Stop Playing the Victim.

Have you ever had someone in your life that you just dreaded being around because they are always so negative and complain about everything? Often times, these are the people who love to play the “victim” role, and they continually love to remind everyone about how shitty their life is, usually at someone else’s fault. They may complain about their life sucks and they barely survive on their current wages but seem to always cycle their current situation back to a specific incident, perhaps a childhood trauma or an early relationship that impacted their lives. Then, there are some people who seem to be so negative that their entire life is one series of hardships right after the other. It is as thought their whole life is nothing more than a never-ending horror movie. Don’t get me wrong, I do understand completely that there are things that we can experience that are extremely hurtful to us and can have serious long-term impacts on our lives, or future relationships. I never take that type of thing lightly.
Many people, if not most, face hardships at some point in time throughout our lives. I am certainly no exception. I was physically and sexually abused as a child, I endured adult relationships that were physically and/or emotionally abusive and found myself in my forties living with my mom as I was trying to get myself in a position to face living on my own with my daughter with no home or car that I owned, about one hundred pounds overweight, and no financial security for my and her future. I could have been pissed at the world. I could have blamed my parents for my fucked-up childhood, or my ex-husband for crushing my spirit and destroying any sense of self-worth I may have ever had. I could have blamed everyone else for my failed life. Granted, because of the choices and actions of others at times, I have been placed into unwanted situations that altered my life plan, but I ultimately had to choose whether to let that defeat me or fuel me. I learned some harsh lessons about other people, but I learned so much more about myself. I made a list of my top ten goals, and then I started doing the work that I needed to do in order to see those goals come to fruition.
Do you ever just want to shake those eternal “victim” card playing people and scream in their face, “we all go through hardships, YOU have to bring yourself out of it!!”? I find myself wanting to do just that. It is difficult to be around those kinds of people. They constantly play the “woe is me,” “my life sucks,” and the “nothing good ever happens to me” cards, and quite honestly, it gets old. People who live to play the victim, will get angry at you when you try to point out that, in fact, not everything about their life sucks. They can shut you out and avoid you. They often times will talk negatively about you to other people. Basically, they resist hearing the truth because it forces them to admit that they are not accepting responsibility for their own role in controlling their own life situation. People go through hard times and heartbreak every day, and some people go through absolute hell on a regular basis, yet they still can manage to find the strength inside of them that pushes them to get better and be willing to fight through any hardship to change their circumstances. People who refuse to accept that responsibility and continue to blame others for their situation, is someone who is unwilling to accept that they are capable of putting in the work to change the situation. It becomes easier to blame others for their own laziness. And, that is what it boils down to, when it becomes easier to lay in bed all day and be pissed at other people who hurt you throughout your life than to get up and get busy making yourself happy, that is lazy. Muhammad Ali said, “Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it.”