Last month’s newsletter generated emails from people wanting to know more about how to allow grief to have it’s way with them and people wanting to blame others for how they were feeling. Which got me thinking that it might be useful to offer some thoughts about the slippery slope of claiming to be a victim and in doing so, give away power you might want for using for yourself. It’s not unusual to feel victimized when someone or life throws you a curve ball or sucker punch. Yet claiming you are a victim of either the person or what life sent your way will send you down the wrong path for making things better.
As an example, a client who divorced his wife in large part due to her emotional abuse which escalated into physical abuse, feels victimized by her when she continues to be abusive to him. What he keeps getting hung up on is wanting her to be different from how she rolls with him, even though she is simply being who she has been for a long time with him. Yet in claiming he is her victim, he avoids facing the part he plays in the pattern of abuse with her. Am I blaming the victim? No. Am I suggesting there is power my client is not taking up by wanting her to be different with him and in his resistance to changing how he engages her? Yes. And, he’s making the small changes that will result in time with his big “ah-ha” and shift how he makes his choices, whether with her or others like her.
Claiming oneself as a victim-which is different than being victimized-is often a choice to hold oneself as helpless and hopeless instead of taking account of where you find yourself and making it better. Being victimized is real. And, claiming oneself as a victim can be a choice to align with being powerless in the dynamic with the bully/abuser/life challenge/etc. Again, this is different than blaming the victim; people are victimized every day by both people they trust and people they don’t know. Yet what is also true is that most of us believe we have way less power than we truly do to take a bad situation and make it better.
And isn’t this what life in part requires of us ? To learn to receive what comes our way, what we didn’t plan, want, or expect, and deal with it in a way that it stops messing with us or our life? In doing so, we claim more of who we are and realize more of our power, which are often sub-texts to what we are already seeking more of in life. I’m not saying it’s simple or easy; life does require an exchange of value in kind. Yet life is fair in that what we offer in effort consistent and intentional will be rewarded appropriate to such. It may sound a bit woo woo, but the laws of physics ring true whether in the physical, the emotional, or even the spiritual.
So where you find yourself claiming being the victim-and we all do at times-ask yourself if you are good resting there or want to flex the muscles your’ve been given for creating your life with joy and fulfillment abundant. Life rewards evolution and evolving from claiming being to be powerless to engaging your power brings the satisfaction of creating what you seek in your life. Not instantly as again, life requires balance in the value of what is given and what is taken. But with consistency and focus, and intention, there is little you cannot realize in your life. And, live more of your character and caliber in your life as well.