Getting Out of the Victim Role
by Dianne Schwartz
An excerpt from Whose Face Is in the Mirror? - The Story of One Woman's Journey from the Nightmare of Domestic Abuse to True Healing
If you're used to being a victim, it can take time to recognize that love and respect go hand in hand.The doctor said he believed he had gotten all of the cancer. He expected my father to fully recover and live a long life. Dad was heavily drugged and was cracking stupid jokes. My sister and I asked if they had a drug to make him funnier.
Dutifully, I sent flowers to my father's hospital room. When I wasn't working, I tried to visit him, but only when my mother wasn't there. She was refusing to speak to me - an old pattern that no longer intimidated me.
Dad would try to make me look at his incision, knowing I would probably pass out at the sight of it. Things of that nature made me weak in the knees. I laughingly refused. But when he was no longer on painkillers, his nasty disposition returned. He was nice to my sister, but not to me. "It had always been this way, so I had grown accustomed to it. The only problem was, I no longer needed it or fed off it." Once again, though, I willingly let myself be put in the position of becoming a victim of sorts. As a result of my therapy, I could actually see it taking place, but not being 100 percent well yet, I allowed myself to enter into this familiar territory.
It started out as concern on my sister's part. She was in town to visit Dad during his stay in the hospital. She called me at the store one day and said, "I have to tell you that I'm worried. I just found out that Mom and Dad don't have any health insurance. If something major happened, they could be wiped out financially. Would you do me a favor? Could you try to talk to Dad and see if you can talk him into getting some kind of insurance?".
Now, as I look back on the situation, I should have told my sister that if she was so concerned, she should do it herself. But still the rescuer, I told her I would try.
The next time I visited him, I mentioned "my" concern. My father exploded. "The only reason you care is out of fear of losing your inheritance. Mind your own business."
I didn't want to be around his angry and demeaning remarks anymore. I guess since they had gotten all the cancer and he knew he wasn't going to die, he didn't care about his talk of forgiveness or getting along. It was to be the last time I saw him while he was hospitalized.
That evening I examined myself thoroughly. Why did I hang around and take his verbal abuse? Was I willing to do this the rest of my life? If I continued to have any kind of relationship with him, I could expect things to go as before. He was not going to change. Could I accept it? No. It hurt me too deeply and harmed my self-esteem. I had jumped into the situation at my sister's insistence because she was afraid to do it herself. I got the verbal abuse and she went home.
I decided to back away once again from my parents. It was the only way to survive. I didn't have the need to call and explain. That would only say I still wanted to argue or patch things up. I no longer wanted to offer explanations. I was simply removing myself from a bad situation. I had to.
I contacted a business broker and listed the store. The broker could talk to my father about the business, note, and so on.
I was owed money and intended to collect it. I still needed to survive, and I had put a lot of money into the store. I wanted to regain something for all of my hard work. I would no longer punish myself and allow others to walk all over me just to gain their approval.
I still prayed daily for God to show me my mission. I was learning that I still had areas of my life that needed changing.
Bob, my therapist, asked me, "Do you know how to stop being a victim?" Obviously, I still didn't know the answer to that question and gave him a blank look. "This is how you do it," he told me. "You stop being a victim!" In a nutshell, there was the answer to a lifelong problem. You make up your mind that you are tired of being in the victim mode, and you just stop doing it.
We don't have to be abused to be a victim. We might be the one who others contact to do their dirty work—the gophers, so to speak. They take on a project that requires a lot of footwork and know we will be willing to do it for them because we can't seem to say no.
Our fear of confrontation can also put us in the victim mode. Our friends can treat us rudely, canceling plans at the last moment in favor of something better that's come up, and they understand that we won't express anger. We will simply accept their actions without a word of complaint. We will be there for the next event, smiles and all.
We may still be connected to our parents because they hold the family purse strings, even when we are in our middle-age years. We bend and comply, as they not only tell us how to live our lives, but how to raise our children as well. They know we aren't going to argue or break free because we need their financial help. We've grown used to that extra financial bonus they sometimes throw our way, and we allow them to interfere because of it. We remain the victim.
We allow a man whom we work with to make sexually degrading remarks to us because we are fearful of rocking the corporate ladder. He has learned, through repeated efforts, that we are going to smile and treat his words as a joke. We will even change jobs to escape him, rather than face him head-on.
Our children become tyrants who rule our homes with their aggressive behavior and rebellion. We fear what might happen if we put our foot down and restrict their actions. We hold our breath, just waiting for the day when they are raised and out of the house.
We haven't learned that love and respect go hand-in-hand. When we remain the victim, or in the victim mode, we haven't set any boundaries for ourselves. We have no clear-cut or defined lines drawn in the sand that tell others we are not willing to allow them to tread on our self-respect. We may complain about the actions or words of others, but we do nothing to change them.
Sometimes, we will use game playing to get a response from those who don't treat us fairly. We grow silent, waiting for them to respond and ask what is wrong. We detach for a short period of time, waiting for the apology. We feel sorry for ourselves and cry, hoping they will feel bad when they see our tears. We write long letters, which are never delivered, explaining how we feel, the pain they have caused, and the results of their offenses. We never have a face-to-face confrontation, setting our boundaries in concrete. We believe these offenders are mind readers. How will they know and understand if we don't tell them?
When we've set our boundaries, we have to be careful not to use them as a ploy to get even. This only opens the door for more pain. If there is a person in our lives who continually hurts us, it's acceptable to simply walk away. If our explanation is only going to cause arguments and strife, we don't walk down that pathway again. We find a new path. We may have grown accustomed to arguing with certain people, and this is just another reason to do it. If we know we're right, we don't offer previous offenses to explain our case. We use our legs and feet to walk away.
This is about changing. Change is something we are very fearful of. Why else would we remain with an abuser? Our victimization is deeply rooted. It is also a part of us that we have grown familiar with. But it isn't comfortable, and eventually we will understand that familiarity and comfort can be two very different things.
I was familiar with my father's verbal abuse-so familiar that it made me feel strange during those brief periods when he was actually nice. It was a side of him that was rarely seen by me, and I didn't know how to deal with it. If he had always been kind and soft-spoken, his rages would have frightened me. But it was the raging I had grown familiar with, so the periodic affability was not comfortable.
We have to examine when the familiar is no longer comfortable or not something we want in our lives. We need to look at the value of it and what it brings to us. Is it something that reaffirms our belief that we are undeserving of kindness or respect? Is it something that keeps us in the victim role? Is it something that keeps us from having to make a change? Does the familiarity harm our spirit?
I'm very comfortable with my current husband, David. We have a set pattern when he comes home from work. We talk about the day's events, his job, my writing, our children, and other things that may have taken place that day. If it's summer, we sit on our front patio, have a cocktail, and watch our horses grazing in the front pasture. I'm also very comfortable with it. All of these patterns make me happy and content. If he came home angry and verbally abusive every single day, I would be familiar with it, but not comfortable. Do you see the difference?
We literally teach others how to treat us. We do this by accepting and conforming to their actions and behavior. Now they're familiar with our reactions. They've learned how far we will be pushed, what trigger words to use, and which buttons to push—all because we haven't demonstrated that it isn't acceptable.
Actually, defending ourselves can be somewhat intimidating at first. We may be tempted to back down and seek others approval, after telling them we aren't going to tolerate their behavior anymore. We detest the feeling of not getting their acceptance, but after we've done it the first time and refuse to back down on our commitment to change our victimization, we begin to sense a feeling of power. We discover that this new way of living really works! Then, our self-respect begins to turn to self-love. Along with these new emotions, we regain our power. It is something we will not ever lose again.
All of these new feelings will start to bring about change—and we learn that change can be good.