No one likes to think of himself or herself as a victim. When you hear the word "victim," you might think of a sad, helpless person. So, most of us are surprised when we realise how often we let ourselves be emotional victims. After 35 years of counselling individuals, couples, families, and business partners, I know that many of us are often victims without even realising it.
When we let someone else decide how valuable we are, we become victims. When we depend on approval, sex, things, drugs, or activities for our happiness and feelings of being loved, we are victims. When we blame someone else for our feelings of fear, anger, hurt, being alone, jealousy, disappointment, and so on, we are being victims. When we let other people tell us who we are, we give them power over us and feel like we have to do what they say.
When we choose to define ourselves internally through our connection to our spiritual Guidance, we move into personal power and personal responsibility. We will get answers from Spirit when we really want to know what we are worth on our own and what actions are in our best interests. Most people don't know how easy it is to get answers from a spiritual source. If you really want to learn, the answers will come to you in words, pictures, or feelings.
We always have two options: we can try to find happiness, peace, safety, security, loveability, and worth in people, things, activities, and substances, or we can connect with a spiritual source of love and compassion by taking care of ourselves and loving others.
When we try to get our happiness and safety from other people, we have to try to get them to do what we want. Then, when they don't help us the way we thought they would, we feel like they've done us wrong.
Here's what I mean: Don and Joyce fight all the time about how to take care of their kids. Joyce likes to be in charge, while Don is more likely to let things go. When Joyce gets mad at Don's way of raising his kids, she usually yells at him about how he lets things go. Don has to listen to Joyce yell at him a lot. He just listens when she talks for more than an hour. He then tries to talk to her, but she won't listen. Don then feels like a victim and talks about how Joyce yells at him and won't listen to what he has to say.
When I asked Don why he sits and listens to Joyce during a counselling session, he said that he hoped that if he listened to her, she would listen to him. When I asked if she ever listens to him during these fights, he said, "No."
"Why do you need her to hear what you have to say?"
"I'd like to tell her why I did what I did with the kids."
"Why do you have to tell her about it?"
"So that she won't be angry with me."
Don lets Joyce yell at him as a way to try to control her and get her to like him. Then he tried to explain how she felt about him to get even more control over her. When she doesn't listen, he feels hurt by her yelling and blames her for being so angry and controlling.
If Don were willing to take responsibility for getting approval from his Higher Power, he wouldn't listen to Joyce when she was yelling at him. Instead, he would tell her that she could only yell at him for so long and that he would only listen to her if she was respectful and willing to learn with him. But as long as he needs her approval to feel safe or good about himself, he won't set this limit. Joyce will treat Don badly until he starts looking to his spiritual guidance for security and worth. Until then, he shouldn't give Joyce this job.
We stop being victims and gain personal power when we take responsibility for our own feelings of worth and loveability by building our spiritual connection instead of giving that job to other people.
