Victim Mentality

Today I want to discuss something that typically gets in the way of us going “all in”. Something that keeps us stuck and prevents us from creating the results we want. It also keeps us from experiencing joy.

In fact, it causes the opposite of joy. It creates a lot of resentment, bitterness, sadness, hopelessness, and sometimes even anger. I’m talking about Victim Mentality.

Victim Mentality is just a habit. Tune into today’s podcast to learn how to break it.

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TRANSCRIPT:

I’m Rachael Collins at the Joyful You Podcast; this is episode 60: Victim Mentality

 

Last week we talked about being all in, today I want to discuss something that typically gets in the way of us going all in. Something that keeps us stuck and prevents us from creating the results we want. It also keeps us from experiencing joy.

In fact, it causes the opposite of joy. It creates a lot of resentment, bitterness, sadness, hopelessness, and sometimes even anger. I’m talking about Victim Mentality.

 

A few years ago, while I was going through a very challenging coach certification, I received some constructive criticism from my instructor. I quickly fell into victim mentality which looked like: me taking offense, complaining to all my peers, being mad and angry, and then pouting falling into self-pity and not enoughness, and carrying a chip on my shoulder for a few days. I don’t know about you but when I’m taking these kinds of actions, I feel pretty miserable. I quickly slide down the path of “not good enough” and I see myself a victim of my circumstances. Why should I bother trying to be a coach if I’ll never be good enough at it?

Being in victim mentality did not allow me to see that along with giving me some areas I could improve, my instructor, also gave me several compliments. I just wasn’t in the right headspace to recognize she wasn’t criticizing me or trying to make me feel bad or even trying to tell me I wasn’t a good coach; she was giving me feedback to help me improve and become the best coach I could be.

I blamed my circumstances, which in this case were the words my instructor emailed to me, for not going all in.

 

Kevin Hamilton, in a 2018 article tells us “You are an agent not an object.” Meaning you have the ability to act and not simply be acted upon.” When we fall into victim mentality, we give all our power over to our circumstances.

 

Steve Chandler in his book Reinventing Yourself said “As you look back on your life so far, you will see that you always had two basic ways of being. At any given time, you were either one way, or you were the other; you were either an owner of the human spirit, or you were a victim of circumstances.

Owners act for themselves. They know they have the power to create their life. It can be as awesome or as crappy as they want it to be. It’s 100% up to us, but I will tell you this, if you just sit around with your same habits and patterns and stories expecting your circumstances or everyone around you to change before you can find joy and happiness, then you’re being acted upon. You’re not acting for yourself.

 

I am in love with the book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. Habit number one talks all about this. He says there are basically 3 types of victim mentalities we fall prey to:

Genetic which basically makes us victim to our DNA or the things our grandparents passed down to us. Obesity runs in my family. My Great-grandma was a pretty stout woman and some of her kids and grandkids are also obese. I remember believing that my fate was sealed. Weight would be a struggle for me because I had, what my brother called FP, fat potential. And then is it any wonder that I ended up struggling with my weight because of that belief? It wasn’t until I decided that I was in charge of my habits, not my genes, that I realized I had more power to control my weight and to lose weight than I had originally thought.

 

The second type is Psychic. It basically says my parents did this to me. It was my upbringing, the way my parents fought when I was a kid, the rules or lack of rules my parents had. My mom did this or my dad was like this and so now I am. It’s all their fault. If only they . . . fill in the blank. Even now as a grown adult, we still blame beliefs and “flaws” on our parents. As if we’re not allowed to choose differently and to act for ourselves.

 

When I read this type I immediately thought of a silly example. When I was a teenager, the movie Hocus Pocus came out. My mom wouldn’t let us see it because she believed it was too dark and not a good movie. I still to this day haven’t seen it. All 6 of my kids have, and anytime they say, Mom come watch Hocus Pocus with us, I say, “I can’t. My mom told me not to watch it.” Which is funny because I’m a 40-year-old woman, who hasn’t lived under her mother’s roof for over 20 years.

 

The third and last type is Environmental. This is when we blame our boss, our work environment, our spouse, our teenagers, our newborns, our in-laws, how much money we have in the bank, how many social media followers we have, the government, etc. etc. I could go on and on but I think you get the point.

The email I from my coach instructor would fall under this category.

 

How often do you allow yourself to fall victim to one of these? Each of these types is based on the stimulus/response theory. I’ve talked about this theory before using the example of Pavlov’s dogs. Pavlov was a scientist who discovered that he could teach his dogs to respond to a stimulus or a trigger, would maybe be a better word for it. They were triggered whenever they heard the sound of a bell. Their response would be to salivate. Do you remember this now?

 

A psychiatrist named Victor Frankl, taught that we can never get rid of all the stimuluses or triggers in our life, but we can choose to act for ourselves instead of being acted upon. He says between what happens to us, or the stimulus, and our response to it, we have the power to decide within ourselves how it’s going to affect us.

Did you know we are the only animals that have this power? All other animals just live life out of instinct, a fly bites them, they swish it off with their tail. A gazelle runs in front of a lion, the lion chases it. The bell rings, the dogs salivate.

We as human beings endowed with a human brain, have the choice to act for ourselves. We don’t have to just react. Stephen Covey tells us we have a responsibility – response ability. We have the ability to respond any way we want to. If we choose to be acted up like an animal and react out of our own instincts and conditioning, we limit ourselves. We stay stuck. We stay mad. We stay in Not Enoughness. We stay trapped in our belief we’re powerless and we blame others, compare ourselves to others, and feel really crappy most of the time.

 

When I was a teenager one of my church leaders shared with the class a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that has stayed with me all these years. She said, “No one can hurt you without your consent.” If we’re being acted upon, and seeing ourselves as the victim and the other person as the villain, we will blame them for hurting us. We’re like a little kid, so and so hurt my feelings. We see power as something beyond our control. Well, so and so can’t actually hurt your feelings or make you mad or whatever emotion you’re feeling because, like I’ve taught before, your feelings come from your thoughts and you have been blessed with the power to choose how you perceive and think about what was said to you. This is your response ability.

It’s easy to know when you’re in victim mentality because you’ll find yourself blaming, complaining, criticizing, and comparing. You’ll feel anger, resentment, self-pity, shame, and other negative emotions driving these actions.

 

Victimhood is a habit, and when we understand this, it can quickly be unlearned and replaced with a better one. We can create the habit of acting for ourself, the habit of using our response ability in a way that brings out the best in us, the habit of being an owner, as Steve Chandler calls it.

So, what do we do? How do we make the shift?

 

The first thing I like to do is take a few deep breathes. This allows me to step out of the flight or fight response and into a more peaceful response where I can the use my response ability more wisely. How do I want to see this? How do I want to feel about this? And what do I want my actions to look like. This gives me all the power! I’m no longer reacting to my circumstances; I am 100% in control.

 

So obviously the next step is deciding how I want to respond to my circumstance. Do I want to speak Ownish or Victimese, as I once heard coach Brian Johnson call it?

 

The next thing that helps me is to be okay with feeling negative emotion.

I try to see them as something that is good. I like to use the example of weight training. If you want to GROW muscle, you have to have resistance. Resistance is what makes you strong. When I can allow and be okay with any emotion that comes my way, I stay open. Staying open allows the emotion to do its job and then leave. When I close off to an emotion or I try to push it down, it can’t do its job and leave. I’ve trapped it inside my body and it gets bigger and stronger until I react.

I used to be afraid of negative emotion. I used to hate feeling it. I used to make it mean that something was wrong with me or my life, that I was sinning, or God hated me, I wanted to feel positive and happy etc. all the time. I only wanted the good feelings and wanted none of the bad. However, that’s not how it works. I can’t say to God, I’m only opening myself up to allow in the good stuff but if any of the stuff I don’t like comes along, I’m closing the door. If we close off the bad stuff, we also close ourselves off to the good. I know I say this all the time, but we really do need the bad in order to have the good. We need the opposition.

When we fight the bad, we’re just adding more bad, but when we allow it and know it’s just part of the plan and that there’s not any feeling we cannot feel, we stay open, which allows it to do its job and leave but also, it keeps us open for the good to come in.

Being a not good enough is a choice. You have the power to break the habit and set yourself free. You have the power to choose joy because happiness isn’t enough.