Jennifer Lehr MFT Blog

Anatomy of an Emotional Victim: Changing Victim Consciousness to Self-Empowerment

Sue and her husband Dave were talking in the morning before leaving for work.  Dave mentioned that he had made dinner plans with a friend later that week.  Sue immediately bristled.  “You never make plans with me, everyone else is always first”, she hissed.  Dave sighed.  “Here we go again,” he thought to himself.  He tried to reason with his wife, but she was already upset and angry.  Dave got quiet and pulled back rather than get into a fight. Sue got angrier as she felt more and more abandoned.  Dave said that he had to go and left for work.  Later that evening when they were both home, there was a chill in the air.  Neither of them brought up the morning’s fight. Eventually things went back to normal again, and although the dinner with the friend came and went, this dynamic between them would come up over and over again, causing distrust, resentment and fear, and over time eroding the bond between them.

Victim hood is a self-concept, a way of seeing ourselves.  It is not the same as being a victim of real circumstances such as a natural disaster or a crime. We all know people who are emotional victims. Emotional victims look at the world through a lens of past injustices without seeing the link in all of the situations: themselves. It just happened to them; life treats them badly. “You can’t trust a man” rather than “I’ve never been able to pick a trustworthy man”. Because they believe that they are not responsible for what is happening in their lives, they feel entitled to act inappropriately towards the perceived offender. Some people create victim roles for themselves. Other people are pulled into a victim role by being in a dysfunctional relationship. We’ve all had times when we’ve engaged with somebody who reacted on occasion as an emotional victim, or felt that way ourselves. Moving from being an emotional victim to self-empowerment involves looking at, and taking responsibility for, our own patterns in relationships, or circumstances.

What is the payback of not taking responsibility for oneself?  Why would someone ever rationalize and embrace their disempowerment?  The reason is that being an emotional victim allows an avoidance of painful feelings such as shame.  Often emotional victims have had difficult childhoods and are sensitized to feeling criticized, wronged, or “bad”.  They easily feel unimportant or mistreated.  Nobody wants to feel as if they are “bad”, unimportant or mistreated.  Deep down, there is a little child in them that really does believe that they are bad, or that others don’t care about them. Emotional victims develop a habit of “explaining” why events happen to them, rather looking at their own role in the events of their lives. In avoiding their imaginary “badness” and the feelings associated with it, they are not able to be honest with themselves about the responsibility they have for their lives and the wrong they actually inflict upon others. They are caught up in believing that people are bad, rather than knowing that it is the behavior that is bad, not the person.  Driven by an underlying and often unconscious fear of being wrong, they blame others for their problems and defend themselves as guiltless and innocent at all costs. As a result, emotional victims take little responsibility for their own behavior and the events in their lives.

The cost of being an emotional victim is high.  It is painful to feel powerless over the events of one’s life and to feel continually wronged.  The ensuing despair and anger is also painful, as well as the strained relationships that result. The price is relationships that do not function well, where the other person walks on eggshells and does not open up to vulnerability and intimacy. 

Do you have a relationship with somebody who does not take responsibility for his or her own behavior?  How is this impacting you?  What “survival” techniques have you developed?  It might be time to change them.

Are there ways that you do not take responsibility for yourself?  What feelings might you be trying to avoid?  Can you allow yourself to be imperfect, make mistakes and apologize?  Can you acknowledge that each of us has an enormous amount of power to change our lives and that looking at ourselves is the first step? 

Becoming Psychologically Healthy

We sometimes believe that if we are "good" people, good things will happen to us.  This is not entirely true. While some people are intrinsically better at certain skills such as making money, having relationships that work, or making art than others, it has nothing to do with their inherent worth. Instead, it has to do with innate ability, effort, intent and which talents we chose to develop.

Lets look at making money first. I know a wonderful social worker. He is a kind person and helps many children. He may never make more than his social worker salary, which although adequate, is not a lot of money. The money he makes is dictated by his career choice. Perhaps he will someday write a book or lecture and increase his ability to make money, but this is not predicated by his being a good person, but by the skills he chooses to develop that are moneymaking skills.

The same is true for psychological health. Most people I know who are now psychologically healthy, were at some point in their lives in a compromised emotional and psychological position. They chose to take responsibility for their self-limiting behaviors and beliefs or past damage (even if it was not their fault) and develop new ways of being. They chose to seek help and do the work of altering how they engaged with the world. They were "good" people before they did this, but they were not healthy. They had old wounds that had not fully healed. They may have been overly reactive, or let people mistreat them. They may have mistreated their loved ones, or have been anxious or depressed.

Although we have to play the hand we were dealt and come to grips with our talents and our deficiencies, we can chose to develop skills and awareness that will enable us to create the life we want. If we want to be joyful, and free of depression and anxiety, if we want functioning relationships with others and ourselves, we may need to look at how we create ourselves historically and currently. As we become more self-aware, we can start to change who we are, how we see ourselves and show up in the world.

To give a quick example: a common issue I notice in working with people is how hard they are on themselves. How a person talks to him or herself is often very negative. When something difficult happens to them, their inner dialogue goes something like this. "You are so stupid" or "Why'd you do that?" These inner voices may come from trauma or the past, or from how somebody else treated us.

It is impossible to live a life of joy and ease if your inner dialogue is negative rather than self-supportive. These voices can be changed and this change is a choice. Instead say to yourself "It will be okay", "That was really hard", or "I need to be gentle with myself". Positive self-talk is a step to becoming healthier and happier. It is your choice to develop skills and tools to improve your life, rather than hold onto the illusion that things will be okay because you are a good person. We are valuable whether or not we have good psychological skills, but these skills enable us to change our lives. 

Making Love Last

Making love last is a concern for anybody with a relationship history that has included disappointment, pain and loss.  How do we do it differently the next time around?

What starts for so many as a blissful connected loving state often turns into sadness riddled with problematic behavior and seemingly un-resolvable conflicts.  How can we learn to have lasting, productive and satisfying relationships?  While innate chemistry and compatibility are important, creating fulfilling relationships that last, is far more complex than that.  Is it possible to learn to create connections in which love can flourish?  Not only is it possible, it is necessary.

It is necessary to look at successful relationships as a developmental milestone and life skill.  Just as other tasks in life require knowledge and practice, learning to create the context for a successful relationship also requires the development of specific abilities, awarenesses and skills. (Assuming that you have a committed partner you can work with.)

How we know somebody else is related to how we know ourselves; how we construct our own reality.  We live in stories; we carry our unconscious stories as roadmaps that most of us are not fully aware of.  We live not just in current “reality” but also through acts of imagination and meaning making. When we experience the unweaving and understanding of our own stories and how we identify ourselves, we become capable of re-envisioning ourselves and allowing for new stories to emerge. For example, if someone were always attracted to “sad” women, because he was re-enacting (unaware) the story that his “sad” mother needed his help, as he becomes aware (often through therapy) of that story and its impact on his romantic choices, he can change his story to one that serves him better. The importance of self-reflection becomes clear. It allows us to understand our role in repetitive self-defeating choice patterns in our romantic relationships.

Relationship patterns also are influenced by our fears around connection and safety. We live in bodily and emotional connection to others. We are born through wombs and are nourished at breasts as infants. We experience love through emotional connection and touch. When our attachment needs are threatened, we move into fear and behaviors which attempt to help us to maintain safety and connection.  Many of these behaviors however, sabotage the very connection we seek.

Instead of responding out of fear, we can look at our actions. Are we building bridges, or burning them?  Are we caught in loops of behavior that we cannot control? Love cannot flourish when we behave in ways that break connection.  Being disappointed with our partner is not the problem; it is the dialogue we have, both with our partner and ourselves that matters. The choices of behaving and thinking that we learn to make in the context of our pain and disappointment can allow us to create a satisfying love. 

Making love last also requires curiosity, both about our own reactions and the reactions of our partner. Love cannot flourish if we blame, criticize, or do not take responsibility for our own responses.  Love cannot flourish when we do not allow ourselves to be vulnerable or behave in a way that the other cannot be vulnerable with us. Because of this, habitual patterns of behavior that create safety and routine, but reduce risk and openness, while necessary for aspects of our lives and our relationships, can diminish connection.

A relationship is a living breathing entity created by two individuals. Creating a relationship is a commitment to the process of that relationship, thus it must continually be nourished. Nourishing a relationship requires the courage to take risks, to be vulnerable and curious rather than defensive. It includes the ability to tolerate and share uncomfortable feelings and experience ambiguity. Making love last includes a willingness to witness oneself and one’s partner with both compassion and openness. 

Emotional courage

How do we change the direction of our lives?   Despite our histories, why do some people create fulfilling lives for themselves while others do not?  As a therapist, and as a person who has made her life about self-transformation and then later, the transformation of others, this is easy to see. But for many people, especially those who do not know much about “therapy,” and the process it entails, this is more of a mystery. 

Have you ever said to yourself, “I will do whatever it takes to reach my full potential in this lifetime – no matter what”?  This statement to ourselves, to our god, to the universe, is powerful and can open us up to change.  There are several main ingredients in change: a desire to improve one’s sense of well-being, and a willingness to do whatever it takes. These qualities could be put together and called emotional courage. 

Emotional courage means we are willing to connect to all aspects of ourselves, including old, scary and painful experiences, and feel whatever comes up, rather than cutting ourselves off to avoid pain, shame, grief, and sadness.  Emotional courage means we will leave our comfort zone if it enlarges our lives, rather than live in a smaller but seemingly safer world.  It means that we can have the courage to suffer if it enables us to grow and live a bigger life. 

While there is much to be said for being kind to ourselves, to not always be pushing, when we avoid that which is challenging or enlarging, we keep ourselves from growing new muscle, developing new talents and abilities.  Doing what is easiest is often a way of avoiding what is hard. 

In therapy, we often have to remember old experiences that hurt us. We often have to sit in those re-activated feelings of shame or pain. We are taught to allow ourselves to let go of control and be disoriented. We come to know that we can survive this process and that in doing so we are opening bridges between different parts of ourselves.  We have to trust that ultimately this is courageous and allows us to become stronger.  We can be in contact with all we have lived with.  We can look back and say, “gee that was really hard”, rather than dismiss it and say, “I had a great childhood”, or “I don’t want to wallow in the past”.  Nobody had a perfect childhood, and we all have created ways of surviving.  Some of those ways no longer work. 

For example, Jane often attacked her partner George angrily when she felt uncared for.  She wanted to stop this pattern and began to look at why she got so upset by things he would do that felt neglectful.  As this pattern was explored, it became clear that as a child, her parents did not consider Jane’s needs and desires.  Now, whenever George didn’t specifically consider her, she went into a rage.  As Jane began to delve into her reactions (which were always much bigger than the situation at hand), she began to experience the pain that she lived through as a child, the feelings of unworthiness, the hurt, the loneliness, and the anger.  She was able to start to communicate what was getting triggered in her, instead of attacking, and due to her courage both in delving into the pain of the past, and communicating her vulnerability openly, Jane began to rebuild her relationship. 

Do you find yourself avoiding situations that trigger uncomfortable feelings?  How is this holding you back?  What might happen if you take the leap and trust that facing your fears will ultimately empower you?  Will you speak up honestly? Will you stand in your vulnerability rather than be self-protective?  Will you trust that you can survive feelings of shame or embarrassment? These choices become skills and abilities that allow us to create healthier lives and relationships. 

Getting Unstuck

Sometimes we find ourselves stuck in a painful or unsatisfying situation: it could be a relationship, a job, a pattern of behavior, or something else. Maybe I am in love with somebody who is not available, or abusive, but I feel that I need them and I cannot leave.  Maybe I am stuck in a difficult job, but am afraid to disappoint the people I work for, or that I cannot find another job. Whatever the situation, rather than judge myself, I can accept that I do not have the ability to change the situation at this time. If I judge myself, I am simply putting myself down, and not giving myself the support and empathy that I really need.  What if instead we could say to ourselves, "I am valuable regardless of the circumstances I find myself in, regardless of my flaws. Because of my past, an inherent weakness, or even social conditions, I am where I am.  I can claim this situation as an opportunity for growth because I can use it to face aspects of myself that I need to change so that I can change my life."

There are a variety of techniques to help us get unstuck. They include:

1. Understanding what we can and cannot control.  Something similar to the serenity prayer can help: grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. It is important to identify what we do and do not have control over, where to place our energy and how to proceed.

2. Imagine your self as a very old person who has already lived through this dilemma.  Ask him or her, "What do you have to tell me?" "How can you assist me?"  Usually an answer will come back that helps.  It might be something like; "Your life is about engaging with many different experiences. Use this experience to learn what you want to change about yourself, to engage with the parts of yourself that are sabotaging you, and to help you start to make changes."

3. Holding a perspective of how we change such as the 12-step slogan:  Awareness, Acceptance, and Action.  First you must be aware of the problem. Then you must accept that it is real, and only then you can start to change it.  

4. Tracking your moment-to-moment awareness and how you shift into different states of being. Maybe one minute you feel okay and not the next.  Or maybe you push things away that you need to face.  Notice what messages you are telling yourself and how these impact your actions and states of being. As we learn to notice in a moment-to-moment way how we get from one state of being to another, we can begin to intervene. This is often easier to accomplish if you are working with another person who can help you, but can also be done alone through introspection or journaling. 

Is there a situation in your life that you are struggling with and judging yourself for?  Is your self-judgment helping you?  Probably not. Are you afraid that if you do not judge yourself that you will stay stuck?  Are you able to tell yourself that you are worthy of self-love no matter what is occurring in your life? Are you willing to find ways to get help so that you can get unstuck?

Safety & Reactivity in Relationships

How many times have we begun a relationship, full of hope, only to have it crash and burn, or one party flee?

Many of us have relational injuries from the past. This often manifests as a "fear of intimacy." Beneath this phrase, lurks not feeling safe in relationships.  Our fathers may have had tempers, or our mothers may have been intrusive.  A past partner may have been abusive, or perhaps their neediness or jealousy was a burden.  A multitude of possibilities exist.  Whatever the case, we found that relating to another could be costly.  We learned to defend ourselves, to shut down, cover up, disappear, attack, or protect ourselves in some other way. We learned to not be too vulnerable, to only let the other in so far, or to run if we got scared. We learned to make ourselves safe by controlling the depth of the relationship in a variety of ways.

Often when we get scared, we react, we become irrational, we move into our limbic brain and rather than being rational, we respond from fight or flight.  Some of us have trauma that is extensive enough that we move into dissociative states, fragments of ourselves that look like Dr. Jeckle changing into Mr. Hyde.  Irrationality is scary to the other and a major problem in relationships.  It can trigger a variety of defensive postures including early abandonment of a promising relationship.  Anger, irrationality, and mood swings directed at the other almost always create a feeling of not being safe with that person. 

Interactions with an intimate other ultimately trigger our deepest wounds, our attachment needs, feelings of vulnerability, and our need for safety.  Anything unhealed is bound to get touched and come up.  These wounds can vary from feeling judged, to not important, abandoned, or even abused.  Regardless, these wounds trigger deep and primal feelings, feelings of desperation, anger, confusion, shame, etc and can cause us to react.

The real problem emerges however, when we cannot own our wound, but instead blame the other, or expect them to "take care of it" or not trigger us.  Ultimately, we have to learn to tend to our own wounds, as well as ask the other to be kind and gentle with our fragilities, to be safe for us.  Both parties have to take responsibility for his or her own behavior before we become safe for the other.  This requires open and non-blaming communication.

What are your deepest fears in relationship to others?  Are these fears related to how you were treated in your past? Have you started to take responsibility for them?  Do you have a partner who is willing to stay open and talk to you when you are triggered, when you trigger each other?

A relationship has the potential to be a cauldron for growth and transformation, or pain, fear or flight. Everything unfinished and triggered in that particular combination emerges to step into the dance of that relationship. In the process, we get to decide if this situation is safe enough, or if we want or deserve more.  If we are attempting an intimate relationship with somebody who allows us to feel nourished and safe enough, we can stay and do the work and play of learning to love and grow in the matrix of connection with another.

Telling the truth: creating authentic relationships

Sometimes it is hard to tell the truth because:

    *   We don't trust our perceptions.
    *   We are afraid of hurting the other person.
    *   We are afraid we will make them angry or they will abandon us.
    *   We don't realize that relationships are about relating.
    *   We have been taught to take care of others by not being ourselves.
    *   We assume that we are 100% responsible for the relationship.
    *   We see ourselves as powerless in the relationship.
    *   We are afraid of being transparent, real and seen.
    *   We are afraid of our power.

If we don't tell the truth, the other person has no way of knowing who we are, what we are thinking or feeling, or how they are impacting us. We assume (perhaps unconsciously) that they do not have the ability to navigate through their own feelings in response to us. Although this may be true, by not telling the truth, we rob them of the opportunity to rise to the challenge of relating to who we are, of having a truly authentic relationship with us.

Learning to tell the truth is a big process. Often we have been taught since we were little to put other's feelings ahead of our own.  We have been taught that relating is being the same as the other, rather than allowing our differences. In order to alter this and honor ourselves, we need a new perspective.  We need to know that as we take action and speak the truth in a way that empowers us, our lives will re-align. Our actions have impact and allow us to change, creating our lives.  We are no longer held hostage by our fears of voicing ourselves, of being seen.  As we become truthful, those we interact with get to choose whether or not they can also step up to the challenge.  In either case our relationships will change.  We will become closer to those, who whether they like it or not, support hearing our truth and honesty. These relationships will deepen and we will no longer feel as alone. We may lose relationships with those who do not want to hear how they affect us, who do not want to know who we are.  When this happens, we may experience grief. Rather than being trapped in resentment, or fear, we have the opportunity to grieve and let go of our expectations, accepting the limitations of that person and relationship. A reorganization of our lives and relationships occurs.

How do you not tell the truth?   Look at someone in your life who you don't talk to directly about his or her impact on you.  Imagine telling them something they do that is difficult for you.  Notice what feelings come up: discomfort, fear, shame?  Notice how you choose the feelings associated with not telling the truth: frustration, feeling trapped etc, rather than the feelings that emerge when you do tell the truth.  Both sets of feelings are uncomfortable, but one will lead you to freedom and authentic, healthy relationships, and the other will keep you trapped and disempowered.  It is your choice. What kind of relationships do you want to have?  What kind of life do you want to live?

Adversity is a privilege

I was in a session the other day when my client who had been struggling with some challenges said that he was taught that things had to be easy to be okay.  I found myself responding…it is a privilege to struggle and have the opportunity to find out who we are, what we are made of. 

When life is easy, we can enjoy ourselves and that is wonderful.  But what about when life is not so easy?  What about when we are up against challenges that really scare or overwhelm us? 

It seems that it would be great if our lives were always easy and happy rather than challenging.  But if we can only feel happiness when we are in the right situations or conditions, born into the right family or the right socio-economic group, we are trapped by the external. Adversity allows us the opportunity to find out what we are capable of, to access aspects of ourselves that we did not know existed, inner resources we didn’t know we had, and to develop our strengths.

Adversity can teach us that we have the ability to rise beyond our environment, that we are powerful beings who co-create our lives. This knowing brings not only inner strength and self-empowerment, but also ultimately wisdom.  Instead of being victim to circumstances which shift and change throughout the years, we can choose to know that no matter where we find ourselves, we have the ability to grapple with both the external situation and our attitude about it. Like a small leaf being carried down a river, we can accept that we will move through different times and challenges.  Rather than judging ourselves for what life hands us, we can trust that if life doesn’t dump us on pleasant shores, we will find a way to create what we desire, whether in attitude or actual circumstances.   

Look at a difficult situation in your life right now.  Are you using it to develop your strengths and compassion for yourself, or are you telling your self that you are bad, or that life isn’t fair?

Like Psyche, a goddess in Greek mythology, who despite tremendous obstacles, persisted in nearly impossible tasks and in the process made her soul complete, we can do the same.  By owning our capacities and developing them, we create our lives and world. We come to find out who we are.  Things do not have to be easy to be okay.

I am in the middle of my beautiful life

"I am in the middle of my beautiful life". I tell myself this on occasion, and it always moves me into gratitude and also opens me up to feeling. It is a way of honoring my life, with all of its complexities, flaws, joys, heartaches etc.  Even the parts of me that hurt or are small or broken are part of the beauty of my life. It moves me out of a perfectionistic attitude and into an owning of what it is to be human:  beautiful and amazing, yet imperfect and wounded. It allows me to see my life stretched out from infancy to a future I have not yet created.  I honor this life, this moment, this journey that I am on.  This moment is part of a bigger picture, a bigger pattern, a bigger life than I may realize.  I open up space for myself. I create grace.

We are all imperfect, but we have choice.  We can choose what we tell ourselves. We may not be able to alter the past, change patterns immediately, or remove limitations currently affecting us, but we do have choice in how we speak to ourselves, and in the attitudes that we hold. We can tell ourselves that there is something that is wrong with us and make ourselves bad for it, or we can chose to honor ourselves despite the pain our imperfections require us to bear.

"I am in the middle of my beautiful life".  Say it to yourself right now and notice what comes up.  A feeling? A thought? Maybe you are rejecting this idea, maybe embracing it.  Don't make yourself wrong or right, just notice.  This is how we get to know ourselves, how we find out who we are. It is only when we know ourselves that we have the power to enact change.