tied up. There is nothing
they can do. They are victims of their circumstances. They
can only but whimper. As victims, they are helpless. As
victims, perhaps they are even due benefits such as
sympathy, attention, special care and so on. But as
victims, they are not in charge of their circumstances
and/or their responses.
Applying this theory I discovered that regardless of the
circumstances, from hospice to prison, the suffering was
directly related to blame or "victim-hood". What is more, I
discovered that on the opposite side of this continuum,
rested the self responsible. The person who assumed control
of their own life and found creative solutions for
difficult situations---returning the flower, if you will,
replanted in a new flower pot.
These responsible individuals were in charge of their own
inner environments. Their secret was simple, they did not
become angry and involved in blame. Oh they did not
necessarily accept everyone or anything, in fact, quite the
contrary in some instances, but they did not waste time
eliminating their possibilities by divesting their power
via blame. They took the initiative to resolve situations
positively and assumed the responsibility for doing so.
Unlike the whimpering victim, they were what they made of
the stuff of life and accepted so.
There is an interesting experiment that has been replicated
many times and perhaps addresses the effect this kind of
hopelessness/helplessness mentality can have on physical
health. Dogs were placed in Pavlovian slings where they
could do nothing when electric shock was administered by
psychologist Martin Seligman at the University of
Pennsylvania in an experiment to determine the effects of
helplessness. Seligman suggests that many of us have
learned that nothing can be done in many circumstances to
make a difference. Once the dogs were conditioned to the
shock they were then placed in cages with floors that on
one side of the cage an electric grid could be used to
apply shock while on the other side of a low barrier wall
the dog could escape the shock. What Seligman discovered
has many ramifications. Dogs who had not been conditioned
in the sling ran around frantically when shock was first
administered. They learned to jump the small wall and
escape the shock. They became so good at it that when the
electricity was turned on, they simply got up and casually
jumped over the wall. However, dogs that had been
conditioned to the sling ran frantically at first just as
the unconditioned dogs but soon quit and only whimpered.
They accepted the shock passively and thus the whimpering
shocked dog metaphor (Ibid). This sense or conditioned
belief in victim-hood has been demonstrated to effect the
immune system in a negative manner. The Institute of Noetic
Sciences has funded much of the research in what is now
termed PNI or psychoneuroimmunology and this body of work
shows clearly, as does the entire body of literature
regarding mind/body wellness, that the deleterious effects
of certain mental processes on the body can literally kill
( ). Nothing I could do---helplessness---victim-hood---this
side of the responsibility equation is among the worst of
mental processes one can adopt regardless of its source. In
fact, in a paper that is now in press, we learned from a
follow-up study of terminally diagnosed patients conducted
by PROGRESSIVE AWARENESS RESEARCH, that the physicians
attitude is somehow more influential on patient life
expectancy than either the treatment modality or the
patients attitude toward their future, their responsibility
regarding the disease and/or their outcome expectation.
Somehow the attitude of the physician is assumed to have
been communicated to the patient for in every single
instance where the physicians responded to the
questionnaire regarding patients role in terms of the
positive use of their mind with neutral to negative
evaluation, the patient died. The study generally indicated
a survival rate of over 30% for all respondents (remission)
and an increase in life by up to three years over time
given in prognosis for those patients whose physicians
generally agreed that the mind has a role in patient health
even in the face of "terminal" illness. The assumption
suggests that one must fully accept the responsibility for
their own lives and mental processes even if that means
guarding against the influence of another.
What then is the pragmatic to overcome, or I prefer, to
outgrow, this early conditioning. Once again, it's so
simple as to be difficult---difficult to believe and
difficult to do. The answer is forgive! In my research we
began applying three messages as cognitive tools to untie
the victim. They are called the forgiveness set and consist
of these three statements: I forgive myself; I forgive all
others; and I am forgiven.
When you forgive, you can not blame. If you do not blame
it's exceedingly difficult to become angry. What you cannot
become angry about, you do not fear. When there is nothing
to fear, there is nothing to become angry about or no one
to blame. Life is simply a miracle and living is the
process of maximizing the miraculous experience. Every
thought or deed becomes therefore differently oriented.
When you accept responsibility for everything in your
universe, you gain the power to make changes. The real
changes are made in you and thus your experience of life
and self become qualitatively different almost immediately.
You are in charge of your inner environment, and your
beliefs, attitudes and emotions do matter to you. Your
health, your enjoyment of life, your ability to become all
that you are is inescapably involved in your ability to
forgive and let go.
But alas, you may say, that's all too simple and further
life sucks and then we die. And I am sure you can find many
that will agree. Still, if you want to see the barnyard
from the sky, spread your wings and see for yourself.
Seeing is believing. Try it---I promise, you'll like it.
And if necessary, fake it until you make it.
----------------------------------------------------
Eldon Taylor is the author of over 200 books and self
improvement programs. His vitae is listed in over a dozen
"Who's Who" publications. He is diplomat in the American
Psychotherapy Association and received the 2005 Peace Prize
awarded by the United Cultural Convention for his work in
teachning self-responsibility around the world. His works
are available in five languages and are sold around the
world
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