We have all been victims and we probably do play the victim sometimes, but ultimately what a victim is is someone who has agreed, on a deeper or conscious level that the past and the hurt of the past has more power over our present. Its blaming the person who stole your power who you haven’t forgiven or dealt with the pain of. It is refusing to take ownership for your mistakes and actions. Essentially, refusing to be a victim is stating that you have power over your life and are responsible for your own happiness.
In today’s society i can see it very easy for many to remain complacent in their victim-hood, because it serves them. Of course many enablers who need to be needed contribute to the dysfunction by allowing bad behavior to continue because it enables the victim to avoid meeting his own needs by having the codependent need freak meet them.
To take full ownership for your life, of your choices and happiness takes a lot of accountability. I would imagine many successful people have done this.

I did not mean that the complaining person is living in the past, but rather is choosing his attitude and his perspective.

I felt close to God, connected to I recall at the age of 3-4. Over the next year I was babysat by an older couple in my neighborhood and I stayed the nights often. Funny thing is that it was not until I was in my 20’s that I began to ask my mom if I ever stayed with anyone. It was a vague sense of something odd. After the age of 4 life was different. I never, ever felt safe, secure., ever. So much that I made my family not go out of town because I felt threatened not knowing where a hospital was, a safe place. I felt different and I perceived myself differently. Like most kids, I lived in the moment and never questioned my experiences. I was known as a chronic worrier since I can remember and my anxiety mounte4d over time and eventually became panic attacks. I always thought I was dying, because I was, it was just on the inside and I couldnt articulate or give cause for the fear, but it literally consumed me. I was paranoid, was known to be very uptight and never had an ounce of peace. Around the age of 7-10 I developed chronic urinary infections that would not let up until I had a urethral procedure done to fix it. We all thought it was odd but went on with life.
It was not until 25 that I had my last panic attack, I had to face some of my pain so I surre3nered enough to ease the panic attacks forever.
Fast forward more life, about 10 years and not until I hit a low did God meet me and made me new. Two years into my healing was when I began to sense that there was something very dark in me and I was terrified to look at it. I always had this vague sense of something so awful but it was so far out of consciousness at the time that I didnt have to deal with it…until it was literally at the bottom of the pit of my pain. It was a spirit, it was the root of fear the spirit that had attached itself to me 33 years prior and I tell you whenj i first got in touch with it I thought I was going to go insane. I was with a safe group of women in recovery who I felt safe to be uterrly and completely vulnerable. The little girl that was frozen in fear and didnt know how to handle what was happening to me, stood still and I just remember after that never really being able to feel again. Tapping into this made me convulse and Ive never felt so helpless in my entire life. The devil stole something from me that that man took and it was unbelievable how it shaped my whole life. I was a secure safe little girl who naturally felt a connection to God, to love., after that it took me 30 years to get back to love. I became to believe that I was that fear and all that hurt until Jesus gave me power and now I know who I am.
Mr Bew was his name was the first man in a string of 4 that would have power over me in some way and in each relationship I felt like the victim. I was emotionally starved for love so this made it easier to be victim to someone who supplied me with what I needed. I dont believe I will ever be that victim again because that wound no longer holds me captive and I have released and forgave and know now that I am capable of meeting my own needs, but it was this last the fourth one that provided me with just enough pain to give up on myself and fully surrender. I wasnt prepared to meet my demons until I had to and thank God he stepped in.
So, yes I understand about victim-hood and all I meant by is that my victim hood was unconscious buried within me and how this affected me at the time as a person who felt burie3d in shame, unworthiness and guilt was that rather than make an empowered decision based on the present moment and circumstances, I was too unconscious to even live outside of the toxicity that was my mind and body. In this regard, the past had power over me.
It actually is very freeing to share this with someone because few people know

Dear melissa:

Thank you so much for sharing your lifetime experience here. I feel privileged to read it, to be trusted, even as an online person, with such sensitive and personal information, emotions, experiences of such a precious person, you…!

When I hear anything that even remotely sounds like someone is saying that … I live in the past and should snap out of it, I get triggered. You are very sensitive and perceptive to have noticed my strong reaction to what I perceived I read. I need to pay attention and think around my trigger so to read what is really being said.

I am so sorry you had such ongoing distress. I did too. You wrote that you did not have a moment of peace. What I realized is that the brain takes breaks from distress, mine did in the form of long, all day long day dreaming that were all absorbing and relaxing, I suppose. The brain cannot take non stop distress. If you look into your childhood, can you “see” breaks you took, moments, hours where you drifted away from the distress into maybe, make believe world, like mine, daydreaming?

I am so glad you are on this website. Please do post again… and again.

anita