victimization | David M Masters

You Can Transform From Victim to Mastery

So, things haven’t worked out quite as you had planned. You realize you’d been told that there would be hard times, but this is ridiculous. You knew there would be pain, and you know God would never give you more than you could take, so He must think you are beyond Herculean. No one knows better than you, that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, but how strong does one human need to be?

If you knew what effect all those thoughts that are rolling around relentlessly inside your head had on your life, you’d be rethinking what you’re thinking about, and if you knew what effect your feelings had on your life, you’d be finding ways to be more loving and happier post haste.

Do you believe you were born under a bad sign, always have bad luck, feel like a dark cloud follows you wherever you go? Do you find yourself feeling good about something in life, just waiting for it to fall apart? (And it does.)

Do you feel like you can’t trust anyone? Have you been victimized too much for there to be any hope for recovery?

No one would blame you for feeling bad. Go ahead and continue to suffer, then, when you’re ready, think about it and ask yourself,

What impact do your feelings have on your life?

Blaming anyone or anything helps alleviate the pain, establishing you as a victim of circumstances beyond your control, and others will be supportive or come to your aid, because they feel sorry for you, as you continue to feel sorry for yourself. This helps you feel a little bit better as you get ready for the next round of bad news.

This cycle of blame and victimization prevents you from taking control of your life. You are not likely to take responsibility for your life, the mistakes you have made, or take the action(s) necessary to take your life back.

And I promise you, as bad as you feel, as awful as you feel your life is, there are billions of people on our planet who have it so much worse than you, In comparison, their degree of daily suffering and painful deaths are inconceivable to you, or even me. It is utterly incomprehensible what so many of our brothers and sisters must endure every day on our planet. Yet, we continue to think that “we” have it so bad. Really?

In comparison, you have it surprisingly good.

I’m no better than anyone else. There have been times when I’ve felt so hurt, betrayed, isolated, and victimized that I could not see straight. All I wanted was someone to listen to my story, and hopefully feel as bad as me, as we wallowed in misery together. And this did offer me some relief. I did feel better.

Doing so was attracting more drama and trauma to me, and it was coming in as I was being distracted from the beautiful, love-filled, magnificent world that was all around me. I just could not see or access it while I was in the whirlpool of the cycle of blame and victimhood. It was there all around me, but I couldn’t see it, let alone touch it.

I had to take action and change my life, and I had to start by stopping. I had to stop telling my story of betrayal and victimization. I had to stop blaming others and/or the system for what happened to me. I had to stop hanging out with others who were stuck in their own cycle of victimization.

Instead, I had to start assuming full responsibility for my life, past, present, and future. This left no one to blame for what happened to me, and I had to find a way to start thinking about the good things in life and finding any way possible to find happiness, love, and joy. I found ways to be grateful for all the good things in life that I did have, and more good things started coming my way. I created opportunities to connect with people who were on a similar track, and I kept going.

You Can Transform From Victim to Mastery

Consider taking such action for your life. If you decide not to, no one would blame you, but if you trade your victimization for personal responsibility, focusing in the good things in life, happiness, love, joy, and gratitude, you might find yourself the undeniable master of your own destiny.

What if you create your world?

Experience the power of your being as you grow and expand in your own way. Watch as everything around you starts to change to match the new you that is emerging.

Love every moment of your life, let love fill you, and overflow into those around you.

You can have and do anything you want if you are ready to take inspired action to live a better life, your best life, and make the world a better place.

Need Someone to Blame?

When you’re doing your best to make your way through the maze of life, you do the best you can with what life throws at you. People, places, things, situations, and scenarios will throw you for a loop, and not meet your expectations. You can feel better when you are disappointed, betrayed, wronged or otherwise let down by blaming someone for the breach. If you want to feel better, you need someone to blame.

You are the victim, and from the perspective of the victim you will always be on the alert, looking for someone or something to blame for your pending (or perceived) victimization. Forever the victim looking to blame someone or something for your disappointment or pain.

On the other hand, there are those who take full responsibility for how they feel. When they feel slighted, they look within, not without, for a solution for feeling better about themselves. They do not seek to blame anyone or anything outside of themselves.

No one can victimize these people because they realize that in most, if not all, cases no one does anything to another person to cause them harm. The seemingly “offending” person is only doing the best he or she can with what they have.

They realize had they been that person, having lived their life, faced with the same set of circumstances, would have done the same thing at that particular point in time, with little thought of the consequences, or how it might have affected someone else.

From this perspective, there is not intention of malice, for everyone is only doing the best they can with what they have. From this point of view, you can compassionately attempt to try to empathize and understand what it might be like to be this person and see that there is no offender, and no victim.

But we like to blame others when we feel bad, and we feel bad when we attach our expectations to a particular outcome. When things don’t turn out like we expect, or people do not act like we think they should, we feel bad and need someone to blame.

What if someone is blaming you when you didn’t do anything wrong?

When people blame you for something you didn’t do, this is not so much false accusation as it is an attempt to make them feel better and blaming someone for victimizing them makes them feel both bad, and better, because it absolves them for any responsibility on their part.

You can have compassion for this person for awhile and take the blame on their behalf because you are a genuine, loving person, who just wants this person to not feel as bad as they might feel if they weren’t able to have someone to blame for feeling bad.

While this may be an impressive display of heroism or martyrdom, subjecting yourself to this repeatedly is a pattern of self-abuse.

At some point in time, you may have to draw the line and separate yourself from the victim and let them find someone else to blame for all the things that make them feel bad.

You can’t change the victim or expect them to perceive or act in any other way because they are only doing the best they can with what they have. Bless them, love them, leave them, miss them, grieve the loss of them, and let them go.

I’m Pissed Off!

You’ve been abused, neglected, or disrespected, you’ve had about all you could take. If asked how you feel, you might grit your teeth and express, “I’m pissed off!” if you were able to practice some restraint. You might like to express yourself with other superlatives, but nonetheless, you’re mad, and rightfully so.

Someone has hurt you. Maybe they did not slash you with a machete or shoot you with a gun, but the pain is just as real, possibly worse, because a physical wound could be treated at the hospital and you could return to normal physical operation with nothing more than a scar to remind you of the initial wound, while emotional wounds of those who have hurt you remain and can persist for much longer.

How you respond to being pissed off for being hurt or suffering some injustice has a huge impact on the quality of life you experience along your life’s journey. If you harbor bitterness and resentment, you will experience premature aging, advanced illness, and a shorter lifespan. There is also evidence which suggests if you entertain thoughts of being victimized by someone or something, you will attract more victimization, thereby increasing the damage done by just thinking about former transgressions.

If you are in the frame of mind of feeling or saying,

“I’m pissed off!”

At someone or about something, you’re inviting more reasons to be pissed off.

Do you like the feeling of being pissed off? (Most people do not) and there’s good reason, because if you’re pissed, or have bitterness or resentment in your heart, your body is actually suffering deterioration. Your otherwise healthy state of being, both physically and emotionally, is breaking down. Your immune system declines making your more subject to illness and disease and your state of mind becomes fragile, leading to anger, outrage, sadness, or depression.

What Can You Do When You’re Pissed Off?

So, what can you do when you’re apt to shout out, “I’m pissed off!”

You basically have two options in general. You can be part of the problem and fight back, or you can be part of the solution, practicing tolerance and let it go. Revenge and tolerance are on opposite ends of the spectrum.

Fight Back

The emotional stance of fighting back can be performed either by launching a counter-attack of any kind in the real world, in your mind, or by adding to the energetic momentum by focusing on the cause of your angst, or the negative results of it. Whether you’re fighting back in the real world, or just in your mind, the psychological and physiological deterioration is the price you pay for entertaining the idea or engaging in a battle over the even that pissed you off.

While holding it in may help you to save face in the real world, far more damage is done to your body, mind, and spirit in the process of burying the emotions inside. Doing so will literally decrease your quality of life and lead you to an early grave, but you will be more respected in the community for your ability to handle whatever life throws at you.

In this respect, it’s healthier to have expressive emotional outbursts or to launch revenge-fueled counter-attacks, but depending on your definition of integrity or dignity, this may not be the best approach to promote a better world, for retaliation only makes whatever your fighting against more powerful.

You don’t want to become a generator of negative energy. If you want to take a stand against something, do not oppose it, instead support and turn your attention toward a positive solution.

It may be wiser to consider a bit of,

Tolerance

From the perspective of tolerance, you see things from a different point of view. You imagine what it must be like to walk a mile, or live a life, in someone else’s shoes. From this compassionate and loving viewpoint, you can understand and see that most injustices are neither malicious or fueled by any intention to harm you or make you feel bad in any way. More the most part, people are just trying to get through life the best they can with what they have.

You could forgive your transgressor, but that establishes you as a victim. A higher resonating vibration is not to need to establish yourself as a victim requiring recompense or forgiveness but to disempower the whole affair by realizing there was never an intent to harm you. You realize that had you been that person, living their life in their shoes, at that moment in time, you would have done the same thing. You know this is true because you witnessed it.

Now you can have compassion for that person (being careful not to self-righteously judge or demean) understanding that we’re all just doing the best we can with what we have,

The practice of tolerance is the moral high road, and it does not come easily because we are trained from birth to practice separation and opposition, whereas tolerance promotes unity and harmony. Tolerance takes practice, but the benefits are more of the qualities in life that you desire.

More love, happiness, wellness, peace of mind, longevity…

Then there are the cases of malicious intent to deceive or harm you directly, these are really quite rare and might be associated with someone who is potentially a psychopath or sociopath, but that’s a different story.

What approach are you likely to take the next time you feel like shouting, “I’m pissed off?”

Want to be a Victim?

You’ve been victimized. There’s no doubt that you have suffered at the hands of another. You have been hurt and the fallout was devastating. Clearly you are the victim.

Once you’ve been victimized, you find your place within the Victim’s Spectrum.

On the left side of the spectrum is the full-on victim and on the right side of the spectrum is the fully-free victim.

In my work with victims I can find the victim at any place along the victim’s spectrum. Ideally, I would like to see all victims make their way to being fully-free but it is a process and some victims progress very far along the spectrum and some stay at the point they entered the spectrum.

There are advantages to being a full-on victim. You can easily gain the interest of anyone who is sorry you were victimized, but thankful they were not the victim in your story. You can garner their undivided attention while you tell your story and they pay close attention in the hopes that by doing so, they may be able to avoid falling victim to a similar circumstance.

People who love and care about you will offer their support, encouragement and empathetic concern as they try to comfort you while in the throes of pain and anguish and their support does help to decrease the pain from being victimized.

The full-on end of the spectrum is based in fear; fear of being further victimized and the fear can be debilitating, preventing you from being able to make any positive movement along the spectrum and may overflow into other areas of your life. Left unattended the full-in victim may be completely consumed by the fear, in the most catastrophic of circumstances may be catatonic.

Also, as the full-on victim, there is little responsibility on the part of the victim. Reduced to its simplest terms, the victim is right or good and the victimizer is wrong or bad (possibly even evil). Even though being a victim is embarrassing, and represents loss, shame and suffering, the affirmation of the victim’s goodness or rightness has some redeeming value and may be seen as comforting to the victim.

There is no condemnation for being the full-on victim and just as in dealing with grief (as in the loss of a loved one), only the sufferer can determine when is the right time to make any movement toward healthy healing and freedom.

In terms of spiritual enlightenment, the more advanced life traveler will more quickly firmly position him or herself at fully-free.

What does the fully-free victim look like?

1. Decides not to be a victim

You may not be able to reverse your victimization, but you can choose to not act or feel like one. Be aware that this is a process and its different for everyone.

2. Take full responsibility

That means you stop blaming someone or something else for your victimization. In taking full responsibility, you assume that you caused the events that led to your victimization and the actual victimization to happen.

3. Retain the Learning

Review the process of the victimization. What did you do to make yourself vulnerable? What could you have done better to protect yourself. When reviewing, try not to do so from a viewpoint of fear or anger, instead attempt to look through the eyes of tolerance and love. The learning is the purpose behind the victimization.

4. Be Thankful

Adopt an attitude of gracious thankfulness for the entire affair. You have survived and earned your master’s degree in how not to be victimized, like this, again. You have paid dearly for the training and experience, and you are thankful for the opportunity.

Speaking of opportunity, I have realized in my life, any time something goes tragically wrong, there is something better coming… I start looking around for something amazing that is on its way as soon as possible.

5. Forgive and Let Go

This means to forgive yourself for the part you played in attracting or allowing the victimization to happen. Also forgive all other participants in the victimization, remember you are thankful for their participation in your learning process.

Letting go means holding no grudges and not feeling bad. If you are able to authentically and honestly forgive and accept all the good that has arisen from this tragedy, you can let it go. That means: No complaining, only recalling the treasure hidden within the process and celebration of your survival.

6. Accept Your Calling

Your experience may have great value to others. This may have been the purpose behind the whole affair. You have been through it, you survived and are better for it. You now can offer understanding, empathetic compassion, hope and assistance to others who may be involved in a similar situation.

This is likely why you were chosen to have this experience, to help others. I know that was the blessing in my experience with a psychopath. It opened my eyes to something I didn’t believe existed prior to surviving the experience, as well as any other less than desirable (or tragic) experiences I have survived along the way.

7. Accept the Process

Realize that moving along the victim’s spectrum is a process. As you are in search of recovery, your progress may vary, but it does get better the longer you work on the process.

Remember, you are not a bad person, neither are any of the other players. Love yourself, love others and keep moving toward love and in doing so you will be the recipient of increased peace and harmony.