Pick up any book on spirituality or personal development and at some point, you will read about the benefits of a positive mental attitude, the determination to see the best, rather than the worst in situations and people.   In order to live in a positive frame of mind, you might need to let go of being in victim mode.   What does this mean?  What is Victim Mode?  How do you know if you are in it and how can you begin to climb out of it?

What is Victim Mode?

Victim mode may be summarised as ‘Poor Me’ syndrome.    It is the attitude that dwells on the bad things have happened to you.   The bad things, when you are in victim mode, are a consequence of a mysterious conspiracy against you, poor parenting, inadequate lovers, uncaring friends.  Perhaps you were ignored as a child or didn’t get the support or love that you needed.  Perhaps the fates are against you or you always get ‘bad luck’.   Whatever the bad things are, victim mode does not require you to consider if your behaviour or beliefs or attitude may have played any part.   In victim mode, bad things are always, reassuringly, somebody else’s fault. 

Victim Mode can be Self Reinforcing

For some people, being in victim mode becomes a habit.   They begin to define themselves by the bad things that have happened to them. “I am the sort of person who always gets left out”, “I will never find true love,” “Nothing ever works out for me,”.  At every opportunity,

such people will trawl out their personal story of how they were abandoned, abused, unloved, betrayed and so on.   Their story will almost certainly elicit sympathy and attention.  Attention is reinforcing, so the story is revisited again and again.  It is petted and nurtured and stored away to be replayed as soon as an opportunity presents itself.  Every time the story is reactivated, so is the pain associated with it.   Before too long, the victim mode thinker’s personality is defined by their pain.

Victim Mode Thinkers Need Enablers

Think of people that you have met who are in habitual victim mode. When you meet them, they will tell you a tale of woe.   This or that has happened to them, which has caused them great angst.   People have upset them or let them down or failed to recognise their needs.  They may have pulled through, but it was torment.   You feel compelled to sympathise.  There seems little room for 50/50 conversation.  Before long, your conversations are dominated by their negative experiences of the world and you have become an enabler for their victim thinking.

As victim mode thinking becomes habitual, such people expect the worst.   For them, the glass is always half empty or about to drain away at any moment.  There is no joy in the world and if there is, it is only transient, with an asteroid already winging its way through space or the government about to implant brain-controlling chemistry in the Covid vaccines.   Conspiracy theorists and people in victim mode are happy bedfellows.

Victim Mode is Catching

“If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em”.  

Sometimes, collective victim thinking seems to be the basis of friendship groups.    Groups of friends complain and moan to each other about their jobs, their partners, their children.  They have as much a common interest in moaning about their lot as a photography group as in looking at the world through a camera lens.   The person that is happy in their relationships or enjoys their work does not fit into this kind of a group.   Neither does the person that challenges the group to problem solve their situation.   If you make a positive comment to such a group, it will probably be followed by a short silence and then the conversation will return to the comfort zone of complaining.   

Why Does Victim Mode Matter?

If you choose to be in victim mode and you have other people to spend in co-misery, does it really matter?

And of course, at one level, it does not matter.   It is your choice, after all.  But in victim mode, there is little joy.    Spiritual writers assert that if you are in victim mode, you are locked into low level thinking, which prevents you from experiencing the joy that comes with higher vibrational thinking, such as being compassionate and living in gratitude.

And the real problem is that like attracts like.  If you are in victim mode, you are probably going to be attracted to, or attract like-minded people.   With others, your negativity could sink the world.   Look at the people around you.  Are they moaners?  Do they always complain about other people in their life?  Is it possible that you are an enabler or are they merely a reflection of your own victim mode thinking?  These are uncomfortable questions.

Can You Get Out of Victim Mode?

Being in victim mode is quite comfortable. It does not require much effort and you will always find people that share your negative take on the world.    Getting out of victim mode is much harder and requires determination and monitoring of your thoughts.   The first step is to focus on your own thoughts and what you say:

• How many times do you catch yourself moaning about another person?

• How many times do you trawl out a story about something bad that has happened to you?

• Do you expect good things to happen or bad thing?  For example, when you embark upon a new project or relationship, do you expect it to all work out beautifully or do you think about all the things that can go wrong?

• Do you usually blame other people for the bad things that have happened to you?

Being in victim mode is comfortable and commonplace.   Being locked in victim mode closes off the experience of joy and happiness as the two are incompatible.  It is like trying to experience sunlight in the middle of a dark night.   If you would like to open the door to let more joy into your life, relinquishing victim mode might be a great step to take.    

The Human Experience is a blog about what it is to be human.   Join the debate by letting us know about your experience and whether you agree or disagree with the points raised in this blog.