Self-Victimization

Self-Victimization

Do you attribute control of your successes and failures to yourself or to some fated force outside of your purview? Whether it is your weight, your emotions, your spouse, your children, your paycheck–if you continually find yourself feeling angry, resentful or upset by the events in your life, reflect on who you blame for life’s ups and downs. How a person internalizes a particular point of view about control speaks volumes about their ability to live with a sense of wellbeing and contentment.

In personality psychology, locus of control defines how much a person believes that they are ultimately responsibility for their successes and failures. The word “locus” is Latin for “location”–essentially either a person feels the location of their control over life is either internal (rests within themselves) or external (rests with fates outside of their control). The concept was clarified by Julian B. Rotter in the 1950’s. He demonstrated that locus of control is on a continuum, some people are highly external, some highly internal, and some fall somewhere in the middle. Since the 1950’s this research has been brilliantly expanded by Carol Dweck with her theory of success as based on a “Fixed” or “Growth” mindset.

People who have a high internal locus of control believe that effort, hard work, learning from setbacks, soliciting feedback, eventually lead to success. People who have a high external locus of control attribute success to sources outside of their immediate control, i.e. luck, other individuals, environmental factors, accidental chance. If you have a high external locus of control, you do not see how your own actions or lack of action may be at the root of how you generally feel about your life.

People with a high external locus of control continually blame environmental factors for their hardships. For example, if they perform poorly at work, people with a high external locus of control are more likely to blame their boss, while those with a high internal locus of control may blame their own efforts and abilities.

If you have a high external locus of control you may continually find yourself experiencing the same set of negative consequences over and over again; this may occur interpersonally, professionally, emotionally and even in terms of your physical health. If your philosophy about control is outside of your conscious awareness then you are essentially a slave to it, repeating the same negative dynamics again and again, all the while feeling at the mercy of circumstance.

Over time, repeatedly reenacting the same problematic patterns of behavior causes a self-fulfilling prophesy to manifest. A person comes to believe that they truly cannot impact their own future; thereby sealing their fate as nothing more than a cog in a wheel that goes nowhere.

If you grew up with parents who continually emphasized effort and personal responsibility, you may have an easier time with life’s ups and downs. On the other hand, if your parental models continually blamed external factors for their difficulty or if you genuinely struggled with events outside of your control (socioeconomic status, trauma, abuse, war or social unrest) you may be prone to having a high external locus of control.

Locus of control has been extensively researched and is a significant factor in pro-health behaviors, emotional stability, relational satisfaction and professional accomplishment. Having a high external locus of control may make some more prone to depression, alcoholism and obesity.

It is important for your future contentment to consider how you approach setbacks, what is your attributional style? Answer these questions to find out.

1. Do you believe positive events in your life are mainly due to luck or chance?

2. When you hit a setback or fail at something do you blame others?

3. When you are upset do you feel like your emotions are out of your control?

4. When you have an argument with a friend/romantic partner do you repeatedly tell yourself what they did wrong?

5. When you hit a roadblock or challenge (interpersonally or professionally) do you tend to give up, i.e. want to break up or switch job assignments?

Answering yes to all of these questions suggests you have a high external locus of control, answering yes to a few suggests you externalize in some situations. Altering whatever tendency you have toward externalizing control will have a significant impact on your self-perception and your ability to get what you want in life.

Work to change to a more internalized locus of control. Whenever you find yourself upset or stuck over a relationship, work event, family event, notice if you are feeling that you are at the mercy of others and blaming them for your hardships or negative feelings. Even if your blame is warranted, wallowing in it is not going to help you achieve your goals or make you feel any better.

Resist self-pity—instead, focus on the problem that is within your control. Of course, you cannot control the actions and reactions of others. Remember though, you do control whether or not you surround yourself with toxic partners, impossible jobs. You also control how much effort you put into your professional pursuits, psychological wellbeing, physical and emotional health.

Self-determination is a remedy for feeling perpetually, and passively, victimized. You , alone, choose which way you wish to control your life.

Jill P. Weber, Ph.D. is a clinical psychologist and author of Having Sex, Wanting Intimacy—Why Women Settle for One-Sided Relationships.

 

Source: Self-Victimizing Again? | Psychology Today

 

 

 

Self-Victimization

Definition:

Self-Victimization – Casting oneself in the role of a victim.

Tying Oneself to the Tracks

We’ve all seen a small child do it – crying crocodile tears, pouting or sulking when they don’t get exactly what they want, when they want it. Some folks, however, never grow out of using the “poor me” strategy.

Part of the passage to healthy adulthood is learning to take responsibility for our own situations and our own mistakes, and learning not to blame others for things which aren’t their fault. We also learn that most people can see through insincere attempts at manipulating their emotions.

Some people with Personality Disorders, however, do not achieve this level of self-responsibility and continue with exaggerated, even blatantly dishonest campaigns to arouse the sympathies of others, even to the point of appearing ridiculous to observers around them.

Sometimes, these campaigns continue to get them what they want, as exasperated family members with weak boundaries try to appease them in the hope that they will just give it a rest. This is similar to spoiled children, who learn to get what they want from parents with poor boundaries by throwing tantrums, whining, nagging or making ultimatums and threats.

In some cases, playing the victim is also used strategically by abusers to divert attention away from their own behavior and place responsibility for any wrong-doing on the victim, the government, or some other scapegoat. This is, for example, a fairly common defense strategy for assault and murder trials.

Self-Victimization is also sometimes used quite strategically to elicit sympathy from others and gain their assistance in supporting, enabling or hiding abusive behaviors. This is a common tactic used for proxy recruitment.

It is very common for perpetrators of abuse to engage in self-victimization for two main reasons:

Justification to themselves – as a way of dealing with the cognitive dissonance which results from inconsistencies between the way they treat others and what they believe about themselves.
Justification to others – as a way of escaping harsh judgment or condemnation they may fear from people whom they wish to please or impress.

What it Looks Like

A spouse, challenged over emptying the joint account, complains the other partner is neglecting their needs.
A husband hits his wife and then, when confronted with his actions, complains that he is treated worse in other ways.
A mother beats or neglects her children and diverts challenges about it by only discussing her own medical complaints.
A spouse is having an affair and claims the other partner drove them to it.
A person spreads false accusations about physical or sexual abuse in the home.
A thief caught red-handed tells stories about how they were abused as a child.
A narcissistic boss mistreats a subordinate and then claims the subordinate’s behavior was hurting the company as justification.
A teenager starts a fight with a sibling then complains about the resulting bruises.
A young girl overdoses and then says she did it because nobody listens to her.

How it Feels

If you are in a relationship with someone who plays the victim, it is easy to feel like you are in the classic “damned if you do and damned if you don’t” scenario. No matter how hard you try, how well you behave, or how much you sacrifice, your actions and efforts can never fill the bottomless pit of “need” that is presented to you. . Once you solve problem A, problem B suddenly appears.

This happens because the true “need” is inside the mind of the person who is playing the victim. What they really need is to address their own illness with treatment programs that work, which also requires effort and rigorous work on their own part. It has nothing to do with you. Even if you had the character of Gandhi, Mother Theresa and Saint Francis rolled into one, you could never fill the void – because you cannot change what their mind creates. At some point, you are likely to feel resentment and frustration as you realize your efforts are being consumed and not reciprocated. Worse still, you may find you are the focus of the Personality-Disordered individual’s resentments and complaints.

It is important to understand that getting angry or hitting back is not going to help you – all it will do is feed into the self-victimizer’s scenario that you are unfair or abusive towards them and give them further “justification” to abuse you.

What NOT to do

  • Don’t react to every false accusation you hear from a Personality Disordered individual. It just makes it worse.
  • Don’t try to justify yourself or your actions to a person who is casting themselves as the victim. It’s their illusion, you do not have to engage with it.
  • Don’t admit to or apologize for anything that you haven’t done wrong. Stick to the truth, and say it once calmly and clearly.
  • Don’t try to compensate for a self-victimizer’s complaints by increasing your own effort. Spend your energy on what works.
  • Don’t give a self-victimizer a “free ride” just because they claim they deserve one. . Everyone, regardless of their personality, gets to deal with their own stuff.
  • Don’t retaliate or strike back at someone who cast themselves as a victim. You are just pouring fuel on their fire.
  • Don’t assume that everyone who hears a self-victimizer’s complaints believes them. Most people can smell a rat when a story doesn’t ring true.

What TO do

  • Try to be as unemotional as possible. Try to judge based on facts rather than feelings.
  • Acknowledge that everyone, even a self-victimizer, is entitled to believe what they want without validation or judgment.
  • Surround yourself with friends who are not self-victimizers and who can help you figure out what is real and what is not.
  • Keep doing what you know is right – regardless of what a self-victimizer tells you.

Source: Self-Victimization — Out of the FOG

Comments are closed.