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Bonds That
Make Us Free, Part 9: Making Victims of Ourselves
by C.
Terry Warner
The Core
of All Excuses
Carol
hated Saturdays because her husband yelled at the children when
he supervised their household chores. She said this ruined her hopes
for a day of cooperative work and loving play. When he would begin
to yell she would roll her eyes and say under her breath (or sometimes
a little louder than that), "Here we go again!" or "He's
ruining everything just like every Saturday." As a victim of
this domestic autocrat, she would often cry.
Then she came
to a realization that astonished her. In a flash of understanding
(not unlike mine when I realized what I had been doing to my son)
she saw that the Saturday morning problems were not entirely her
husband's fault.
I told myself
I was trying with all my might to make sure we had a good time together,
but in reality I was looking hard for evidence that he was making
it impossible. That's what surprised me so much. What was most on
my mind was, "How can I be a good mother when the father acts
like this?" Ironically, I could tell that my criticism not
only hurt him but seemed to make him even more agitated and impatient.
My criticism was contributing to the problem!
Carol's story
shows clearly how three aspects of the self-betrayer's conduct always
go together:
accusing others,
excusing oneself, and
displaying oneself as a victim.
We can't seek
vigilantly for evidence that others are mistreating us, as self-betrayers
do, unless we actively put ourselves in the victim's role. Our sense
of suffering, or at least of being inconvenienced, clearly proves—at
least in our own mind—that our accusation of them is justified.
Furthermore, it is precisely by taking this victim role that we
are able to excuse ourselves for not being more considerate. It
makes no sense, we tell ourselves, to think we could respond more
generously when we're being mistreated so!
The following
chart illustrates the perfect correlation between various commonplace
accusations that self-betrayers make and the resulting sense they
have of being victimized.
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Accusing
Judgment
|
Sense
of Being Victimized
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"It's
your fault."
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"I'm
suffering because of you."
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"You're
not being fair."
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"I'm
getting cheated." (Or, "Someone's being cheated
and I'm offended by that.")
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"Our
suppliers are unreliable."
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"We
were prevented from meeting our production quotas."
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"The
instructions weren't clear."
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"You
made me foul up the job."
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"You
insisted on having this kid."
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"Now
my whole career's going to pot."
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Fabricating
Victimhood
Carol accused her husband and excused herself by thinking of
herself as his victim and acting the part of the victim. This raises
an issue that needs to be cleared up before we go any further. There
is a very big difference between portraying oneself as a
victim the way Carol did and actually being a victim.
To the extent that we are actually being victimized, we bear no
responsibility for the bad things that are happening to us, such
as being mugged on the street or falling ill or being discriminated
against because of our gender, race, or religion. But we are
responsible when we present ourselves as victims in order
to excuse or justify ourselves. There are indeed real victims, but
acting and feeling victimized does not make a person a real victim.
Carol's case
illustrates this well. No doubt she honestly suffered from her husband's
insensitive treatment of their children, and to the extent that
she had no part in this, she must be considered a victim. But in
addition she amplified the destructiveness of what he did
by portraying herself as hurt, thinking obsessively about how he
was wrecking their lives, and so on. How she might have felt if
she had not done this, and what difference that might have made
in her relationship with him, are subjects we will address later.
At this point, however, we will simply note that both her feelings
and her marriage would have been different.
One way we can
make ourselves out to be victims is by failing in some aspect of
life; our failure "proves" how badly we have been treated.
We have all known someone like Heather, who "just knew"
no man would want her. She was attractive enough, and fairly often
men would make overtures. But she would interpret everything they
did (even their innocent actions) as some form of rejection, until
finally they would give up. Those who knew her best reported that
finding evidence of rejection seemed to be her primary interest.
"Yeah, see, he didn't call back," Heather might say. A
roommate, trying to be helpful, would explain, "But he did;
he left a voice-mail message with his number." "No, if
he was really interested, he would have kept trying till he got
me." Heather's tone in such reactions would be triumphant,
as she once again successfully defended her theory of why her life
didn't work. These losses in love established her as a Great Martyr,
and in her mind this excused her from treating men considerately,
as fellow human beings.
A businessman
who coaches tennis in the summer says that after watching tournaments
for many years, he came to an intriguing conclusion: Except in a
very few matches, usually with world-class performers, there is
a point in every match (and in some cases it's right at the beginning)
when the loser decides he's going to lose. And after that, everything
he does will be aimed at providing an explanation of why he will
have lost. He may throw himself at every ball (so he will be able
to say he's done his best against a superior opponent). He may dispute
calls (so he will be able to say he's been robbed). He may swear
at himself and throw his racket (so he can say it was apparent all
along he wasn't in top form). His energies go not into winning but
into producing an explanation, an excuse, a justification for losing.
It is no different
for those who amplify their victimhood in everyday life. Their particular
way of going against conscience and evading responsibility is to
look for reasons why someone or something else is to blame for their
loss. Their key concern is not with winning, enjoyment, or getting
a job done but with being prepared with an excuse when they lose,
so it will be clear that they have been unfairly deprived of what
was rightfully theirs. Failing to win, succeed, or become important
is acceptable to them as long as they collect evidence that they
deserve to have won, succeed, or become important—and they
would have done so if they had not been unlucky or treated unfairly.
Often such people
go to extreme lengths. Some put themselves at a severe disadvantage,
falling behind in the economic or social struggles of life, or making
shocking sacrifices, in the way they suppose a genuine victim might
be forced to do. There are people who make fools of themselves in
public, lose a job, or even take their lives just to prove they
are victims—just to prove that someone else (possibly the whole
human race or even God) has treated them unfairly.
Losing out in
the affairs of life is not the only way to display oneself as a
victim. Victimhood can be just as readily displayed by those we
think of as successful or powerful. The successful may view themselves
as victims when they perceive others as trying to take advantage
of them and then redouble their efforts to succeed. Hitler may be
the most extreme instance of this. He called his autobiography Mein
Kampf—"my struggle." He had originally planned the
title to center on the idea of "a reckoning" or "a
settling of accounts," but then put this idea into the subtitle
instead. He wanted to convey in the title something about the wrongs
he had suffered and the vengeance he was taking. He stands as an
extreme example of people whose preoccupation with their own victimhood
leads them to seek power so they "won't have to suffer abuses
anymore" and so they can "give them (their abusers) what
they deserve."
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