“The Victim Complex”
Why is it whenever someone musters up the courage to speak on their experience with respect to being abused or marginalized the reaction from the peanut gallery is not one of empathy or compassion, but judgment?
“Look at you feeling sorry for yourself…”
Every time I attempted to confront my toxic family of origin, long before it ever even occurred to me that walking away was an option, just on the precipice of my unsteady attempts at speaking my truth and laying boundaries, I was met with sometimes subtle, sometimes loud-and-clear gaslighting.
Oh COME ON it wasn’t that bad…
Yeah, that’s right, go to therapy and suddenly everyyythinngg is the parents’ fault…
THAT’s funny, I seem to remember you having a HAPPY childhood…
Sure, you had it SOoooOOOooo HARD
The irony is, the people accusing me of hysterics, of blaming them for my misfortune, of “being stuck in the past,” of “playing the victim” are the same people who were so hindered by their own pain that they couldn’t see the wide swath of damage they left wherever they ventured.
My truth felt like accusation. My humble attempts at re-establishing these relationships from a healthy place—an honest place, a place of accountability felt like blame and subsequently, shame.
It wasn’t really about me, was it?
An inability to take responsibility shows a certain lack of self-awareness and points to a deep and unacknowledged well of shame. We all get triggered when we are being confronted with harm we’ve done, but being in relationships requires a willingness to be humble, to be vulnerable, and to be wrong from time to time. It’s an important and necessary part of growing, of loving, and of being loved.
We are most susceptible to ego flare-ups when we are triggered. Someone coming to us and explaining harm we’ve cause can definitely cause a shame spiral. But the shame spiral passes!! That’s when the best course of action would be to take a step back, engage in self-compassion, and use this information to learn and do better in the future.
Sometimes we are too wrapped up in our own experience to see how we could have hurt someone. Sometimes we lose sight of the light within. Sometimes the mirror of another is exactly what we need—even if it feels harsh in the moment.
Why do Dave Chappelle, Ricky Gervaise, and JK Rowling feel the need to go after trans people (one of the most marginalized communities throughout the world) despite having massive platforms, money, success, and no stake in the gender game? Why does Johnny Depp feel the need to sue a woman he (~allegedly~) (i hate that you have to say “allegedly” or you could get sued, but everyone takes that word to mean not guilty) horrifically abused for many years and sick his rabid stans on her by publicizing a trial that should have been private (if it even needed to happen at all)!? How was a victim speaking on her experience with abuse (and not even naming him directly) equal to this public shaming he’s subjected her to. He could have seen the disillusion of yet another relationship as a Rock-Bottom-Come-to-Jesus-Moment regarding his addictions. He could have taken responsibility for himself and gone in a new direction. He could have made the choice to stop causing harm. JK, Ricky, and Dave could have reframed their ego flare-ups as just an experience of the shame that can come from feeling the sharp edges of waning relevance and no longer being hip to the cultural zeitgeist. I’m sure it hurts to no longer be on the leading edge of the conversation (literally, I’m an aging millennial, I know the feeling intimately). But a mature person doesn’t go Right, I’m irrelevant, my time as the bad boy of *checks notes* children’s fantasy novels is coming to an end, time to attack a marginalized community!!! No no no, Joanne. A mature person goes fuck I have a lot to learn! Or I am so embarrassed at how ignorant I am… maybe it’s time to……. read a book?! Or WOW!! I have a room full of money like Scrooge McDuck, I guess I can delete my twitter now because my life is pretty good, actually.
But no, they see their waning 15 minutes as the fault of some scapegoat monolith “Woke Culture” and go on bigoted tirades that would feel right at home in the mouth of everyone’s Cue Anon Uncle that doesn’t get invited to holidays anymore.
“The Victim Mentality” is a form of gaslighting that perpetrators of harm tend to project onto the people that they are harming in order to silence or discredit them. But it is just a projection. It is a direct line to the truth about themselves. It is the wizard pulling back the curtain.
I have never met an abuser who didn’t have a victim complex.
I have never met an actual victim who didn’t have to muster every ounce of bravery and self-love in their being to speak on the ways they’ve been hurt.
Speaking your truth is inherently empowering. It is the moment a victim becomes a survivor. It is the moment that wounds turn toward healing. It’s so courageous, it’s strength incarnate. It’s so beautiful. And it’s inspiring— it causes a ripple effect.
This is how we got to the cultural reckoning of the past 10 years. By people sharing the ways they’ve been hurt and empowering others to embrace their own vulnerability in the same way. Communicating from a place of empathy and open-heartedness That’s how we got here.
and the backlash is the diametric opposite.
It’s not “blame” to give the responsibility of harm caused to the person who caused it. It’s not being “stuck in the past” to acknowledge what you’ve been through.
It’s necessary. It’s what healing is.
Don’t allow yourself to be gaslit by someone who can’t own their actions calling your honesty a “victim complex.”
Instead, ask yourself…
who’s really
“playing”
the victim here?
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