VICTIM vs VICTOR
Regaining Your “You”. Don’t ever play the victim.
Has anything bad happened to you? I know—that’s a stupid question. The real question is: What have you done with it?
You have two paths:
- Let it get the best of you. Spend a huge part of your life defeated by what happened, making excuses about why you can’t move on, complaining, and living in the past.
- Get back on the horse of life and conquer the day with confidence and vision.
One path spells Victim; the other spells Victor. A Victor isn’t perfect, but they are willing to keep moving forward through every “failure,” seeing it instead as an opportunity to learn.
Bad things happen. Let’s look at the worst-case scenarios: Have you been abused or betrayed? Have you lost a loved one? Have you survived a devastating divorce? After the initial grieving period, you still face two choices:
Grab hold of being the Victim and play it out as long as you can.
Grab hold of being the Victor and move forward despite what happened.
If you put on the “victim jacket,” this follows:
- You expect others to feel sorry for you.
- You become “addicted” to that attention and habitually complain to keep it coming.
- You wait for others to comfort you while you sit in isolation.
- You expect others to cater to your needs with an unrealistic sense of entitlement.
- You look for handouts because you feel the world owes you for your misfortunes.
Now, there is nothing wrong with seeking comfort, to an extent. For a brief season, this is perfectly fine. You need time to heal, collect your thoughts, and accept reality. Feeling bad is natural; comfort from others is necessary for recovery.
But if you cling to that mentality, “feeling bad for” turns into “pity.” Comfort turns into coddling. Catering turns into dependency. The goal of this discussion is to ensure you don’t reach that point.
Set a goal to grieve, then set a time to make up your mind. Decide not to accept pity or expect constant sympathy. Start reaching out to others. Go to them. Make the effort to do your own cooking, cleaning, and shopping. Put a smile back on your face.
These actions don’t excuse what happened, but they create positive forward motion. Get back into the things—and the people—you love. If you have lost a loved one, find others to be with. You aren’t forgetting them; you are sharing the good times you had with them. Loving your life again is not a betrayal of their memory.
Get out of the “what-if” mindset. Those are wasted thoughts. Focus on the reality: It happened. Now what?
Healing begins the moment you let go of what happened and grab hold of what can happen. Victimhood often filters into the subconscious slowly, becoming an automatic reaction. The first step to recovery is awareness.
Victims stay locked in sorrow. Victors break through despite the sorrow, saying, “Yeah, it happened; now it’s time to move forward.”
Victims take advantage of the attention. Victors find a way to rely on their own emotional strength to end dependency as soon as possible.
Victims wait for others to come to them. Victors go out and make things happen.
It won’t be easy, and it won’t be quick. You will have setbacks. You might break down—just don’t stay there. Ask for help if you need it, and accept love when it’s offered, but don’t rely on it as a crutch. Move away from dependency, but never move away from love.
Regain your “you.”
