Do you often feel helpless or like the world is out to get you? Do people often mention that they think you are cynical or a pessimist? Then it’s most certainly possible that you have something referred to as a victim mentality.
A victim mentality is a learned mental state in which you blame others for your problems and absolve yourself of all responsibility for anything which occurs in your life. Think this sounds like you? Below are the most common signs you (or someone close to you) may suffer from a victim mentality according to Robert Leahy the director of the American Institute for Cognitive Therapy.
- You spend most of your time thinking of the past and refuse to forgive or forget.
Either of these situations tends to lead to a thought process where the individual constantly thinks of all the bad things which have happened previously in their lives rather than focusing on the here and now which may be substantially better than their past.
- You think that everyone in your life is trying to make life miserable for you.
Even if you have great, supportive people in your life, you will constantly focus on the one individual that has hurt you. Or you simply believe that everyone in your life is trying to ruin something for you whether they actually are or not. Not only that, but if you believe someone has wronged you in the past, you will refuse to forgive them (as mentioned in #1) and may go as far to exact revenge.
- Every event in your life is considered by you to be a major catastrophe and you tend to dramatize everything.
You find yourself continually exaggerating the situations to find yourself in, even if they were just small misfortunes such as running out of an ingredient while cooking dinner. Your life is always “over” and filled with never ending drama.
- You see the world as a bad place and think nothing will ever change for the better in your life or current situation.
In your mind, the world is a dark place and nothing will ever get better. This doesn’t mean you don’t want it to get better, you just think it won’t. You refuse to accept you can make any changes to your life.
- You don’t want to even consider that your perspective could be wrong or incorrect. You don’t want to see the world in a new light.
Your way of thinking is clearly the only way of thinking, even when people try to help you out and show you the positives of your life, you shoot them down. And if someone else claims to have a problem, yours is always worse no matter what the situation may be.
If any of the above sounds like you, it’s important to know victim mentality is not a diagnosed mental illness, rather it is a learned process of thinking which can be reversed at any time.
And if you have a victim mentality manner of thinking, this won’t be an easy task. You need to start challenging your thought processes by pointing out the possible error in your ways of thinking. It can be difficult to do this on your own, but you can start by setting long term goals for yourself and establish limits on negative thoughts. If your mind starts to go down a rabbit hole, get up and do an activity you enjoy, don’t let yourself sit and wallow in your own thoughts.
If you want some help with this and you would like things to change, then maybe we should have a chat.
