Essay 9. Victimology and Self Pity

Let's take a candid look at victimology and self pity. Victimology and self pity represent major obstacles in our quest for emotional freedom. First we will see where we acquire those beliefs, how to examine them, and how to free ourselves from their grasp.

Adversity is guaranteed to strike. It is how we handle adversity that truly matters.

Clearly, we can become victims. We are victims of bad belief systems instilled in us by our parents. Many of those beliefs are well intentioned. Some are not. Sometimes, those beliefs prevent us from obtaining the proper emotional tools to deal with our problems. Sometimes we acquire bad beliefs through relatives, friends, and experiences. We may be victimized by criminal behavior or in some instances, just bad luck.

If you believe you are a victim, then in essence you are and it is true. It becomes a belief system. You can indulge in all of the self pity you want and you can certainly enlist your sympathetic friends, families, and even attorneys to commiserate with you. They will enable you to do this.

The problem is, is that accepting that you are a victim or indulging in self pity will prevent you from ever getting well or emotionally free. It is a self fulfilling and damning emotional tar pit that quite honestly-I have seen many people get mired in and die without ever recognizing the escape route.

You will fall in that tar pit. We know this. We want you to recognize it and escape when it happens.

Our first step is resolution. We apply rigorous honesty to our failings and shortcomings. To our existing thoughts that we are victims. To each and every resentment. We examine our role in every situation in which we "think" we were victimized. We accept our role and responsibility with unflinching honesty. And we take ACTION to not repeat our mistakes. This is key.

Perhaps you discover that your wife or girlfriend is sleeping with another man. You feel angry, betrayed, hostile. You see yourself as a victim. You tell your friends and relatives. They shower you with sympathy and they further entrench you in the belief that you are right, you are a victim. Your ego entrenches, it is hurt. Your ego demands apologies, vindication, and unconditional surrender from your unfaithful partner which of course it doesn't get. You fail to examine your role. You fail to see your selection of a mate, or you fail to see your own selfish actions prior to the affair, and all the while that ego of yours exerts fear and control. It says you were right. That false sense of self and those enabling and sympathetic friends have helped you lie to yourself. You are stuck in the tar pit and if you want, you can wallow there for years. Build hostilities, resentments, see counselors. Stay angry, hostile, depressed. Or get well.

Acceptance. Your cheating partner was simply living her life. The relationship was over long before the symptom showed up. She was just trying to live her life and made a bad choice in how to do that. Really. It had nothing to do with you. In fact, it never does. We'll take about this later on. So the quicker we accept this, the less emotional damage we cause ourselves.

That is how emotionally free people let go and let go fast. Believing that you are a victim and a hostage prolongs all those negative emotions, anger, animosity, fear, loss of control, self esteem, depression.

So we accept that our partner is free to live her life. We refuse to be a victim or beat ourselves to death emotionally worrying about what we did wrong. We apply the rigorous honesty rule and we accept where we screwed up. We resolve our failings and forgive ourselves. We are thus arming ourselves to recover quickly. We realize suddenly, that by CHOOSING to be victims, we victimize ourselves and prolong our time in the tar pit.

Self pity works much the same way. By whining, justifying, and rationalizing our actions we simply struggle in the tar pit. Talk shows are absolutely filled with unconscious, ego driven, and the faulty belief systems of the host, guest, and audience. The other day in a restaurant, I heard the waitresses whining about the cooks, an attractive gal whining about her roommates to a couple of male friends, and my own guest talking about her problems. To say that we are a nation of victims and people fully engaged in self pity may be an understatement.

Emotionally free and conscious people understand the ill effects of enmeshing our friends or ourselves in faulty belief systems and lying to ourselves. We don't like the tar pit much and to stay out of it, we don't allow our false sense of self to run us. We REFUSE to be victims even when we are. We reject self pity.

We do our best, we accept adversity, we identify and resolve ill feelings and commit to improvements to modify our behavior. We apply rigorous honesty. We refuse to be victims or engage in self pity. Why? When we fail to examine our role, we really engage in dishonest behavior with ourselves, don't we? And in the end, we only hurt ourselves. Emotionally free people understand this. It is actually quite simple.