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Maxwell67 -> So you're a victim? How's that working out for you? (8/10/2008 7:43:35 AM)
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I have written before that I used to be the passive-agressive type. I was expert at setting myself up to appear to be the victim an nearly any exchange. See, I was a victim of abuse as a child and I never really learned how to be anything else until one day when out of the blue something changed drastically for me.
One day, I was doing as I often did, feeling downtrodden and looking to blame someone else for it. It was an easy prospect.
When you identify as a victim, you learn that enjoying the status is actually relatively fleeting. Eventually people expect you to get over it and move on (oh you can stretch this out be beng wounded so many times you don't bounce back so well anymore, but eventually it has to end). However, if you are addicted to the attention it brings, that is not going to work for you. So you manipulate your relationships early with that in mind. I could set myself up to be the victim of half a dozen close friends, then just wait. Eliciting promises of faithfulness and loyalty, love and understanding, then waiting for just the right moment to force them to an all or nothing decision in which they had to decide if they were going to "be the bad guy" and do what was best for them or live up to their promise to me and suffer. I was a true master at "If you loved me you would ... (insert degrading and co-dependent thing here)." So needless to say, I never ran short of dramas. I could always set myself up as the one who did nothing wrong, lived up to my end and got screwed.
Here is how it is done: First off, for purposes of this example assume that currently there is nothing actually wrong. Now start to get that feeling like "the other shoe is about to drop." Something bad is bound to happen. You are happy, and that cannot be tolerated, so in any exchange look for the little signs that things are not really as rosey as they appear. You will find them. It won't be hard if you are looking for reasons to feel insecure to suddenly notice scads of them. In fact it is stunningly easy. Let a few build up. Enough that you can delude yourself into thinking it is some kind of pattern. Then get very needy. Start clinging to the person and be all depressed all the time. Inconsolable.. become a serious buzz kill to be around. At first this person will try to help you. That is what people who love you do after all. But find some reason why every suggested solution won't work.. "That may fix things for everyone else but it does not apply to me because ..." After a dozen or so attempts to help, your chosen victimizer-to-be finally throws up their hands. "Ah Ha!!" you say. "I knew you never really loved me!" Or insert whatever appropriate relationship betrayal applies... This then gives you the chance to get all maudlin, and go feed off the love and kindness of the people around you because you have obviously been betrayed.
Well that is the general outline. Change a few details here or there, but pretty much it works like that.
Well this time, after destroying yet another close relationship this way, as I was seeking out my pay off in pity from the rest of the crowd, something occurred to me: I was not happy. No not the normal kind of unhappy thought.. this was new. Suddenly I realized that all the work I had done to be "the good guy" in the relationship. Avoiding any hint of blame for myself, quietly catalogueing all those little hurts I could use against my so-called victimizer, skewing my perceptions to make everything seem like doomsday was just around the corner. Sighing and moaning and asking questions that made it apparent I was hurt. Forceing my chosen victimizer through all my little hoops to "prove" they were on the up and up with me... looking for any reason to take offense so I could pounce on yet one more piece of evidence in my case that this person was taking advantage of me.. whew.. it is hard work... And it is no fun.
Even after all my unwitting plans came to fruition, and I could get the longed for victim status once again.. I was miserable. What did I ever see in this sort of behavior? Did it ever make me happy? DId I get somethng out of it? Even once? The fact? No. Even as a child, when I was being victimized by someone I did not subconsciously set myself up be hurt by, it was not fun... Oh sure I got a lot of attention. I was even given special treatment because I was a victim, after all. But I can't say I ever enjoyed it. In truth I felt guilty accepting it.
This whole series of tactics I had been practicing most of my young life was never going to get me what I wanted. Hell I did not even know what I wanted anymore. What I did know was being a victim sucked. I did not know how to be something else, but I was damned if I was going to continue wasting my energies repeating this pattern over and over. I did not know what I would be if not a victim. I did not know how to be anything else, but I was going to learn.
I decided right then, one rule that broke me out of the victim mold for good: Stop looking for reasons to be miserable.
No more would I examine the words and actions of another to see if there was some kind of baby hurt in there I could blow up into something alarming. No more would I befriend people whose trustworthiness was in question, and fool myself into thinking this person is simply misunderstood and they would never treat me that way because I am so obviously such a good person.
I did not know what I would do instead, but I would learn to do something else.
Well wouldn't you know it? I have never again been victimized. Now my life is a lot less work and a lot happier. I never knew how hard it really was to be the victim til I stopped and realized how easy it was to refuse to do it any more.
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