Playing The Role of Victim

I remember in my drinking days how easy it was for me to play the role of a victim whenever I experienced unwanted or unfortunate circumstances in my life and often blamed others for them. I felt like no one understood what I was going through or had it as bad as I did and would dwell in the negative emotions that I took comfort in because they gave me an excuse to drink.  Poor me was always the theme that included anger and sadness and as my self-pity grew, my anger would usually turn into a deep seated resentment that inevitability got me drunk.  This feeling of being a victim was also evident in some of the troubled teenagers I worked with. Although not many of them drank, they did use the negative emotions they felt as an excuse to act out and do the things that got them into trouble.  There are a lot of reasons why people like playing the victim and none of them are for healthy emotional reasons, but I will say that many of the teenagers I worked with were like me, indeed victims. None of us ever asked for the bad parenting we had or the type of environment we grew up in and some had it much worse. A few of them had been abandoned as a child and some sexually or physically abused by a parent or family member. Although the goal for me was to help them understand why they liked playing the role of victim and what they needed to do to stop, there were times when professional help was needed to uncover more deeply rooted causes for their behaviors. Fortunately I was still able to help these young men at some level too because I understood the emotions behind feeling like a victim, but I never pretended to understand what they had gone through. Instead I talked openly about my life and how I felt through my childhood and adolescence, and did my best to get them to do the same. Much trust was needed and I certainly didn’t get every teen to open up and talk to me, but the fact that many of them did gave me a feeling that I could help anyone if they were open and honest with me, and more importantly with themselves. I learned how being honest with our self and someone else helps to uncover things that can cause both real or perceived emotional pain by doing the 4th and 5th Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. I also talked with people in the rooms of AA who experienced the horrible things some of my teenagers did while growing up and still became emotionally well despite it. This was very important because it helped me reinforce to my teenagers that it was possible to overcome the awful things they experienced and that whether they were victims or not, they could stop playing the role of victim and start playing the role of survivor.



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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 1st, 2010 at 8:09 pm and is filed under Living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.