From Victim Mentality to Resiliency, How Not to Fall into the Trigger Warning Trap
As a mental health advocate, I have been hearing a lot about the dangers of victim mentality lately. It's a common struggle for people in modern society to be more aware of potential problems than solutions. Our brains developed this survival mode over time to help us survive, but in our daily lives, it can make everything look like a war zone. That's where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness strategies help us notice this process, pull back, and retrain our brains to offer a different path.
We are lucky to be living in a time where we don't have as many direct threats as our ancestors did. Most of us have homes, clothing, and enough food to survive. However, we still battle personal demons or experiences that can trigger our survival mode. Trauma survivors often try to give their children an idealized childhood, setting them up for more irrational beliefs and victim mentality. But life is inherently uncomfortable, unpredictable, and uncontrollable. Too much comfort makes us emotionally fragile and shapeless.
We need to grow muscles for this life, muscles that help us cope with discomfort and lean into triggers instead of avoiding them. By leaning into triggers, we learn how to desensitize ourselves to them and take our power back from any past abuse. It's not about seeking comfort or feeling entitled to receive special treatment. It's about accepting that life is hard, but we can still cultivate peace, ease, and grounded centeredness within ourselves.
Social media and colleges have been stoking the fires of victim mentality for a variety of reasons. Trigger warnings are a great example of how good intentions can backfire. Trigger warnings sound compassionate and reasonable, but they can create entitlement and irrational beliefs that we need them to be okay in the world. When we don't get them, we feel victimized and hurt. This demand for comfort actually becomes a victim mentality.
We can't control the external world or the people in it, but we can control ourselves, our minds, our bodies, and our responses. Healing brings us more of a sense of control over our experience, reactions, and choices so that we can choose with more wisdom instead of reactivity. It's not about perfect control, but about a sense of control. We need to deal with the realities of this world and better coping strategies to help us find more comfort than what we know how to do naturally.
Trigger Warnings: Are They Creating Victim Mentality?
Trigger warnings have become a widely debated topic in recent years, with some arguing they are necessary to protect people from potentially distressing material, while others argue they create fragility and victim mentality in society. In this blog, we will explore this debate and offer some insights on how to reframe from victim mentality to resiliency.
No one ever suggested trigger warnings to create fragility or instability or anti-resiliency in the human condition, but here we are. Living out that old phrase, loved by old Catholics I've known, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” From that good intended, accidentally born fragility, it can seem as if the world is out there to get us. That everything that happens politically, everything that happens in the news, is just against us in some way, shape, or form, and that turns into a framework over time. It becomes a lens. This is how victim mentality gets reinforced in a personality as a lifestyle. And that just brings more fragility.
The first step in reframing from victim mentality is to acknowledge the feeling and be in the feeling and keep our thoughts just with that feeling. It's like our inner child crosses his or her arms over the chest, huffs and puffs, and sits on the ground in protest and pout. But it's too hard. We can empathize with ourselves and others. Life invites us to throw our hands up and give up and give in and beat our fists on the ground a lot. And yep, like a tantrum. Because the thought, but it's too hard, comes from many of us from being overwhelmed without enough help in our childhood or enough direction or enough care or consideration or concern or guidance. Acknowledge the feelings without creating a story. What's wrong with me? Why does this always happen to me? It's always me. The world is against me. That's the story that just makes the victim mentality bigger.
The second step is to coach ourselves by saying, "I'm going to take a deep breath and then do it." Notice the difference between saying these things versus “but it's so hard.” Notice that this gives you somewhere to go versus practicing powerless stuckness because it's hard. We learn to offer ourselves the message, "It's time to shift." If we have proper parenting, a parent is going to see when we get overwhelmed, absolutely frustrated. They're going to offer us just a little bit of help so we can get over that hump and keep going. Sometimes you just need to step away and then come back.
In terms of reframing from victim mentality to resiliency, we must acknowledge when we've been victimized, and acknowledge that being victimized is a temporary state. It’s essential that we move on from that past event and live in the here and now. We just can't buy property in the victimhood. We must understand, acknowledge, and then we move through. Or victim mentality can set into our minds and bodies like I've seen termites eat old southern wooden homes to dust. Personal responsibility and resiliency take us out of that victim neighborhood that no one has ever driven through intentionally. The reframe with language is, "Yes, this was all kinds of wrong. But what's right?" is me no longer being affected by this. What's right is me letting this go. What's right is me moving forward.
Victim mentality is a mindset that can keep us stuck and feeling powerless. By acknowledging our feelings without creating a story and coaching ourselves to take one step at a time, we can cultivate resilience and empower ourselves to overcome obstacles and challenges. Letting go is an essential part of this process, as it frees our hands to pick up different things and move forward with purpose and empowerment.
Victim mentality can be a dangerous and slippery slope. We need to cultivate muscles for this life and accept that life is hard. Instead of seeking comfort, we need to lean into triggers and desensitize ourselves to them. We need to take our power back from any past abuse and focus on cultivating peace, ease, and grounded centeredness within ourselves. We can't control the external world, but we can control ourselves, our minds, our bodies, and our responses. By doing so, we can choose with more wisdom instead of reactivity and find more comfort in this life.
Episode Tags
- ADD 1
- Abuse 14
- Alcohol 3
- Anger 8
- Bullying 4
- Childhood 35
- Codependency 6
- Covid 4
- Crystal Catalina 7
- Depression 15
- Detachment 2
- Disassociation 4
- Emotions 70
- Existentialism 1
- Faith 1
- Family 24
- Fatigue 4
- Focus 3
- Gratitude 11
- Grief 8
- Guilt 2
- Healers 7
- Healing 52
- High Sensation 4
- Hope 1
- Hypervigilance 7
- Introverts 6
- Lonliness 7
- Love 3
- Manifesting 5
- Manipulation 16
- Men 1
- Mindfulness 37
- Money 10
- Music 3
- Nutrition 3
- Overthinking 8
- PTSD 11
- Parenting 12
- People Pleasing 6
- Perfectionism 6
- Pets 4
- Relationships 11
- Resiliency 12
- Sadness 1
- Self Esteem 15
- Self Love 11
- Self-Care 24
- Sex 1
- Shame 4
Episode Tags
- ADD 1
- Abuse 14
- Alcohol 3
- Anger 8
- Bullying 4
- Childhood 35
- Codependency 6
- Covid 4
- Crystal Catalina 7
- Depression 15
- Detachment 2
- Disassociation 4
- Emotions 70
- Existentialism 1
- Faith 1
- Family 24
- Fatigue 4
- Focus 3
- Gratitude 11
- Grief 8
- Guilt 2
- Healers 7
- Healing 52
- High Sensation 4
- Hope 1
- Hypervigilance 7
- Introverts 6
- Lonliness 7
- Love 3
- Manifesting 5
- Manipulation 16
- Men 1
- Mindfulness 37
- Money 10
- Music 3
- Nutrition 3
- Overthinking 8
- PTSD 11
- Parenting 12
- People Pleasing 6
- Perfectionism 6
- Pets 4
- Relationships 11
- Resiliency 12
- Sadness 1
- Self Esteem 15
- Self Love 11
- Self-Care 24
- Sex 1
- Shame 4
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