Don’t Play the Victim!
I’ve been manufacturing ‘meaningful memes’ again. Comes from my heart. Playing the victim is a narcissistic trap which leads to twisted outcomes, for oneself personally, in relationships, and societally. It’s addictive and hard to throw off. But it can be done, if thelack of self-respect which caused it is overcome. The interesting thing about this playing-the-victim stance is that it is in complete opposition to the beautiful process of forgiveness. I have known people who have forgiven someone for what happened in the past (something which is not atrocious or evil), only to have others (often “besties” or those who themselves have a vested interest in not being forgiving and are threatened by their friend’s new-found forgiveness) remind them what a victim they *really* are and that by giving up their victim status through being forgiving they have allowed the other person to “get away with it”, even suggesting that they’ve been “gaslighted” into being forgiving. This resulted in the “victim” aggressively retracting their forgiveness of the “perpetrator” and renewing their role of playing the victim even more than ever before! It is no exaggeration to say that we live in a society which mostly not only encourages but actually URGES people to play the victim. If forgiveness is a beautiful constructive process, then playing-the-victim is an ugly destructive one…
The Naked Troubadour 
Jun 8, 2020 at 12:07 am
This is so true. I feel badly that somepeople have pain. Everyone has pain to one degree or another. Yet, when I am told to vicariously participate in that pain by jumping through arbitrary hoops to appease the guilt machine, when is it ever enough to pay the debt I don’t owe? With acceptance and forgiveness there is peace and healing. That is the hard truth. Vengeance doesn’t assuage pain, it only perpetuates more victims.
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