352. How to deal with someone who is ALWAYS the victim

Have you ever met someone who always seems to see themselves as the one who’s been wronged - or maybe noticed that pattern in yourself? The sense that life is happening to you, not for you? It might not just be negativity - it could be a victim mentality, a learned way of seeing the world that often begins as a form of protection.

In this episode, we take a look at the psychology behind the victim mindset - why it develops, how it impacts our relationships, and what it really takes to move from powerlessness to self-trust.

We explore:

•        What exactly is the victim mentality?
•        How trauma, learned helplessness, and chronic fear shape this mindset
•        The overlap between victimhood and covert narcissism
•        Why relationships with ‘perpetual victims’ can feel draining or triggering
•        How to support someone without losing yourself
•        When compassion becomes enabling, and when to let go

If you’ve ever struggled to understand why some people - or even parts of yourself - stay stuck in stories of unfairness or defeat, this episode is for you.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hello everybody. I'm Jemma Spake and welcome back to the
Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through
the biggest changes, moments, and transitions of our twenties and
what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody, Welcome back

(00:25):
to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. New listeners,
oh listeners, wherever you are in the world, it is
so great to have you here. Back for another episode
as we, of course break down the psychology of our twenties. Today,
we have a listener requested episode for you all, one

(00:45):
that a couple of you actually wrote in and DMed
me about after our Toxic Friendship episode. In that episode,
we talked about the victim friend and it brought up
a lot of questions about the victim, the broader victim
mentality that we spoke about in that episode, and what
psychology actually says about people who always play the victim.

(01:08):
I fell down such a rabbit hole of information about this,
about this idea, this phenomena of this concept. And so
today here we are, we are going to dive into
the complex psychology behind the victim mentality. Now, I want
to start with a very important note. When I talk
about the victim mentality. I'm not trying to minimize the

(01:31):
experiences of people who have genuinely been victimized by abuse,
by systemic injustice, by trauma, by loss. If you have
been through something that's left your body and your brain
on constant high alert, if you've learnt through experiences that
bad things do happen to you more than others, you
are not a problem or the problem that we are

(01:54):
unpacking today. What we are talking about is a pattern
of behavior or a psychological habit whereby people turn neutral
situations or situations that simply don't go their way into
something that they use to gain sympathy from others for
their own gain. We're talking about situations where people learn

(02:19):
how to turn out natural sympathy against us in a
way that feels manipulative, ichy, wrong, in a way that
really lacks self awareness. So the question we're really asking
today is how do we navigate these kinds of people,
whether they're friends, family members, colleagues. How do we navigate

(02:40):
people who truly do believe that everything goes wrong for them,
that everybody is out to get them, that they are
the unluckiest person in the world, and why are they
the way they are? What made them this way? Do
they genuinely have any clarity about what they're doing? And yeah,
how do you go about it so that you are
aren't always in the firing line? Without further ado, I'm

(03:03):
so excited for this episode. Let's get into the psychology
behind the victim mentality. First of all, how does the
field of psychology talk about this phenomena? So in psychology
the term victim mentality or victim mindset. It's also known

(03:25):
as that It basically refers to a habitual pattern of
thought in which a person consistently perceives themselves as a
victim of the negative actions of others or of fate,
even when the evidence suggests otherwise. That second half of
that statement is the most crucial part. The evidence suggests otherwise,

(03:50):
and as one twenty twenty study put it, across all situations,
even when outcomes differ, these people will still seek out
an explanation where they are the victim. That is, the
one constant in every situation. They are always the one
who is wronged, even when things change, even again when
the evidence is stacked up against them, even when people

(04:11):
tell them, no, you're wrong, The victim mentality is actually
believed to be somewhat of a personality trait. We all
have the capacity to see ourselves as less or more
as a victim, you know, regardless of actual circumstances. But
people high in this victim trait tend to again interpret

(04:33):
neutral or ambiguous situations or events as hostile. They tend
to dwell on unfair treatment and ruminate longer than others,
and they really struggle to move past what happened, meaning
that everything that maybe does prove this mentality or does
prove this state of mind for them gets held on

(04:55):
too longer than any situations that don't. It isn't that
they're lying. They do truly believe that the world is
against them. They're suffering from a delusion, a delusion of victimhood.
I used to have a coworker just like this. I'm
not going to give any more specifics than that because

(05:16):
they do still work at this place. But anytime, like
somebody got a promotion, they would always turn it into
into about like how nothing good ever happened to them.
Anytime someone gave feedback, they were bullying her, they were
ganging up on her. One time, one of our coworkers
won Do you know those car giveaways that they sometimes

(05:39):
have at supermarkets or like malls, where you can like
win a Kia Carnival or like win a Suzuki Swift.
Like one time one of our coworkers won one of
those competitions, and I remember she went on and on
about how, you know, if she'd won the car, which
of course she wouldn't probably you know, it wouldn't even
work anyways. I bet it would be a scam. This

(06:01):
reality of her having won the card didn't even exist,
and yet she had turned a situation that had not happened,
that was not real, into one in which she was
still the victim, and it wasn't even her life or
her story. And I remember like that happening and being like, oh,
I actually feel really bad for you, because imagine, like

(06:23):
every possible scenario, even those that haven't occurred, still end
up in the same way when you haven't even given
them the opportunity to prove you otherwise, it would be
a pretty sad way to live. There are a few
key signs that someone you're dealing with has this kind
of victim mindset. Number one, the biggest of them all.

(06:47):
They externalize blame they attribute their struggles, their faults, their
mistakes entirely to others, or to fate or to bad luck.
In psychology, there is this idea that people either have
an internal or external locus of control. This was a

(07:10):
theory that was developed in the nineteen fifties by a
psychologist called Julian Rodder. Basically, what he said is, if
you have an external locus, you see your life as
being controlled by outside forces that you have no control over,
so you shouldn't bother trying to change anything because these
forces are always going to win. If, on the other hand,

(07:33):
you have an internal locus of control, you basically believe
that you make your own luck, you can influence your life.
You can kind of guess which mentality the victim tends
to have the external locus, right, So that is why
blame is never something that they take on. It's always

(07:54):
about the outside world, outside circumstances, things that they have
no capacity to control. Number two. And this might surprise you,
but this mentality often makes the person feel morally superior
and act that way as well. So in that twenty
twenty paper i mentioned earlier, researchers actually found that people

(08:16):
high in victimhood also show high levels of moral elitism,
which is basically a belief that they've been wronged and
as such they have a moral high ground. This can
make them feel as though they're entitled to more from life.
They're entitled to more sympathy, They're entitled to more leniency.

(08:37):
They are allowed to retaliate because they see themselves as
fundamentally righteous because of what has happened to them in
daily life. You know, how might this look. It might
look like someone who constantly is like, well, you know,
I'm going to steal that thing from the grocery store
because when I was a kid, like I never I

(08:57):
never got much, or you know, I expect you to
rescue me, like I can't possibly be responsible for dealing
with this situation, or they resist taking steps towards change.
They might say that they want help, but it has
to be on their terms, and anytime you try to
suggest something, they normally reject it. They feel entitled for

(09:19):
more from you. They feel entitled to your resources, your time,
your energy, because it's owed to them by their bad luck,
by their bad circumstances. The third sign someone has a
victim mindset. They are also very self centered, They constantly
bring the conversation back to them. They lack empathy for

(09:40):
other people's suffering. In fact, they see other people suffering
as an inconvenience to their own ability to talk about
their suffering. And they also really do tend to dramatize, overstate,
maybe even lie about experiences or event that they've been
through in order to get attention. Although they see the

(10:06):
world as controlling their fate, they also still have a
lot in a deep sense of self focus, and they
tend to think about themselves more than other people do
and more than they think about others, which is honestly fine,
Like you really you should be your number one priority,
but for people with the victim mindset, it's the only priority.

(10:28):
Now this brings us to a big question. How do
people end up like this? How do two people who
have the same childhoods end up like this? How did
two people who grew up in the same city, country,
circle of friends, and you know, how do they end
up so that one of them takes accountability one of
them doesn't. Some of us are able to celebrate successes.

(10:51):
Other people can't stop complaining about how hard done by
they are. The core truth and maybe one that's a
little bit uncomfortable is that it usually starts as protection.
At its core, the victim mentality reflects a psychological position
of learned helplessness. This was a concept first proposed by

(11:14):
Martin Sielgman in the nineteen seventies. We've mentioned it on
the podcast a few times before, but essentially, what he
found was that when people don't feel like they can
escape their bad circumstances, even when they are clearly given
a route or an opportunity to do so, they still

(11:34):
won't take it because they have learnt that nothing they
do matters. They have no control because in the past
they've had no control. Let me be clear, for many people,
it's not an act, it's not even necessarily a conscious behavior. Instead,
it's actually often a functional freeze response away the brain

(11:59):
protects its after prolonged helplessness, prolonged trauma, prolonged invalidation through
a trauma lens. If we're having sympathy for these people,
it makes a lot of sense when someone experiences chronic maltreatment,
when they've experienced emotional abuse or neglect, or repeated failure

(12:19):
from their relationships in some form or from the system,
their nervous system learns that agency is pointless, and the
body goes into what trauma therapist Stephen Porgus calls the
dorsal vagal state. It's basically a state of shutdown, dissociation freeze,

(12:40):
and in that state, the message the brain is sending
constantly is you're not safe and you can't do anything
about it. Don't fight, don't move, don't run away. Over time,
the physiological reaction can kind of crystallize into a psychological identity, aka,

(13:04):
I'm the person who bad things happen to I can't
do anything about this. Here's where the story gets a
little bit more layered. Yes, it does start as a
protective strategy most of the time, but it can also
take on manipulative qualities, especially when it develops into what

(13:25):
we call covert narcissism. Covert narcissism it's also called vulnerable narcissism,
is a subtype of narcissistic personality disorder or narcissistic personality
patterns that hides behind insecurity, shame, and self pity rather
than arrogance. So unlike the classic grandiose narcissist who demands admiration,

(13:49):
the covert narcissist seeks someone to rescue them and give
them validation and reassurance through their suffering. There was a
twenty twenty four paper postblished in the Journal of Social
and Personality Psychology, and it found that covert narcissists don't
necessarily dominate rooms. They don't come in hot, they don't

(14:11):
need people to think they're the best, but they do
seek to elicit a caring response from others that actually
inevitably ends up dominating the emotional undertones of a space.
Their pain becomes the currency through which they maintain control
over a situation, over their relationships, over how other people

(14:31):
see them now. Because empathy is one of the strongest
human instincts, this strategy often works really well. For a while.
People rush into help. We want to comfort, we want
to reassure this person. We don't want them to suffer,
and this person loves that because it does feel amazing.

(14:53):
But soon those relationships do start to feel one way.
They start to feel like transactions, and of course, naturally
people are going to drop off, people are going to
leave that person's life. That actually increases their attempts for
victimhood and their idea of themselves as a victim, as
somebody that people leave, as somebody that people can't love,

(15:16):
not tracing it back to this pattern of behavior that
they're exhibiting. Still, it's important to note that even manipulative
forms of victimhood usually began as legitimate pain. The difference
is that the person never learnt how to self soothe
or regulate, so they just externalize that responsibility onto others.

(15:40):
They learnt that helplessness gets them what assertiveness never did,
And this passive state is again it is reinforced by
early experiences, early experiences of not being heard, but noticing
that actually, when you play up the powerlessness, when you

(16:04):
exacerbate or you know, really call in people to try
and comfort you and help you, you get the same
kind of love that you probably want it all along. Ultimately,
I think knowing this helps us hold kind of two
truths at the same time. Some people live from a
place of victimhood because life taught them to Others use

(16:28):
victimhood because it gives them power. Both need compassion. I
think the sentiment is that only one of them can
truly heal. The first kind, where it's really just because
of an absence of love and an absence of feeling
like they can take control of their life. That one
is something people can get over when they have crossed

(16:49):
into the state of like this is actually a really
great way to get what I want from people and
get what I want from situations. It's a lot harder,
if not almost possible, after a while, to come back
from that. Now. I'm sure at this point, if you've
listened this far, you probably have somebody in mind who
you are thinking of. Maybe it's your mother, maybe it's

(17:12):
a friend of yours, maybe it's a family member, maybe
it's like a colleague, maybe it's even your partner. And
the thing is is that you can have sympathy for
this person. You can understand that this mindset was born
from a deep pain and still be deeply frustrated by
how it impacts you. So what I really want to

(17:35):
talk about next is what do we do when this
kind of individual is in our life sucking energy from us?
How do we handle this in a way that doesn't
just further determine or prove their victim put to them.
We're going to talk about that after the shortbreak. Stay
with us. Here's something we can all admit. I think

(18:02):
pretty freely. Being around someone who is always a victim
is exhausting. It is exhausting, it's boring, it's annoying, Like, yeah,
those might we might not want to admit that, but
it's true, even if you have sympathy for them, even
if you understand why they are the way they are.

(18:25):
Relationships run on reciprocity. Both people have to share emotional labor.
Both people have to take responsibility. Both people have to
feel like they are seen as much as they are seeing.
You know what I mean. That doesn't change even if
you know that someone is incapable of doing that, even
if you know why they are the way they are,

(18:46):
And over time, I think it makes us feel like
we aren't family members, We aren't friends with this person.
We aren't truly a partner to this person. We are
a caretaker. There is this underlying dynamic of like you
need me more than I need you. That really can
ruin a partnership and ruin a relationship. Do you want
to know something else? Really interesting? Maybe maybe not interesting,

(19:09):
maybe kind of hard. The closer you get to someone
like this, the kinder you actually are to them, the
more you do try to tolerate it, the worse. Their
behaviors actually become in a lot of literature, including from
psychologists like Juth Herman, who is a huge trauma expert.
She wrote the foundational work Trauma and Recovery. What she

(19:32):
describes is that trauma survivors who end up having a
victim mindset do often oscillate between craving closeness and really
fearing it, and so they often will begin to victimize
themselves as a victim of you in your presence, as
a way to push away the love that they so

(19:54):
crave and also are so fearful of. The more as
well that they trust to you. The less they will
suppress these urges towards victimhood. The closer you get, the
more you see these patterns, the more you actually might
not want to be around them, so you pull away.

(20:14):
The more it confirms to this person that they are
in fact a victim, the more they ramp up the
victim mentality. It's a terrible cycle. It's very unfair, it's
very messy, and you know, for you, it's really difficult
because no matter how much reassurance or patience you offer,
it may never be registered as safety. If the other

(20:35):
person's nervous system is wired constantly to anticipate harm or
if this has in fact become a deeply ingrained part
of their personality. And you know what, it also really sucks,
let's just say it, to be trying really hard with
this person, to have endless sympathy, and then occasionally to

(20:56):
have them turn on you and blame you, blame you
for their hurt, blame you for their circumstances, blame you,
or see your winds or your success as just something
that further hurts them and proves that they are hard
done by. And you know, if you're somebody who was

(21:17):
naturally optimistic, and I know I am, it honestly feels
contagious to be around somebody like this. Being around that
kind of constant pessimism or that powerlessness can drain even
the most empathetic, care free grass as green where you

(21:37):
water it kind of individual because empathy, by nature involves
emotional mirroring. We feel what others feel. So when you're
sitting in front of somebody, there's a mirror up to
your soul and all they're giving you is like, this sucks,
this is hopeless. We have no control. Life is hard
upon us. God you're going to feel that despair almost

(21:59):
as deep as they do the work here. For anyone
on either side of this pattern, it's not about blame.
It's about awareness. It's about an ability to recognize that
reactivity and that negativity in those moments and know that
it isn't about this relationship. It's about the original relationships,

(22:22):
the relationships with parents, caregivers, with community, with the system.
It's really important to know that this isn't actually about you.
It has nothing to do with you. You are just
a proxy for so much other baggage and so many
things that are going on behind the scenes that it's
just getting taken out on you. Let's shift the focus

(22:45):
a little bit. I'm gonna ask you to be completely
honest and self reflective with me for this next part,
because it's one thing to talk about people who seem
to live in the victim mindset. It's another to maybe
recognize them when we may or may not slip into
that way of thinking ourselves. It's normal to have certain

(23:08):
periods where you're just like, this really sucks. Life really sucks.
You've been through a breakup, you got laid off, there
has been a string of disappointments, suddenly it feels like
the world is stacked against you. I've had this happen recently.
You know. I had a huge opportunity that I've been
working on for years fall through recently, and you know,
it was just such a bummer. And then I had

(23:29):
a couple of days where I'm packing up, you know,
my life to move countries and things aren't going right.
And then you know, someone is It's just like a
bunch of things and you're just like, God, well is
me list just all sucks? Life is terrible. And I
was in the studio the other day recording with my
friend Rahene, and she was like, you know, she really

(23:50):
was just like, tough love, your life's not that hard.
And I was like, yeah, totally right. Thank you for
saying that to me, Like thank you for just being
like it could be a lot worse, not in a
way that was like meant to undermine, but in a
way that we're good friends. And she could really see that,
Like I was just getting into this spiral and it's comforting.

(24:10):
It's sometimes comforting to be like, yeah, you know, life
just sucks for me right now, because it removes the
burden of choice it removes the burden of having to change.
And this actually means that you feel a lot more
free and you feel like you don't actually have to
take responsibility. And that's great. That's actually quite a nice

(24:34):
feeling when we're in our twenties, when we're in our
thirties and it just feels like everything is suddenly our responsibility.
Wouldn't it be nice if this, all these bad things
that are happening to me are just not in my
control at all. Psychologists actually have a name for this.
It's called self handicapping, and I wanted to include the
original term for you guys. I don't love the language

(24:56):
of like self handicapping. I like to use the term
self sabotaging. But it basically refers to this idea that
we create explanations for our setbacks that protect our self esteem.
You know, this opportunity I didn't get. It's very easy
to say, like, well, it's because you know of this
and that and outside factors and these people were biased,

(25:19):
and you know this person that person. It's a lot
harder to say maybe because I wasn't prepared, Maybe because
you know, I didn't put my best foot forward. These
stories aren't conscious lies. You know. Yeah, maybe the explanation
is a lot more varied. Maybe it's a combination of
external and internal factors. But when we only look at

(25:41):
the external factor, we shield our ego, we shield our
self esteem. We also don't have any way to grow,
and we don't actually learn the truth about what we
could be doing, to ask for what we want to
change our lives, to see positive changes in it, in
our attitude. If you notice that your inner monologue sounds

(26:04):
like things never work out for me, people constantly let
me down, nobody does for me what I do for them,
it might not mean that the world is against you.
It might mean that you're actually repeating patterns that are
quite hurtful. Sometimes our brain uses very global, wide reaching

(26:26):
statements to disguise a very specific kind of grief. Saying
everyone leaves me. It's easier than admitting, you know, someone
has left me and it really hurts, and this has
happened before, and I don't want to investigate why. Saying
nobody ever puts into my relationship what I put into it,

(26:49):
or nobody ever gives me what I give them. You know,
it's a lot easier to say that than to, you know,
get into a conversation of like, am I people pleasing
for others? Or for me? Am I actually a nice person?
Or do I expect things in return? Maybe I should
stop putting that resentment on others. Hard truths, I know,

(27:11):
maybe they're not the thing you wanted to hear, But personally,
I just believe that we grow when we leave room
for the truth and room for investigating and being honest
with ourselves about why we feel the way we feel
about our circumstances. And that doesn't mean blaming yourself for
what's out of your control. It means recognizing the places

(27:33):
where you do have agency, even the tiniest bit, and
using it. It's really common for people to switch between
two polar opposites, blame or shame. It's either all their
fault or it's all my fault. The goal here is
the middle ground. We want to be able to recognize

(27:54):
something hurtful happened, but I still have choices now. Yes,
I wish the hurtful thing hadn't happened. I wish life
had been different. That doesn't change what's available to me
in this moment. It's very tempting to believe on the
flip side, that empowerment means pretending nothing bad ever happens,

(28:16):
but in the real world sometimes it does, and we
have to understand that we're allowed to move forward past
that without making it our whole story, with still acknowledging like,
this terrible thing happened. I don't want it to happen
to other people. I don't necessarily I'm not grateful that
it happened. But what are my cards now? And that's

(28:36):
so much harder to face than the very simple, simple
explanation of I'm just a victim and these past circumstances
are proof that I will continue to be a victim
into the future, and there's no point wasting my time,
wasting my energy trying to change that. I hope you

(28:58):
guys get where I'm coming from. I hope you can
understand this isn't victim blaming. It's just a more nuanced
discussion of like whether a victim mentality actually helps you,
and when acknowledging circumstances and the role they play is
valid and important, and when it becomes a way to

(29:21):
completely shield you or turn any form of agency invisible
in your eyes. Okay, we've talked about ourselves. We've talked
about the self aware people who are critical of themselves
when they fall into this mentality, know when they are
adopting a victim mindset. Let's actually just turn back again

(29:41):
to when that mindset is applied upon us by people
beyond us, by parents, siblings, teachers, I don't know, friends, partners, colleagues.
What do we do when we encounter somebody like that,
when we have the self awareness in ourselves to know that,
sometimes we do a complain, But this is maybe a

(30:02):
level beyond what do we do about it? Okay, we're
gonna take another short break, but when we return, let's
talk about, Yeah, how to manage forever victims in your life.
If you've got a forever victim in your life, there's
no one way to go about it, but here is

(30:25):
perhaps the kindest way that you can that also won't
drag you down with them. Obviously, it starts with this
understanding of what's underneath. If we look past the words,
the complaints that despare the blame, what we usually find
is fear. For people whose victim mindset developed through trauma,
this fear is learnt. It's a nervous system reaction doing

(30:48):
what it's always done for them, which is preparing for pain.
And that is why logic advice PEP talks aren't gonna help.
When someone's brain believes danger or disappointment is inevitable, that
optimism that you would maybe use as a shield like

(31:09):
that's just not going to help them. The most powerful
thing that you can do is in fact, creating an
atmosphere of regulation. That means staying calm when they spiral,
modeling steadiness, showing them through your tone and presence that

(31:30):
maybe this idea they have of themselves as a victim
is not true and also isn't helpful. Compassion, you know,
it doesn't mean that you have to just go along
with it. You can validate someone's pain without validating the
hopelessness cycle or mindset that comes with it. You can

(31:53):
say something like that sounds so painful, and I can
see why that would hurt you. But I also believe that, like,
it's not always going to be like this. I also
believe that there's a lot that we can do to
change that. I also believe that things are going to
still turn out okay. As a way to model that
this isn't the end of the world, and it also
may not be what they think it is, giving them

(32:15):
a hint of like, hey, I for one, belief you
have agency, invites them into a new story, like a
new version of seeing themselves that also accepts the past,
but doesn't tolerate this forever mentality that they can never change.
So I think it's like you're safe, but also you're
capable in therapy, I think this approach really mirrors something

(32:39):
that we call motivational or interviewing. Instead of arguing with
somebody's self defeating beliefs, you ask open ended questions in
this technique that help them discover their own reasons for change.
You ask them, you know, what do you think life
would look like if this pattern started to shift. What's
one thing you wish you felt different about. What's something

(33:01):
small that you can do that you can control right now? Yeah,
these circumstances are overwhelming. Yeah, it's really really sucks. Who
didn't get that job? Sucks that that person broke up
with you. Let's think Bigger's what's gonna come for you next?
What's around the corner that you're excited about? That second
last one of what's something small you can control right now?

(33:22):
I love that I have a friend Emma. She is
a social worker and one of the most beautiful humans alive,
but she she uses this on me sometimes. I don't
think I have much of a victim mindset, but sometimes,
you know, I just sometimes I like to winge and
she tries to be sneaking about it, but I know

(33:43):
she does it. She has such a positive way of being, like,
let's redirect here, and it works. She doesn't have to
do it very often, but it's so funny. I always
call her out on it. I'm like, you can't. You
can't therapize me, Like I know what you're doing, And
what these questions really do is like, if you're somebody
who can and wants to change, it just allows you

(34:04):
to see that the door the door is open, and
it bypasses defensiveness by really just being like, here's an
invitation to take accountability now for those of us on
the other side. It's also crucial that you set boundaries
around emotional labor, especially if this is somebody who is
a family member, or somebody that you live with, or

(34:27):
somebody that you're very close with. Of Course, I'm sure
you love the people around you. You want them to
feel great about themselves. There is a point where you
cannot change them, and it's not your responsibility and it
should not drag you down. Endless sympathy does not work
for people like this, let's be very very clear, and

(34:48):
it doesn't help you either, even if you think you're
being nice. Boundaries are what keeps that relationship's relationships sustainable.
Saying things like I really care about you, but I
I cannot keep having this conversation because it's starting to
hurt me too, or I'm here for you, but I
need you to take the lead on what comes next.

(35:10):
I need you to really try and help yourself in
this situation, even saying things like Hey, I love you,
but I can't be around this kind of negativity in
my life because it's really starting to change how I
see myself and I don't think that's good for either
of us. These phrases signal empathy, but also an expectation

(35:32):
that you need to take charge if you want me
in your life, if you want this to be a
positive relationship, something needs to change. I saw this beautiful
quote the other day that said true empathy is not
about absorbing someone's feelings, but witnessing them without losing ourselves
in the process. You know, it's very easy to think

(35:53):
I'm being empathetic when actually you're just taking the emotion
away from them and placing it inside of you. It's
easy to think I'm being empathetic when you're really maybe
by accident, helping someone continue a cycle. When we overfunction
for somebody else through rescuing, fixing, excessive soothing, we actually

(36:14):
reinforce the helplessness. We teach them safety exists through us
and us only, and their central form of regulation becomes
venting to us, becomes asking us to fix their problems,
becomes complaining to us and knowing that we're going to
be like, yeah, like you're totally right about that. You
are a victim, and you're going to stay that way.

(36:36):
Like that's not helpful at all. When we model stability,
when we model boundaries, we teach them something subliminally. Now,
sometimes despite all the empathy and all the listening, nothing changes.
You know, some people just aren't going to change. And
that is like a really hard truth about life, Like

(36:57):
they're not going to change, and they're not going to
change for you, and that really sucks and it's a
really hard thing to acknowledge. But you have to take
the situation from there and just think about, Hey, what's
maybe best for me here. You'll know when it's time
to kind of maybe distance yourself from a person, maybe

(37:19):
see them a lot less, maybe limit interactions when compassion
starts turning into resentment. Resentment is your body telling you
that your empathy levels are sinking, and they are sinking fast.
When you dread the next conversation, when you feel your
body tense every time you see their name pop up,
those are the signals that your boundaries are being crossed repeatedly,

(37:43):
that this victim mindset is becoming contagious, and that you
aren't feeling good about this relationship. It is a signal
that your genuine desire to help has swiftly entered the
territory of maladaptive people. Pleasing sometimes in these situations, like
walking away is the kindest thing you can do for

(38:04):
both of you, or giving distances is also a kindness
so that this relationship doesn't end up just becoming a
total dumbster fire that again makes them feel like a victim.
Giving yourself two weeks away from this person to see
how your own life changes, whether you feel better, It's

(38:26):
just a little experiment just so that you know your
own limits and you are able to put healthy boundaries
in distance between this person so that you can recuperate
and so that you do have the energy to be
around them for the good times as well as the
bad times. If you need to distance yourself, do it
with the do it with clarity, Do it with the

(38:46):
clarity of like, I care about you, I want good
things for you. Right now, this dynamic isn't healthy for me.
I hope you get the support you deserve. I'm so
excited to see you soon, but I'm just kind of
busy for the next couple of weeks and I just
really need to recharge. I've got my own things going on.

(39:07):
I'll talk to you when I when I get the chance.
You know, it's harsh. It's probably something that not everyone
is going to be willing or wants to do, but
it's probably important to learn that you are allowed to
just not be in somebody's life. If they constantly make
you feel terrible, and if you have done everything else

(39:29):
on this list and this person does not change brings
you down, is using the victim mentality for manipulative purposes.
You are allowed to change if they won't and you're
allowed to exit the relationship for self care purposes and
so that you can hear the truth is. You know,

(39:52):
this might sound like a simple situation, I'm talking about
it rather than doing it. It's really complicated. It You
really just have to determine what's right for you, whether
this person is a manipulative victim or a compassionate victim.
It's really complicated. I feel like we like to just
throw around these terms of like that person has such

(40:14):
a victim mentality, not realizing like that these people also
have friends and family members and coworkers whose lives are
intertwined with them. We need like a better way of
dealing with it. But sometimes, like in the cases of control,
in the cases where they're trying to guilt you or
use your empathy against you, like you can just be like,

(40:35):
this isn't what I want from my life, and you
can provide distance and give yourself the distance to move
away from that person. I'm giving you permission to say
like that's actually okay, and the severity of the circumstances
may actually call call for you to do that. You're
not being cruel, that it's the kindest thing you can
do for yourself so that you don't turn into a

(40:57):
victim who then ends up victimizing somebody else, and it's
sometimes the kindest thing you can do for them as well.
I hope this episode has given you a bit more
to think about. If you have made it this far,
if you are loyal all the way through a listener,
I want you to leave a little black heart emoji
down below. I think that's pretty symbolic somebody who has

(41:19):
a victim mindset. If you want to stay in the
loop with other episodes that are coming out, you can
follow us on Instagram at that Psychology Podcast, and you
can also follow us here wherever you are listening. Make
sure you are subscribed. Please give us a five star
review if you feel cool to do so, but if
you don't, that's all right as well. I also want

(41:39):
to thank our amazing researcher Libby Colbert for her contributions
to this episode. We couldn't deal without her and all
of her help. But until next time, stay safe, be kind,
be gentle to yourself, good luck with the victims you're
dealing with, and we will talk very very soon.