First, I want to point out that this article acknowledges that there are many cases where innocents are victimized by nasty, evil characters who unfortunately do exist in this world. These are the very real bad guys who have traumatized, betrayed, manipulated, gaslighted, and hurt precious hearts.
To those poor souls, we say, “You deserved better?” To you, we offer our support and compassion!
But for the rest of us who have hooked our unhappiness hats on unempowered, negative comments like,
“Everything always happens to me.”
“If it wasn’t for (name your person or circumstance), I would not be in this mess!”.
“What’s the use in trying anyway? It’s hopeless.”
Maybe, just maybe things are not going your way because you are more than a victim.
You are a victimizer’s volunteer.
A victimizer’s volunteer is an unpaid worker.
It’s honorable to be a volunteer for a noble cause or charity. But, when serving the selfish goals of another individual or organization or doing a whole lot of nothing but whining, blaming and complaining – that kind of volunteer activity is a dream death sentence.
The kind of volunteer we are referring to often suffers in silence but publicly.
This volunteer secretly enjoys the feel-good perks of being a seemingly selfless underdog or an unlucky, lonely soul. It’s unrewardingly comforting to wallow in the warmth of martyrdom while tirelessly hoisting responsibility for misery onto someone else’s guilty shoulders.
Whatever suffering there is for the victimized volunteer, overcoming it requires some healthy boundary setting and making changes that include, consistent effort, sacrifice, discomfort and the risk of failure!
A clue to discerning between healthy volunteer service and victimized volunteerism is satisfaction with the status quo as evidenced by taking no action beyond feeding resentments with words like, “always”, “never”, “why try?” “because of”, “if it wasn’t for” “nobody else” and “only me”.
There is a price to be paid for all this namby-pamby, jellyfishing. The price is your dreams drowned in the crocodile tears of your unfortunate circumstances.
The bully in the driver’s seat who’s been bulldozing over your promising future is not going to stop the shenanigans anytime soon unless you enforce it.
Somehow, you’ve convinced yourself that it’s safer to allow your habit of blaming and making excuses to let you off the hook of being the master of your own destiny.
It’s time to fight the bully even she’s you!
The good news is while you are part of the problem, you also have within you the makings of a superhero rescuer capable of transforming your voluntary victimhood into victorious inspiration.