You don't like hearing it, if you are a Runaway, but you have not escaped. Not anything. You drag it around with you like a ball and chain. It alters your relationships, your jobs, your sense of yourself, everything--all because you are running from it.
You may feel that you have successfully escaped, but actually, you've only made things black or white. That thing you run from, whatever it is, is the black, and you are the white. It's bad, and you are good. Your past is bad, your abuser is bad, your family is bad, your childhood is bad, the things you did in the past are bad--but you have separated yourself from those bad things now, so, whew! everything is okay now. Right?
Wrong. All that has happened is that you have split yourself off from aspects of your own emotions. All the love and sorrow you feel for family members, all the wistfulness you feel for your memories, etc., all of these have been relegated to the unconscious, so that you can feel, literally feel, as if these things don't matter to you anymore. You wonder about this sometimes, how it is that you don't feel anything for these people, events, times or memories, and sometimes it even worries you, but you don't really want to spend too much time figuring this out, because way down deep you fear, that if you do you will be overcome with emotion.
But if you ever do become infected with pieces of shrapnel from your unconscious, when it blasts out of you unexpectedly you just attribute it to PMS, a bad day at work, or just being in a bad mood. You don't connect the dots between the two worlds, the one you've run from and the one of the present--which is, by the way, very much like the one you've run from. You don't look at the patterns of your own behavior that have created the world that mirrors, at least to some degree, the world you run from. You don't even realize the similarities between the two worlds. You just keep running.
Runaways tend to run from anything that makes them uncomfortable--even someone else's emotions. They don't tend to have much patience for the pain that their new friends and loved ones express. Instead, they basically give everyone who "whines" in their hearing a "get over it" whack on the back of the head. The central objective is to run--even if they have to move to Ethopia to do it. Geography works just as good as that whack on the head.
Runaways come into therapy when their own behavior disturbs them. They want to understand why they have done the things that they have done. But what so often happens for Runaways is that they find the person, event, place or thing to blame for the choices that they've made, they separate themselves from those people, events, places or things and that's all that they think they need to do. They have found an explanation for their own behaviors. Now the people or events they blame become the black enemy from which they must escape in order to take charge of their own lives. But, of course, as we've said, this doesn't provide real healing, only an illusionary escape.
So, how does one stop running? Well sometimes it takes a tragedy like the death of one of those despicable people in their pasts or a serious loss of some other type to make them begin to feel all of the love that they've always felt but didn't know they felt. Then there is all of the years of absence and loss to deal with, on top of the sorrow. This is the adult-child who hates his father until Dad dies. Then he grieves inconsolably, not only for the loss of his father, but for the loss of all of those years they could have shared, and for the fact that he never allowed his father any room for limitation and humanity.
Runaways must be willing to consider the possibility of gray. They must be willing to allow room for other people's mistakes. They must be willing to recognize that love is bigger than mistakes. Love doesn't die, even when we try to kill it.
Runaways must change some of their thinking and beliefs. If they are to heal, really heal, not just run, they must learn that black and white thinking is not only ineffective, but completely irrational. They must be willing to find and heal both the blacks and the whites. This means catching themselves in the act of self-betrayal, by recognizing black and white thinking when it occurs. This means catching themselves in the act of self-betrayal by recognizing the subtle mental posturing that they are doing that keeps them out of touch with their own feelings. This means plummeting the depths of their own shadow material.
That's not an easy job. But when people do it, they reconnect with people they have loved and lost due to their own cold choices. When people do it, they learn the art of forgiveness. They pass through the barriers in their own psyches that have prejudiced the past and the people in it and begin to see clearly all of the many different colors of the truth. In so doing their anxiety decreases, their dysfunctional behaviors subside and they become whole people.
We must encourage the Runaways in our lives not to stop growing, to explore the reasons why they can't feel anything, to come to terms, real terms, not black and white terms, with their pasts. It can be done. And on the other side of it is real human connection.
Love and Peace,
Andrea
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Superwoman
In this week in which Maria Shriver is so diligently working to inform us of the fact of and the art of women in the workplace, it’s a good time for us to talk about Superwoman. She's the woman in the retro commercial for Enjoli perfume who can "put the wash on the line, feed the kids, get dressed, pass out the kisses, and get to work by five and nine; … bring home the bacon, fry it up in the pan and never, never, never let you forget you’re the man." But more than that, she can be counted on by the boss to get all of his projects done yesterday, and her own too! She is leaned on by everyone in her world, because she can be. And she seems to attract a whole population of people who just don't give a damn about when they get anything done, or if, in fact, they get it done at all. Why does she attract these people? Because she needs to stay in this Superwoman role. She needs to believe that she's in charge, totally in charge of her world, because if she's not, then she might turn into that lonely little child, who found herself totally alone in a world full of supposed caregivers, who didn't care about her.
She's the child whose parents were both alcoholics or drug addicts, who needed someone in the family to be responsible for her younger siblings, because they sure weren't going to be. She's the child who parented her own parents, as well as whomever else came with the package. She learned how to cook when she was five and somehow seemed to know what to do for her younger siblings when no one else did. She is the teenager who appears wise beyond her years, and is praised for that very thing, by teachers and other relatives--those very same relatives who are very glad that she's so responsible, because they don't want to have to step into her shoes.
She's the adult to whom her parents, siblings, children and friends still turn for wisdom, succor and money. But she's also the one who knows that they are not listening to her wisdom and couldn't care less about her succor--they just want the money, thank you very much.
She's the adult who has, over the years, built up an emotional wall between herself and the world, because she knows, without at doubt, that no one in her world really cares about her. They just need her to be there for them. And over those same years, she's built up an arsenal of secret bitterness that, for the most part, only leaks out in a few sarcastic words now and then. But since she believes that she is and must be super-strong, she can scoop those words right up in the pan and "never, never, never let you forget you're the man."
She's the adult who, when she finally decides to get help for herself (which is often many years down the road--and only after someone in authority insists upon it), she'll be suffering with all manner of stress-related diseases, from coronary disease to arthritis. Why? Because for so long she's stuffed her own anger and even her own needs so far down into her psyche that they've bled into her body.
Sometimes Superwoman will lose a job with which she has identified and suddenly become utterly depressed, despondent and even suicidal, because she can no longer be the Superwoman. Underneath every Superwoman is a small, unattended little child, waiting hopelessly in the wings for someone to finally reach out and take care of her. But no one has, and she's certain that no one ever will--so what's the point of living anymore. She can't be Superwoman and she can't be cared for. There's nothing left. Except the Authentic Self.
So, how does Superwoman finally find and begin to live the Authentic Self? She usually has to have a crisis first, similar to that described above. She's been so used to leaping over tall buildings with a single bound and running faster than a speeding bullet, that crises don't really affect her so much. So, it has to be a crisis that takes the wind out of her for a while. It has to be a crisis that makes her land clearly in the heart and mind of that little child. Then she can begin to hear the voice of her own very legitimate needs.
That said, I have seen Superwomen get it young. They somehow realize how unhappy they are, and how unloved they feel and they come to therapy. This younger generation is much more psychologically savvy than those of us in the boomer generation. They seem to get it sooner.
Some young women of today, though they haven’t experienced lack of caring in their homes, have adopted the Superwoman role as a way of immolating their super-strong mothers. Sometimes Superwoman is a single parent, and the daughter simply adopts the mother’s super-stance because Daughter thinks that it’s really working for Mom. So Daughter builds the same walls and bridges all the same gaps between herself and others, because she senses that this will keep her safe from the big, bad world. This daughter may have even been super-loved by Mom, but senses that Mom is trying to protect her from the monsters of the world, and adapts accordingly. But one day, just like Mom, she may have to realize that it was always only a poor coping mechanism.
So, what is the first step to moving out of Superwoman and into authenticity? Well, if this role is not also attached to the Scapegoat role, which it often is, she's not going to have loads of guilt to wade through also, and won't feel terribly selfish for beginning to think of herself. In fact, if she's not also a Scapegoat, she can begin to see that her needs are equal to those of whom she's taken care for all these years and that it might just be her turn.
But her turn doesn't mean getting others to take care of her. That's what she's been secretly craving all these years. But, here's the real deal about adulthood: nobody takes care of us, but us. There can be, will be, should be those who care about us. But take care of us? No. That's our job.
No matter who loves you, it is not their job to take care of your needs. You do that. How do you do that? Well, first you have to know what you need. That takes some soul searching. Then if what you need involves another person, you ask for it. Not demand it--I have to say this to the Superwoman who has been enabled for years in her demanding behaviors that never quite pay off--not demand. Ask. That person is either going to do it, or they are not. If not, you can go to someone else and ask. And if no one can do it, you can do it for yourself.
Superwoman doesn't really want to hear that. Superwoman thought that at the end of the Superwoman role, someone would be standing there, like a parent stands at the end of a sliding board, ready to catch the toddler. No, that's not how it works. The truth is that care-giving that actually takes care of, is meant for infants, toddlers and less and less as the years go by, for young children.
But that's not to say that Superwoman's needs cannot be met. She does have to begin to allow herself to grieve the childhood she never had, to allow herself to know that it's too late for her to be a child now, and that all she can do is move through the stages of grief to acceptance. Once she's begun to accept that she cannot be taken care of, she can begin to allow herself to seek and find real caring in her world. Where she finds that such caring cannot be given, she can remove herself from those relationships. When real caring happens she can begin to tear down the inner walls and allow herself to really take that caring in, as if she were smelling a rose for the first time. Be present with that caring, really feel that hug, really feel and notice the love in someone else's eyes, really receive. And what a gift it is to have your job be learning how to receive!
But there's one more job. She must learn to give only as she desires to give. Not because she HAS to, or SHOULD, but because she truly desires to give. Not only does this make her gifts much more authentic, but it energizes her, rather than depleting her energy.
Along the way, she's probably going to piss some people off. People have been counting on her to get it all done yesterday. And when she starts saying "no" to those tasks and activities and gifts that she doesn't really feel a desire to do, then those dependent people in her life might be a bit upset with her. But even bosses can come to see that they've been piling it on a little too high. And if not, well, it might be time to dust off that old Resume.
Superwoman can stop herself from becoming a death threat to herself. But the path isn't in learning how to do more for others--as many who come to see me often think. Many Superwoman who do finally land on my couch will say that they've come because there's something wrong with them, they used to be able to fly faster than a speeding bullet and they can't anymore. So their assignment to me is that I'm to fix what's broken and get them back to racing that bullet again. Nope, can't do it. Sorry. My job, as a therapist, first isn't to fix anything, but second, is to assist clients in becoming more true to their own deepest selves. Can't do that with a mask and costume.
So, if you are a Superwoman reading this blog, consider the telephone booth to your left, I left some street clothes there for you.
Love and Peace,
Andrea
She's the child whose parents were both alcoholics or drug addicts, who needed someone in the family to be responsible for her younger siblings, because they sure weren't going to be. She's the child who parented her own parents, as well as whomever else came with the package. She learned how to cook when she was five and somehow seemed to know what to do for her younger siblings when no one else did. She is the teenager who appears wise beyond her years, and is praised for that very thing, by teachers and other relatives--those very same relatives who are very glad that she's so responsible, because they don't want to have to step into her shoes.
She's the adult to whom her parents, siblings, children and friends still turn for wisdom, succor and money. But she's also the one who knows that they are not listening to her wisdom and couldn't care less about her succor--they just want the money, thank you very much.
She's the adult who has, over the years, built up an emotional wall between herself and the world, because she knows, without at doubt, that no one in her world really cares about her. They just need her to be there for them. And over those same years, she's built up an arsenal of secret bitterness that, for the most part, only leaks out in a few sarcastic words now and then. But since she believes that she is and must be super-strong, she can scoop those words right up in the pan and "never, never, never let you forget you're the man."
She's the adult who, when she finally decides to get help for herself (which is often many years down the road--and only after someone in authority insists upon it), she'll be suffering with all manner of stress-related diseases, from coronary disease to arthritis. Why? Because for so long she's stuffed her own anger and even her own needs so far down into her psyche that they've bled into her body.
Sometimes Superwoman will lose a job with which she has identified and suddenly become utterly depressed, despondent and even suicidal, because she can no longer be the Superwoman. Underneath every Superwoman is a small, unattended little child, waiting hopelessly in the wings for someone to finally reach out and take care of her. But no one has, and she's certain that no one ever will--so what's the point of living anymore. She can't be Superwoman and she can't be cared for. There's nothing left. Except the Authentic Self.
So, how does Superwoman finally find and begin to live the Authentic Self? She usually has to have a crisis first, similar to that described above. She's been so used to leaping over tall buildings with a single bound and running faster than a speeding bullet, that crises don't really affect her so much. So, it has to be a crisis that takes the wind out of her for a while. It has to be a crisis that makes her land clearly in the heart and mind of that little child. Then she can begin to hear the voice of her own very legitimate needs.
That said, I have seen Superwomen get it young. They somehow realize how unhappy they are, and how unloved they feel and they come to therapy. This younger generation is much more psychologically savvy than those of us in the boomer generation. They seem to get it sooner.
Some young women of today, though they haven’t experienced lack of caring in their homes, have adopted the Superwoman role as a way of immolating their super-strong mothers. Sometimes Superwoman is a single parent, and the daughter simply adopts the mother’s super-stance because Daughter thinks that it’s really working for Mom. So Daughter builds the same walls and bridges all the same gaps between herself and others, because she senses that this will keep her safe from the big, bad world. This daughter may have even been super-loved by Mom, but senses that Mom is trying to protect her from the monsters of the world, and adapts accordingly. But one day, just like Mom, she may have to realize that it was always only a poor coping mechanism.
So, what is the first step to moving out of Superwoman and into authenticity? Well, if this role is not also attached to the Scapegoat role, which it often is, she's not going to have loads of guilt to wade through also, and won't feel terribly selfish for beginning to think of herself. In fact, if she's not also a Scapegoat, she can begin to see that her needs are equal to those of whom she's taken care for all these years and that it might just be her turn.
But her turn doesn't mean getting others to take care of her. That's what she's been secretly craving all these years. But, here's the real deal about adulthood: nobody takes care of us, but us. There can be, will be, should be those who care about us. But take care of us? No. That's our job.
No matter who loves you, it is not their job to take care of your needs. You do that. How do you do that? Well, first you have to know what you need. That takes some soul searching. Then if what you need involves another person, you ask for it. Not demand it--I have to say this to the Superwoman who has been enabled for years in her demanding behaviors that never quite pay off--not demand. Ask. That person is either going to do it, or they are not. If not, you can go to someone else and ask. And if no one can do it, you can do it for yourself.
Superwoman doesn't really want to hear that. Superwoman thought that at the end of the Superwoman role, someone would be standing there, like a parent stands at the end of a sliding board, ready to catch the toddler. No, that's not how it works. The truth is that care-giving that actually takes care of, is meant for infants, toddlers and less and less as the years go by, for young children.
But that's not to say that Superwoman's needs cannot be met. She does have to begin to allow herself to grieve the childhood she never had, to allow herself to know that it's too late for her to be a child now, and that all she can do is move through the stages of grief to acceptance. Once she's begun to accept that she cannot be taken care of, she can begin to allow herself to seek and find real caring in her world. Where she finds that such caring cannot be given, she can remove herself from those relationships. When real caring happens she can begin to tear down the inner walls and allow herself to really take that caring in, as if she were smelling a rose for the first time. Be present with that caring, really feel that hug, really feel and notice the love in someone else's eyes, really receive. And what a gift it is to have your job be learning how to receive!
But there's one more job. She must learn to give only as she desires to give. Not because she HAS to, or SHOULD, but because she truly desires to give. Not only does this make her gifts much more authentic, but it energizes her, rather than depleting her energy.
Along the way, she's probably going to piss some people off. People have been counting on her to get it all done yesterday. And when she starts saying "no" to those tasks and activities and gifts that she doesn't really feel a desire to do, then those dependent people in her life might be a bit upset with her. But even bosses can come to see that they've been piling it on a little too high. And if not, well, it might be time to dust off that old Resume.
Superwoman can stop herself from becoming a death threat to herself. But the path isn't in learning how to do more for others--as many who come to see me often think. Many Superwoman who do finally land on my couch will say that they've come because there's something wrong with them, they used to be able to fly faster than a speeding bullet and they can't anymore. So their assignment to me is that I'm to fix what's broken and get them back to racing that bullet again. Nope, can't do it. Sorry. My job, as a therapist, first isn't to fix anything, but second, is to assist clients in becoming more true to their own deepest selves. Can't do that with a mask and costume.
So, if you are a Superwoman reading this blog, consider the telephone booth to your left, I left some street clothes there for you.
Love and Peace,
Andrea
Sunday, October 4, 2009
The Victim
We've all known at least one person whom we would call a victim: Someone who has actually been victimized by someone else, or for whom "life has been hard." And we don't want to give them a bad rap, I mean, really, they've had it hard, right? So, we tolerate their inability to get up in the morning, or their constant or convenient references to their hard lives, or even their abuse, while we sigh and try to be understanding and say, "Yeah, but she's had a hard life," or "Yeah, but he's been through a lot."
Now, I don't want to come across as an unsympathetic person here, but with regard to the victim role, it can turn on a dime into the bully role, if we're not watching. See, there's a difference between someone who occasionally has a victim thought, and someone who is living the role. Anyone can get on the pitypot now and again. Anyone can fault life circumstances with life choices. Sometimes it's hard to reverse that and fault life choices with life's circumstances. I mean that means taking personal responsibility! But if we are going to finally arrive at acceptance of any particular given circumstance, be it an abuse or an accident, illness or a "bad" job or relationship, we are going to have to take personal responsibility. And those of us who do finally move to acceptance over that given circumstance, have learned to take personal responsibility over the choices that we made. That doesn't mean that everything that happens to us is within the power of our choices, but it does mean that we have choices about how we are going to respond to those events over which we have no control. And it does mean that we have much more say-so in our lives than many of us would like to admit.
For someone who has opted to live out the victim role, this means all but never being the cause to your own effect. The mantra of the victim is filled with phrases like:
"You just don't understand how hard it is for me!"
"I had no choice!"
"I was out of control!"
"I was overwhelmed!"
"She or he made me do it!"
"I can't help it!"
I could go on, but you get the idea. This person lives out of what we, in the mental health field, call externalized locus of control. In other words, they locate their controls outside of themselves. They truly believe that their own actions and even their thoughts are controlled by something or someone outside of themselves. The very idea of challenging themselves to do something different than they've always done, hoping for different results, is foreign to them. They cannot even imagine that they are responsible for life choices. It's their parent's fault for not loving them enough; it's their teacher's fault for being bad teachers; it's their brother or sister's fault, their wife or husband's fault; it's the driver of that car's fault--THEY ruined my life!
Ever heard someone say, "He/she/it ruined my life?" At the very least you were listening to someone who is in the throes of a victim seizure, if not someone who lives entirely out of the victim role. Let me be absolutely clear here, before we go into any further depth: NO ONE can ruin your life but you. Take note, there was a period at the end of that sentence. Regardless of what happens in our lives, we still have loads of options, and still are in charge of what we do with it. But the thinking, the belief system of the victim finds this thought unbearable.
Why would such a seemingly hopeful belief be so unbearable to the victim? Because it means taking responsibility for life and life's choices. Taking responsibility to them means several things. It means:
Being guilty.
Bearing the burden of this awful life.
Holding myself accountable.
Fear, terror, blinding terror!
You see, how we interpret makes a huge difference. I interpret taking responsibility for my life and the choices I make as grandly hopeful. I interpret it to mean that nothing, NOTHING can keep me down. But this concept is foreign to the victim. The victim thinks: If I take responsibility for my choices, my responses and very often the actual circumstances themselves then I'll have to feel this enormous guilt. I'll have to be ashamed of myself for all the things that I've done. My response to that, of course, is well, that's your choice. You don't have to choose guilt and shame, but of course, you could if you want.
Victims think, but I should add here that they only think these things on an unconscious level, for to think them consciously might be to recognize what they are up to. Victims think that life is, indeed, awful and that they could not bear to imagine being responsible for such an awful thing. My response to that is, again, that perspective is a choice. Very often, when one of my client's is in the throes of a victim thought, I will ask her (let's say it's a she this time) how yesterday was and she'll give me a litany of the terrible things that happened yesterday. Then I ask, "what else happened?" The best she can tell me is that "Oh everything else was just okay." But I'll insist that she be more specific and tell me about what else happened and what she felt about each specific thing. I've yet to have a single person who is not able to come up with some really cool things that happened that day. Things that he or she had not noticed because s/he had been so busy thinking about how bad the day was. For someone who is not identified as a victim, this switch helps them to buoy the other upsetting things that happened. And it helps them to build hope that there are always some good things going on. But for the victim, and this has been almost diagnostic for me, this discussion will cause great consternation and even irritation. The victim will avoid, change the subject, criticize me for being Pollyanna, just plain deny that anything good happened, or if they can admit that they had a good experience or two, they will "yes but" it to death before it reaches the true light of day.
Persons who are identified as victims simply do not want to realize that they are responsible for their own attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, and ergo, their emotions. They don't want to do the work of realizing that beliefs create attitudes, mantras and eventually emotions. They want to believe that their moods are just related to bad things that have happened to them, or to swings. Victims will often say that they need a medication adjustment when in fact what they need is an attitude adjustment. But the medication, being an external control, is held accountable.
The really bad thing about all this is that in the process, victims get themselves victimized. They get involved with bullies all too often. Why do they do this? Well it isn't because they are masochistic. It's because the bully will help them stay in the victim role and for some reason this victim role seems to work better for them than anything else. Not being responsible somehow makes them feel safe--even if in that safety they are getting the beatitudes kicked out of them. This is where the terror of changing out of the victim mask and costume becomes apparent. Even though the victim role may be killing them, in the most extreme cases, they will hold on to it for dear life, for the prospect of living without it is more terrifying than death.
I want to be clear here that not everyone who is being abused is living out the victim identity. Some, who are being abused are living out the scapegoat identity in which they feel guilty and responsible for others' behavior; some are living out other roles we'll talk about later. But when victims are living in an abusive situation, it is because it makes it possible for them to maintain the victim identity.
The other really bad thing about all this is that very often the victim flips over to the opposite side of the coin and actually becomes the bully. In fact, many victims bully others with their victimness. It works like this:
"I'm so sick, you have to take care of me, and if you don't I'll show you in some way that you really are going to have to come up to it." Maybe they will do this by getting sicker, maybe by attempting to force your hand in some manipulative way.
"I need you; you can't leave me." And so the victim holds his or her victim hostage to this desperate need.
"He/she/it ruined my life. Now it's up to you to fix it."
Again, I could go on, but you get the idea. Anything within the life of the victim can be used to scare, cajole, manipulate or abuse another person, who is perceived by the victim to be the next best "mama." Very often the victim will accuse those, who don't do their bidding, of abandoning them. When I am working with a client who is being so manipulated by a victim, I will very often inform them that adults can't abandon other adults. When we were children, our fear of abandonment was justifyable since we were utterly dependent on our caregivers for sustenance. But the growing up process means becoming more and more accountable for our own choices. Adults are responsible for their own lives--which means that they don't need a primary caregiver anymore. The very notion of abandonment implies that the person left behind is not capable of caring for him or herself. But, you see, for victims, everyone else is responsible for their well-being, because they are absolutely NOT.
So, how do we deal with victims? Well, first we recognize the victim thoughts which hold us victim. We need to be able to see the ways that we are thinking like victims before we can recognize it in someone else. And while we may not be living out the victim role, we must fully understand that we are 100% accountable for our lives to this point and after, in order to be able to recognize and deal with a victim identity in another. Why? Because the victim will be very good at talking you out of thinking that s/he is responsible for his/her own life.
Second, because we are now clear that we are not responsible for their lives in any way, shape or form, we can walk away from that responsibility. This may or may not mean walking away from the victim, but it will mean walking away from taking any form of responsibility for them, their lives or their choices. And that clarity about who is responsible, which we learned in the first step, is going to keep us from feeling guilty when they deliberately take a turn for the worse, or get themselves victimized again, hoping we'll come to their rescue. That also was their choice.
And third, we can take complete responsibility for how we react to their manipulations and machinations to get us to renew our commitment to being responsible for their lives. This might mean confronting ourselves about what secondary gain we get out of rescuing victims.
Will they get it? Occasionally to rarely. But that's their choice. Most often I find that victims have this really cool cat-like feature. They always, somehow, land on their feet. Often this means that they will find someone else to hold hostage to their refusal to take responsibility for their lives. But I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that if enough of us take 100% responsibility for our own lives, the victim will find no one out there on whom they can utterly lean for their lives, and the whole victim identity will one day fade away.
Until then, I intend to be responsible for me...not you!
Love,
Andrea
Now, I don't want to come across as an unsympathetic person here, but with regard to the victim role, it can turn on a dime into the bully role, if we're not watching. See, there's a difference between someone who occasionally has a victim thought, and someone who is living the role. Anyone can get on the pitypot now and again. Anyone can fault life circumstances with life choices. Sometimes it's hard to reverse that and fault life choices with life's circumstances. I mean that means taking personal responsibility! But if we are going to finally arrive at acceptance of any particular given circumstance, be it an abuse or an accident, illness or a "bad" job or relationship, we are going to have to take personal responsibility. And those of us who do finally move to acceptance over that given circumstance, have learned to take personal responsibility over the choices that we made. That doesn't mean that everything that happens to us is within the power of our choices, but it does mean that we have choices about how we are going to respond to those events over which we have no control. And it does mean that we have much more say-so in our lives than many of us would like to admit.
For someone who has opted to live out the victim role, this means all but never being the cause to your own effect. The mantra of the victim is filled with phrases like:
"You just don't understand how hard it is for me!"
"I had no choice!"
"I was out of control!"
"I was overwhelmed!"
"She or he made me do it!"
"I can't help it!"
I could go on, but you get the idea. This person lives out of what we, in the mental health field, call externalized locus of control. In other words, they locate their controls outside of themselves. They truly believe that their own actions and even their thoughts are controlled by something or someone outside of themselves. The very idea of challenging themselves to do something different than they've always done, hoping for different results, is foreign to them. They cannot even imagine that they are responsible for life choices. It's their parent's fault for not loving them enough; it's their teacher's fault for being bad teachers; it's their brother or sister's fault, their wife or husband's fault; it's the driver of that car's fault--THEY ruined my life!
Ever heard someone say, "He/she/it ruined my life?" At the very least you were listening to someone who is in the throes of a victim seizure, if not someone who lives entirely out of the victim role. Let me be absolutely clear here, before we go into any further depth: NO ONE can ruin your life but you. Take note, there was a period at the end of that sentence. Regardless of what happens in our lives, we still have loads of options, and still are in charge of what we do with it. But the thinking, the belief system of the victim finds this thought unbearable.
Why would such a seemingly hopeful belief be so unbearable to the victim? Because it means taking responsibility for life and life's choices. Taking responsibility to them means several things. It means:
Being guilty.
Bearing the burden of this awful life.
Holding myself accountable.
Fear, terror, blinding terror!
You see, how we interpret makes a huge difference. I interpret taking responsibility for my life and the choices I make as grandly hopeful. I interpret it to mean that nothing, NOTHING can keep me down. But this concept is foreign to the victim. The victim thinks: If I take responsibility for my choices, my responses and very often the actual circumstances themselves then I'll have to feel this enormous guilt. I'll have to be ashamed of myself for all the things that I've done. My response to that, of course, is well, that's your choice. You don't have to choose guilt and shame, but of course, you could if you want.
Victims think, but I should add here that they only think these things on an unconscious level, for to think them consciously might be to recognize what they are up to. Victims think that life is, indeed, awful and that they could not bear to imagine being responsible for such an awful thing. My response to that is, again, that perspective is a choice. Very often, when one of my client's is in the throes of a victim thought, I will ask her (let's say it's a she this time) how yesterday was and she'll give me a litany of the terrible things that happened yesterday. Then I ask, "what else happened?" The best she can tell me is that "Oh everything else was just okay." But I'll insist that she be more specific and tell me about what else happened and what she felt about each specific thing. I've yet to have a single person who is not able to come up with some really cool things that happened that day. Things that he or she had not noticed because s/he had been so busy thinking about how bad the day was. For someone who is not identified as a victim, this switch helps them to buoy the other upsetting things that happened. And it helps them to build hope that there are always some good things going on. But for the victim, and this has been almost diagnostic for me, this discussion will cause great consternation and even irritation. The victim will avoid, change the subject, criticize me for being Pollyanna, just plain deny that anything good happened, or if they can admit that they had a good experience or two, they will "yes but" it to death before it reaches the true light of day.
Persons who are identified as victims simply do not want to realize that they are responsible for their own attitudes, beliefs, thoughts, and ergo, their emotions. They don't want to do the work of realizing that beliefs create attitudes, mantras and eventually emotions. They want to believe that their moods are just related to bad things that have happened to them, or to swings. Victims will often say that they need a medication adjustment when in fact what they need is an attitude adjustment. But the medication, being an external control, is held accountable.
The really bad thing about all this is that in the process, victims get themselves victimized. They get involved with bullies all too often. Why do they do this? Well it isn't because they are masochistic. It's because the bully will help them stay in the victim role and for some reason this victim role seems to work better for them than anything else. Not being responsible somehow makes them feel safe--even if in that safety they are getting the beatitudes kicked out of them. This is where the terror of changing out of the victim mask and costume becomes apparent. Even though the victim role may be killing them, in the most extreme cases, they will hold on to it for dear life, for the prospect of living without it is more terrifying than death.
I want to be clear here that not everyone who is being abused is living out the victim identity. Some, who are being abused are living out the scapegoat identity in which they feel guilty and responsible for others' behavior; some are living out other roles we'll talk about later. But when victims are living in an abusive situation, it is because it makes it possible for them to maintain the victim identity.
The other really bad thing about all this is that very often the victim flips over to the opposite side of the coin and actually becomes the bully. In fact, many victims bully others with their victimness. It works like this:
"I'm so sick, you have to take care of me, and if you don't I'll show you in some way that you really are going to have to come up to it." Maybe they will do this by getting sicker, maybe by attempting to force your hand in some manipulative way.
"I need you; you can't leave me." And so the victim holds his or her victim hostage to this desperate need.
"He/she/it ruined my life. Now it's up to you to fix it."
Again, I could go on, but you get the idea. Anything within the life of the victim can be used to scare, cajole, manipulate or abuse another person, who is perceived by the victim to be the next best "mama." Very often the victim will accuse those, who don't do their bidding, of abandoning them. When I am working with a client who is being so manipulated by a victim, I will very often inform them that adults can't abandon other adults. When we were children, our fear of abandonment was justifyable since we were utterly dependent on our caregivers for sustenance. But the growing up process means becoming more and more accountable for our own choices. Adults are responsible for their own lives--which means that they don't need a primary caregiver anymore. The very notion of abandonment implies that the person left behind is not capable of caring for him or herself. But, you see, for victims, everyone else is responsible for their well-being, because they are absolutely NOT.
So, how do we deal with victims? Well, first we recognize the victim thoughts which hold us victim. We need to be able to see the ways that we are thinking like victims before we can recognize it in someone else. And while we may not be living out the victim role, we must fully understand that we are 100% accountable for our lives to this point and after, in order to be able to recognize and deal with a victim identity in another. Why? Because the victim will be very good at talking you out of thinking that s/he is responsible for his/her own life.
Second, because we are now clear that we are not responsible for their lives in any way, shape or form, we can walk away from that responsibility. This may or may not mean walking away from the victim, but it will mean walking away from taking any form of responsibility for them, their lives or their choices. And that clarity about who is responsible, which we learned in the first step, is going to keep us from feeling guilty when they deliberately take a turn for the worse, or get themselves victimized again, hoping we'll come to their rescue. That also was their choice.
And third, we can take complete responsibility for how we react to their manipulations and machinations to get us to renew our commitment to being responsible for their lives. This might mean confronting ourselves about what secondary gain we get out of rescuing victims.
Will they get it? Occasionally to rarely. But that's their choice. Most often I find that victims have this really cool cat-like feature. They always, somehow, land on their feet. Often this means that they will find someone else to hold hostage to their refusal to take responsibility for their lives. But I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful that if enough of us take 100% responsibility for our own lives, the victim will find no one out there on whom they can utterly lean for their lives, and the whole victim identity will one day fade away.
Until then, I intend to be responsible for me...not you!
Love,
Andrea
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