Is Victim Mentality Secretly Appealing?

As an abuse survivor, I came to a very confronting realisation one day as I was part way through my two year healing journey. 

There is a certain appeal in staying a victim. 

It wasn’t easy to admit it, but for me at least, victimhood was not only familiar and comfortable, it was inviting and even, dare I say it, seductive. It allowed me to indulge in my ‘brokenness’ and avoid taking responsibility for my own actions. I could be dysfunctional in any way and people would just have to cope with my erratic behaviour. 

I’m a victim, after all. 

And while it was absolutely true, having such a strong attachment to victimhood suppressed me. It kept me small and weak and filled with self-doubt. It kept me believing I was powerless. 

For example, if I ever needed to make a decision in life, I would ask everyone around me for THEIR advice rather than connecting with my own. I constantly doubted myself and I had no idea how to make a decision independently. Free will was a foreign concept to me and intuition had left the building a long time ago. My inner guidance system was permanently offline. 

But not only that, I was constantly enabling myself. 

I realised I’d gravitated towards situations that kept me small and weak, constantly handing my power over to someone else, all for the ‘benefits’ I received in return. One of which was avoiding responsibility. 

And if any of this sounds familiar right now, it’s no surprise. Because, whether you’re a survivor of traumatic abuse or not, all of us have, at some point given our power away. 

Why do we do it? 

Some of us were coerced, others were forced, and many just didn’t know any different. We thought that was simply the way the world worked. 

If you’re reading this, perhaps you relate? 

Perhaps you’ve recognised this in yourself and you’re beginning to think differently? 

Perhaps you want to break away from the cycle of victimhood and take radical responsibility? 

You’ve come to the right place. 

One of the reasons we shy away from owning our victimhood is because the unknown is far scarier than the known - even if it means holding onto our victim story and, for people like me, a paralysing level of pain. Our story may have become so fused with our identity that we feel empty or hollow without it. This is a major factor preventing us from stepping fully into our power as an individual. 

The truth is, for most of us, an unhealthy co-dependency exists between us and our victim story and it has allowed us to avoid our healing responsibilities in various ways. 

But we can change it. 

The paradox of being a victim is that we sustain the narrative ourselves. When we’re aligning with victimhood, we’re projecting a disempowered demeanour, one where something ‘happened to us’ and ‘we are suffering’ yet, in reality, we are often the ones perpetuating it. 

When I started detaching from my inner victim and my stories, I began to experience, for the first time in my life, what it meant to actually be me. The real me, not the traumatised version who had been representing me for so many years. And you know what? It was like I was meeting myself for the first time. And what’s even more surprising, I didn’t hate the person I was meeting! 

For someone who had been at war with themselves for the past decade, this felt like a revolution. Once I got there, I knew there was no turning back. I knew that I had to go the entire way. 

So I ask you, how willing are you to surrender YOUR inner victim? How willing are you to take a leap of faith and discover who you truly are? This surrendering is where the magic truly happens. The part most people don’t like is the walk between these two worlds. It is scary, yes. But trust me when I tell you, it’s well worth it. 

Surrendering your inner victim is an acknowledgment that you’re ready to step fully into your power. You’re on your way to freedom and liberation, and nothing is more powerful than that.