How is the psychology of the victim formed?
The classic victim is a somewhat disadvantaged person with a feeling of inner powerlessness. Such a person believes that he is doomed to failure. And indeed, they do not keep you waiting. It regularly becomes a tool for schemers, thieves and rapists of all stripes.
The psychology of a loser, which is only half a step from the psychology of a victim, is the result of improper upbringing. Parents of a future loser usually go too far when choosing pedagogical means. They are either too carried away with the “stick” or too much with the “carrot”.
In the first case, a downtrodden creature grows up, afraid of its own shadow. In the second, there is an infantile narcissist, unable to take a step beyond the threshold of the house on his own. In both cases, the seeds of sacrifice grow out of false ideas about human relationships. Oddly enough, ideally raised children also often fall into the category of outsiders. They are let down by the idea that everyone around them is the same decent people as their parents. Excessive scrupulousness does not allow them to suspect strangers of evil intentions.
Every encounter with reality for such individuals is akin to sobering up. As a rule, they do not learn lessons from their mistakes, becoming victims of circumstances again and again. You see, it is inconvenient for them to count change in a store or check the bill in a restaurant, to refuse hospitality to the first person they meet or to refuse a bribe to an insolent official.
Errors in upbringing begin to backfire already during school years. Children immediately “figure out” classmates with a victim mentality and make scapegoats out of them. In the work collective, such individuals usually become outcasts, in the family - powerless, obedient slaves.
Unfortunately, some people accept the role of victim and even try to benefit from it. No wonder they say: the status of a victim is a universal alibi. However, by and large, defeatism is one of the types of modern vandalism, called self-destruction. The lot of a person who denies himself the right to win is very unenviable.
Karpman's victim
As we discussed above, the victim provokes the pursuer, the pursuer begins to attack her, at this moment the rescuer turns on, therefore, the victim begins to protect the pursuer from the rescuer and the roles change. And so on ad infinitum. There was probably a situation of humiliation in the victim’s childhood that triggered the mechanism. How to stop being a victim? What to do? Get out of the problem frame and really want to get out of this situation. Think about the secondary benefits, that is, what exactly do you get from being in this victim role. The next step is to understand that you can get these benefits elsewhere, without being drawn into the role of a victim. Take responsibility for the situation. Behave in such a way that they behave with you with dignity, so that they want to take you into account and force themselves to be respected. The internal unconscious goal of the victim is to remain in the role of the victim; this must be realized and not stuck in the usual role model of the victim. Try to behave differently, consciously change behavioral patterns!
Distinctive features of victim psychology
Each outsider's life story is unique in its own way. Yet scientists identify common features in their beliefs, emotional states and behavioral reactions:
1. Inadequate self-esteem. Most people who become victims of all kinds of crooks have low or high self-esteem. Insecure individuals, like arrogant individuals, are easy to recognize and lure into intricate networks.
2. Lack of individuality. This trait is instilled in their children by parents who are confident that they need to live like everyone else. This is what they believe will help them achieve success. In practice, it turns out to be the opposite. The average person, who does not claim any rights, is not unreasonably “appointed” as a victim in any community.
3. Dependence on other people's assessments. Many people rely on the opinions of others. For them it is more authoritative than their own self-esteem. It is precisely the concern for what others will say that often pushes future drug addicts and alcoholics into the arms of morphine and the green snake.
4. Fear of future failures. Such an obsessive state is most often inherent in women suffering from the violence of tyrant husbands. The position of the victim becomes a kind of shield for her, fencing them off from the unknown future, which frightens them with loneliness and restlessness.
Victim syndrome Wikipedia. Victim Syndrome
Victim syndrome is a state of a person when he feels like a victim of circumstances or the negative actions of other people. The goal of the “victim” is to convince others that circumstances or other people are to blame for his current situation, to evoke understanding, compassion, sympathy for him and to provide help. In the article “Karpman Triangle” I described a similar model of behavior. “Victims” always need pity and understanding, support for their rightness. Their speech is negatively colored, they are constantly in a sad state, they talk about their problem all the time. The process of conversation itself is important to them, and not the solution to the problem; they like to discuss all the details of the circumstances and impose blame on others. There is only one scenario: whine and cry, get approval and support, and then continue to suffer further.
Never tell people about your problems, 80% are not interested in them, the remaining 20% are glad that you have them!
“Victims” position themselves as hostages in a hopeless situation. They “won’t lift a finger” to change something. They enjoy and need pity from others. But! Today they cry to you, with the goal of pitying and pitying you, tomorrow they will ask for help, and the day after tomorrow they will manipulate you. If you don’t help and don’t understand, they will write you down as “enemies” and find another “shoulder to cry on.” So it is better to stay away from such people. They are a brake, they do not allow you to move forward, they do not improve themselves and do not allow others to improve.
A striking example is the dominant family relations in the family. When, for example, a husband imagines himself as a kind of newly minted Ivan the Terrible (“we are free to reward and execute our own cereal”) and builds a relationship with his wife according to the standards of Domostroy. In the 16th century, Archpriest Sylvester managed to create a set of rules where the husband “was allowed to beat the cereal and his wife.” And the wife will endure, convincing herself that “hitting means loving.” Instead of waking up and looking at the calendar, where the 21st century is clearly stated, and sending your husband away, where the sky is “blue, blue, but checkered.” She will run around with her children to friends, cry, blame, ask for protection, but will do nothing to change the relationship. She is an accomplice in this terrible game, and she needs it, this is her habitat, this is her comfort zone. She needs to be a victim, she needs to suffer; When she leaves, she will not leave, because she is afraid of being abandoned, she must be with “someone”. I don’t feel sorry for such women, I feel sorry for the children in such families.
What to do?
- If you have a similar situation, when problems pile up one after another, your personal life is not working out, the material part of your life has been reset to zero, you understand that the whole world is against you - you are a victim of your syndrome. We must take this for granted. When you know the cause, it is easier to treat the disease.
- Look around you: even the most successful people have a lot of problems. But, unlike you, they solve them, and do not look for a “vest for crying.” This means it’s time for you to stop suffering and shift responsibility to others in solving your problem. Finally, take responsibility.
- You voluntarily nullified yourself as a person, admitted your own powerlessness, and this is your gravest mistake. Revive faith in yourself, in your strengths and capabilities. Eliminate outside help (“I can handle this problem myself, I don’t need help”). It will be difficult, but you need to move in this direction (“the road will be mastered by those who walk”).
- Don’t waste your energy looking for evidence of someone’s guilt, don’t look for an enemy in anyone or anything, direct your energy to yourself. Allow yourself to defend your personal autonomy and your interests, no matter who stands in front of you. Don’t go against your own inner desires, stop whining and start acting. Your insecurity and low self-esteem are fertile ground for the cultivation of victim syndrome.
- If this “victim” is deeply ingrained in you and you understand that you can’t do it on your own, go to an appointment with a psychologist. First, he will identify the cause of the problem, and then, using psychological techniques, he will help you cope.
- Consider someone else's powerful example to help redirect your thoughts toward affirmation rather than denial. I think that this man is known to everyone for the scale of his personality. Stephen Hawking is an English theoretical physicist, writer, and author of many scientific works. He was truly a victim of his illness, which slowly paralyzed him over many decades and he lost his speech. But the man not only did not fall into despair, searching for the cause of his tragic fate, he continued to live actively, teach at the university, conduct research, participate in international scientific conferences, while in a wheelchair. Such examples from the lives of strong people stimulate a person to take action and reconsider his attitude towards life; one should look up to such people.
Who can be attracted to the victim mentality?
A weak personality, unable to stand up for himself, is the best target for the criminal world that lives by the laws of the jungle. Scientists, together with criminologists, have established the following facts:
• the victims of murder are most often aggressive, self-centered individuals who are prone to alcohol abuse and often get involved in conflicts in which they behave extremely defiantly;
• the victims of rapists are immature, childish individuals who have poor understanding of people, inexperience in sexual relations, and who judge life from sentimental books and romantic films;
• the victims of scammers are often naive or poorly informed people, as well as people steeped in prejudice or in financial need;
• people who are deprived of their own opinions and strong convictions are chosen as victims of family torture; Moreover, their social status may be higher than that of the rapist.
The concept of victimization
Victimization behavior is a person’s tendency to engage in behavior that increases the chance of a crime being committed against him. There are different types of victimization: individual and mass. Types of victim behavior can be considered:
- active behavior, when the victim actively demonstrates behavior that provokes a crime: walking through the streets at night in provocative clothing, demonstrating values, etc.;
- intense behavior, when the victim commits careless acts that lead to a crime, for example, ignoring to wear protective equipment and negotiate an escort, when the victim does not resist or call for help, but simply falls into a stupor;
Sacrifice is caused by deep internal problems that need to be resolved during an appointment with a psychologist. In psychology, there is a model - the Karpman Triangle or the triangle of fate, which describes dependent relationships and explains the relationship between the victim, the persecutor and the rescuer.
Victim behavior. Victimization
Victimization (from Latin victima - victim) is the tendency to become a victim of a crime. The concept of victimization is widely used in positivist, including Russian, victimology. In modern Western victimology, the term is hardly used, and the assumption that the commission of a crime can depend on the behavior of the victim has been heavily criticized as victim blaming.
One of the founders of positivist, or interactionist, victimology, B. Mendelson, in his classic work “The Origin of the Doctrine of Victimology” defines the concept of “victimity” as an analogue of the concept of “crime”: if crime is the state, fact or property of being a criminal, then victimization is it is the state, fact, or quality of being a victim.
Some authors believe that victimization “is directly dependent on the state of crime: the more society is affected by crime, the higher the chance of any individual being a victim of crime.” In this approach, victimization is viewed in relation to statistics.
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Mom is an eternal victim. Mother is a victim
One of the strongest barriers to separation from the mother is her sacrificial behavior. Such a mother is always surrounded by drama, dissatisfaction (both with you and with life in general), complaints, bad mood and well-being. All this is a consequence of the fact that it is difficult for such a mother to take responsibility for her life.
A mother may be successful in her profession and have social connections, but emotionally it will be difficult for her to let her child go into adulthood. She needs someone who will listen to her, understand her, pay attention, and... be to blame for many things related to her life.
The children of such a mother often experience conflicting feelings towards her. On the one hand, this is anger, irritation, on the other hand, they are haunted by guilt and a feeling of pity. A manipulative mother evokes a feeling of pity in the child in the hope that he will do what she wants. A person who finds it difficult to bear this feeling, having experienced it, will strive to get rid of it. And the only way to get rid of it is to give the manipulating mother what she asks.
There is another option - escape from the situation, but then the person begins to be haunted by a feeling of guilt. Experiencing a feeling of guilt, a person seems to split into 2 parts, the first, which committed the act, somehow manifested itself, and the other, which scolds itself for this manifestation.
Here it is appropriate to think about the following questions:
- Is it my fault or was it imposed by my mother?
- Why am I doing this now?
- Why am I doing this?
“Do I really want this or am I driven by the reaction that I’m afraid to see from my mother?”
— Do I limit my life to these actions/words?
- How well do I feel after this?
Emotions are our marker by which we can determine how much our boundaries are being pushed, how comfortable we are with a person in different situations.
Observe your contact with your mother. What emotions are there more? To what situations do you have the strongest emotional reactions? These places are where the victim mother tries to manipulate you, because without directly saying: “if you don’t do this, I will suffer and it will be your fault,” the mother shows with all her appearance that this will be exactly the case.
The child must run to the victim mother when she complains, console her when she is upset and helpless, and guess if something is wrong. And in this contact we must play the role of a caring parent, not noticing that there is a quiet tyrant nearby, whose behavior causes pain, confusion and hostility.
It is difficult to be around such mothers; you have to spend a lot of your resources on this contact and maintaining at least some kind of balance in the relationship, but no matter what a person does, the relationship does not get better. And the nerves, time, money are wasted.
Answer the following questions honestly:
- Why do you need to satisfy your mother’s needs and follow her lead?
- What is behind this?
- Why do you still need your mother (the answer: “after all, she is my mother and I love her” is not accepted, because it has nothing to do with separation from her, you can continue to love, but be a person separated from your parent) ?
