The Problem With the Victim Mentality

Okay, so I've been using Facebook for a little over 12 years. It's a bad rep, I know, but over the last one to two years I've sat back and watched a few very interesting things happen with the algorithms -- and I may have a few things sussed out. You may know this already, but here goes:

Facebook (apart from colleges) have been the primary contributor to victim groups. People like me that have had a hard past can find the idea of being a victim intoxicating. And through Facebook where the algorithm continually feeds your opinions back to you, it can often be hard to break that cycle.

I don't think Facebook is as biased as the conservative media points out, I just think the small few are being made to sound very loud because of the reporting tools given to them, and the way in which they shut down conversation or at least try and shut down conversation. It's hard to battle a person that believes they are a victim.

The victim mindset can be quite addictive because no-one generally understands what to do around people that have any sort of disadvantage. I'm testament to that. I was diagnosed as Paranoid Schizophrenic nearly twenty years ago and for a good ten years absolutely no-one properly knew how to handle me. What would YOU do if I said to you,

I'm sorry I acted in that way, it was my schizophrenia

Hard to deal with, isn't it?

And my friends generally didn't know how to handle or deal with that either, and almost always I was let away Scott free with whatever crazy thing I got up to. You see, being a victim allows you a great deal of freedom -- in the sense that people don't want to feel bad for treating someone worse off than themselves. Ever heard of the phrase, "Kicking a dog when it's down" - meaning don't bully people lesser than you.

Being a victim sucks, but mostly victimisation, or acting like a victim is all in the mindset.

Sure, I'm a victim. Sure I've been diagnosed with all sorts in the past. Sure I've been institutionalised. Sure I can't do many of the things that I would have been able to do had I not been through what I had, but does that make me a victim?

No.

I'm no lesser than anyone else, and anyone else is no lesser than me.

Some people would probably say that I didn't understand what being a victim was because I'm white and male, and those sorts of attributes allow me the best that life has to offer.

Sure.

I'd like to say, try being raised fatherless to two alcoholics and spend your early twenties in and out of psychiatric hospital.

But then I think to myself why am I playing their game? The victim game is like the race to see who can reach the bottom of the pile fast -- and that's stupid. It's the game played by people that have nothing else to offer. No achievements, no goals, nothing. If you ever read the book "Transactional Analysis" then you'll find that the victim mentality is the worst mindset you can be in -- so I'm not going to play that game. Instead I'm going to do like Sargon of Akkad does, and tells them,

I don't care

You probably do care mind you, just like I do, but there's no winning over someone that just wants to control you with their feelings of helplessness.

A great video here in dealing with this sort of mentality:

I don't care about your moral outrage

I love it. Watch and learn how at every turn Sargon slaps him down.

Through my experience this is the only way to do so, and sometimes it does suck telling people negative stuff like that, but on the other hand they will only have you submitting to their offence -- and that's what manipulators do. So don't play their game. 

Tell them their game doesn't exist