If Someone Has A True Victim Mentality, They'll Use These 11 Phrases To Make It Appear Nothing Is Their Fault
Frank Flores | Unsplash When someone has a true victim mentality, they want it to appear like they're not at fault. In contrast, someone with a strong sense of agency believes they're generally in control of their own life. They take responsibility and make empowering choices.
A person with a victim mentality believes that their life is determined by external circumstances that they have no control over. Victim mentalities often arise from experiencing unresolved trauma, and experts insist this outlook can hold people back from forming healthy relationships. Someone stuck in victim mentality will often use phrases that can tip you off to their negative perspectives.
If someone has a true victim mentality, they'll use these 11 phrases to make it appear nothing is their fault
1. 'Why do bad things always happen to me?'
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If someone has a true victim mentality, they believe that their challenges are insurmountable. They tend to have a narrow perspective on how the world works. They hold onto the belief that negative experiences just happen to them, rather than reflecting on the ways their patterns of behavior impact their lives.
According to the Berkeley Well-Being Institute, people with a victim mentality define themselves as the victim of one issue or event, but rather a perpetual victim. They integrate victimhood into their identity to such a deep extent that they're unable to move past it. This mindset can damage someone's personal and professional relationships and keeps them stuck in the idea that they have no agency.
In contrast, feeling empowered allows people to believe that they can change the path they're following. Empowered individuals acknowledge that they're in control of their choices, and that while bad things might happen, those bad things aren't the full sum of who they are.
2. 'Other people have it so much easier'
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Facing hardship is a universal part of the human experience, but if someone has a true victim mentality, they believe their challenges are worse than everyone else's. In addition, they often act like nothing is their fault, they say the phrase, which is why think life is so much easier for others.
They measure their lives against what other people have, only to find that they fall short because they're biased. People with a victim mentality get trapped playing the comparison game, and they always lose. When they say things like, "Everyone else's life is so much better," they genuinely believe that statement to be true.
There are many damaging aspects of comparing yourself to others, one of which being the mental toll it takes on a person. According to research published in Current Psychology, on social media in particular, "social comparison orientation negatively [affects] psychological well-being" and can evoke "a sense of depression, deprivation, and distress, as well as aggravating one's mental health."
It's easy to scroll through social media and see what everyone else has that you don't. The antidote to thinking everyone else's life is better than yours is to practice gratitude for what you have, and locate your own sources of joy.
3. 'I just can't win'
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A person with a true victim mentality sees life through a narrow lens of winning and losing. Instead of accepting that they can't always reach their goal or get exactly what they want, they let themselves stay stuck at their lowest point. They usually don't have a strong sense of resilience, which means they struggle to pick themselves back up after something bad happens.
Transformational coach Jean Walters explains just how destructive having a persistent victim mentality can be. She reveals that the first step to breaking free from victimhood is flipping the script you've written for yourself.
"Design a new story with positive feelings and affirming thoughts," she advises. "Be grateful you noticed the negative chatter, challenged it, and are creating and experiencing a new outcome."
Walters concludes, "You must choose a new, uplifting narrative for your life, because if you don't, your brain will simply go back to its old process: victimizing yourself."
4. 'Everyone is against me'
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If someone has a true victim mentality, they buy into the mindset that they're at the bottom and everyone else is at the top, holding them down. This becomes a negative feedback loop that's almost impossible to escape. Trauma therapist Nancy Carbone notes that in order to stop feeling like a victim, people have to accept responsibility for their own lives.
"If you blame life, others, or situations for things that go wrong, rather than looking at how you run away to escape the feeling of not being good enough, you'll stay stuck in this cycle," she explains. "If you do not recognize the signs of having a victim mentality, you may not realize that you are the one who subjects yourself to feeling as though you do not deserve the good things in life."
Carbone acknowledges that changing negative thought patterns is difficult work, but by reaching out to mental health professionals, practicing mindfulness, and asking close friends and family members to help you stay accountable to yourself.
5. 'No one understands me'
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A person who sees themselves as perpetual victim usually believes their pain or struggle is unique. They're unable to step outside of their own experience enough to recognize that people would understand, if only they would open up and let others in.
Even if people have a different life experience, they can still employ compassion and be empathic enough to see the world from someone else's point of view. For people with a true victim mentality, this level of empathy is hard to imagine, which experts suggest might be part of the problem.
People who see themselves as victims aren't accustomed to being vulnerable, because they think that everyone's against them. For this reason, they think no one knows what they're going through, when really, if they tried to share how they feel, they'd find understanding.
6. 'I'm always the one who gets hurt'
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Everyone is allowed to experience their emotions, yet playing the victim means that people side-step any aspect of accountability. Saying this phrase is common among parents who aren't close with their adult children, but aren't able to see how their actions and attitudes contributed to the fall-out. If someone has true victim mentality, this dynamic can show up in any number of relationships.
People with insecure attachment styles also say this phrase, because they fail to notice that they repeatedly enter relationships without doing the difficult emotional labor involved in changing how they relate to people. No one really wants to be hurt, yet people who have a victim mentality often make being hurt a major aspect of who they are.
7. 'There's no point in trying'
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If someone has a true victim mentality, they feel no sense of agency in their own lives. This doesn't mean they actually lack agency, merely that they feel as if they don't.
According to research published in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, a "sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences." People who have a victim mentality and act like nothing is their fault lack a sense of agency, which would empower them to see that they get to decide the direction their life takes.
With that being said, those with a victim mindset deprive themselves of the opportunity to grow. Instead of having a growth mindset, where they look at their mistakes and negative experiences as a chance to learn and expand their sense of self, they have a fixed mindset, which holds them hostage to the idea that change is out of their reach.
8. 'This is all your fault'
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While conflict requires two people to be engaged in the push-and-pull dynamic, if someone has a victim mentality refuses to hold themselves accountable for anything. They make their problems into everyone else's problems, casting blame like a wide net.
As relationship coach Jordan Gray explains, "When we blame other people for aspects of our lives, we shrug off the tough work of taking responsibility for ourselves... At a certain point in your journey, after feeling your feelings and taking a higher degree of responsibility for yourself, it is a necessary step to look into and dissect what stories you carry about yourself and the world around you."
When people accept that they have agency, they're able to make their lives their own, and stop blaming the people around them for issues that aren't actually their fault.
9. 'Nothing will ever change'
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When people have a victim mentality and act like nothing is their fault, they tend to see their place in the world as an immovable thing. They say the phrase, "Nothing will ever change" because they don't have faith in themselves as agents of change.
They will continue down the same path of looking outward and finding fault in everything but themselves. Until they take a step outside of themselves, they won't be able to change, and the phrase "nothing changes" becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Inevitably, someone with a true victim mentality will think they had nothing to do with this prophecy at all.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.
10. 'I feel like the universe is against me'
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If someone has a true victim mentality, they cannot seem to see the big-picture reasons why so many terrible things happen to them and why they can't seem to catch a break. That reason is, of course, themselves. Instead, they blame the universe or bad luck or some other mystical force.
There is an ironic sense of empowerment that comes from thinking you are helpless. It gives people who perceive themselves as perpetual victims a sense of control. Unfortunately, it is an illusion.
True empowerment, according to definition, is "the power, right, or authority to do something" and while a person may find a sense of control in deciding to be helpless, it is truly the opposite of being truly empowered.
To solve this, the person with a true victim mentality must find the role they play in their own misery, so they can stop wondering why bad things happen to them. Or at least some of them.
11. 'I can't catch a break'
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If someone with a true victim mentality were given a break, they probably would never see it. They'd only see the unfortunate things that happened before and after the opportunity they could've taken.
Because of this, people who are plagued with victim mentality are essentially living a life that is the opposite of "mindful". Mindfulness, as defined by Berkeley's Greater Good Magazine, "means maintaining a moment-by-moment awareness of our thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations, and surrounding environment, through a gentle, nurturing lens."
Instead of being present in the moment, the person with a victim mentality is looking to the past and thinking about what went wrong or looking to the future and worrying about what might happen next. That's why people with victim mentality can benefit so much from adopting a mindfulness practice where they commit to noticing the good things that happen to them, instead of only noticing the times they cannot seem to catch a break.
