Why Do We Villianize The Victim? with Trauma Therapist Esther Goldstein

This week I’m thrilled to sit down again with Esther Goldstein, a New York based LCSW and trauma therapist (also known as the trauma therapist’s therapist), to talk about why it seems like we as a society are so uncomfortable when folks speak up about personal injustice…and why we are so quick to villify the victim. 

 

On today’s podcast, we are diving in to how the word "victim" became an insult, how victim-blaming protects the witness's sense of stability, and how the perpetrator and their enablers use Projective Identification, The Bystander Effect, and The Just World Bias as part of their tool kit to keep painting the victim as a villain…simply for voicing the harm they have endured. Above all else, we are digging in to what you can do, when people refuse to help or even to hear you, in order to make peace with those who would stand by, watch, and deny to your face…the ways in which you were and perhaps still are in fact, being victimized.