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Shedding My Victim Narrative Kick-started My Life
Why a victim mentality can sabotage your life, and what you can to do to fix it.
Do you sometimes feel as though you are cursed? Or maybe that the world is out to get you. Bad things keep happening to you and you just can’t catch a break. I can relate. I’ve had traumatic experiences that were not my fault. Caretakers abused me during a vulnerable time, a loved one passed away, someone did me dirty in a relationship, etc. In those situations, I was the victim of those circumstances, as they were not in my control. Consequently, resentment and anger started to fester. I had no power to do anything but internalize this anger and harbor grudges to the people who wronged me. Alas, my “victim narrative” was born. An accidental by-product of this is I carried a sense of “ I’m being gravely wronged” into situations where that was not necessarily the case — at least not to the extent to which I perceived it. My self-victimization became induced; things that hurt me mildly or inconvenience me ring alarm bells in my head that make me perceive that I am being abused and manipulated, when in reality, I would just be going through an amicable breakup or a minor conflict at the work place. And though it feels like a self-preserving mechanism at the moment, I have found it to be self-destructive in the grand scheme of…