Vulnerability vs Victim Mentality

[Parththakkar12]

What is Leo's stance on vulnerability? Say you're vulnerable/open with someone you want to have as a partner, is that good or bad? Would it be considered 'victim behavior'?

All inner children are victim selves (Even the converse is true). And, everyone has an inner child as part of being human (cuz childhood trauma is part of being human). When you shame people for being victims, you're just deepening their emotional wounding to begin with. I think it's an abusive thing to do in a relationship! What do yall think?

Also, we're a social species and we need each other. There's a difference between taking responsibility for your life and denying your need for someone to take responsibility for your life (and trying to meet that need yourself). I want a relationship in which both of us are taking responsibility for each other's life and our lives are integrated with each other. Does wanting this come under 'victim mentality'? Always remember that emotional needs are more important to the human body than physical needs. That's why people become martyrs, stop eating and drinking after losing a loved one, commit suicide, etc.

I'm seeing a lot people getting shamed here for showing their victim sides. Is expressing how you feel (however delusional it may be) considered weakness and being macho all the time considered strength here on this forum? I understand if you may not want to feel sorry for victims (it may make you feel weak or something), but that's exactly what they need! When you tell a victim you feel sorry for them, they begin to find their feet.

[Nickyy]

@Parththakkar12 A victim mentality is a set of characteristics that have evolved in reaction to having been traumatized.

So a victim mentality manifests as blaming, being argumentative.

Expressing vulnerability and sorrow is something different. 

Being truly vulnerable is talking about your feelings from a 1st person person perspective 

The victim mentality prevents integration of the experience, and true vulnerable innocent expression from the child's perspective facilitates integration. 

That's why it's always helpful to be called out for playing the victim role, because this encourages the person to drop the defensive role and just express there feelings of anger without the hostility.

The victim mentality is still striving to maintain control, the vulnerable admits that it has no control and therefore accepts the experience. 

The victim mentality is a kind of dissociative ego defence against feeling the feelings.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Nickyy

[Parththakkar12]

@Nickyy  Okay. I have questions about what you're saying.

1. Say you're stuck in victim mentality. What would you prefer, to blame yourself or to blame what you perceive yourself to be a victim of?

2. Say you're expressing feelings of powerlessness relative to something. Is that vulnerability or victim mentality? What would your first reaction be to someone doing that?

3. If someone's hostility is making you feel threatened, isn't that you being a victim to their victim mentality (and blaming them for it)? I understand that there is value in calling it out, provided that you aren't demonizing them for it. Also, once someone admits to being stuck in victim mentality, the response of everyone else is 'Just stop being a victim and all your problems will be solved!!' which is true in theory, but it can be invalidating. Imagine saying that to someone who just lost a loved one/is going through a break-up.

I'm not saying that some good-old calling out is never appropriate. I do it when someone goes into excuse-giving mode, i.e. takes their victim mentality as a given. What I am asking for, is for people to not be hypocrites when doing the calling-out. That can turn into a blame-game very quickly and it's abusive when potentially you're trying to be vulnerable. Does this make sense?

 

Edited December 7, 2019 by Parththakkar12
Forgot to add the @user

[Nickyy]

25 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

1. Say you're stuck in victim mentality. What would you prefer, to blame yourself or to blame what you perceive yourself to be a victim of?

Blame happens, it's part of the grieving process. It needs to be accepted as part of the process , but at the same time it can't be encouraged too much because it just causes stagnation. Actually those stuck in victim mentality are blaming both themselves AND the person / people who abused them. There is no blame of the external without also blaming oneself. It might be the case that the person is not aware of this. 

25 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

@Nickyy  

2. Say you're expressing feelings of powerlessness relative to something. Is that vulnerability or victim mentality? What would your first reaction be to someone doing that?

In victim mentality mode and expressing genuine vulnerability there can be a sense of feeling powerless. But you will be able to tell the difference via the context. You can feel when someone is defending against feeling powerless and actually contacting the feeling directly. One makes you contract and the other opens you up.

"What would be your first reaction to someone doing that?"

It depends, if the expression of powerlessness is direct contact with that feeling then allowing that to be would be my response. However if it's a defence then my reaction would be to try to disengage the defence (make it conscious). 

25 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

@Nickyy  

3. If someone's hostility is making you feel threatened, isn't that you being a victim to their victim mentality (and blaming them for it)? 

I don't understand what you mean by "if someone's hostility is making you feel threatened". I don't feel threatened by someone playing the victim role. I feel contracted because it's false, and I feel open when they start to being honest with themselves.

25 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

@Nickyy   I understand that there is value in calling it out, provided that you aren't demonizing them for it. 

Yes, demonizing a person for playing the victim role is a sign of a lack of emotional intelligence. We learn the concept of the victim and we then go about trying to assimilate that concept in order to help ourselves when the time comes. We do that by responding to others on the forum. But until we have actually gone through the experience of doing that work ourselves then we will demonize the other for playing the victim, because we don't yet know how it feels to feel our own hurt directly. 

Once you have direct experience, you can then truly empathise with the other because you are no longer projecting , you have been there and passed through that process. 

One is trying to learn how to ride the bike and the other has learned how to ride the bike and is now tutoring others. 

25 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

@Nickyy   Also, once someone admits to being stuck in victim mentality, the response of everyone else is 'Just stop being a victim and all your problems will be solved!!' which is true in theory, but it can be invalidating. Imagine saying that to someone who just lost a loved one/is going through a break-up.

No, it's not invalidating. It may feel invalidating to the person playing the victim role, because the person has identified with that role. If you're identified with a role and everyone rejects the role, you're going to feel extraordinary pressure and resentment because you have mistaken the defence for your true self expression. 

Once the defence has dropped those same people calling out the game will more than likely open up and become validating . The one that needs validation is not the one who had constructed the defence and become identified with it. 

 

[Parththakkar12]

It seems to me that you are :

1. Taking the person who's 'playing the victim' as separate from yourself in this case (While expecting them to not do the same). Say I'm in a state of defence and you try to 'disengage the defence', that's gonna make me more defensive cuz I'll perceive you as an attacker! You would do that only if you're not putting yourself in my position.

2. Invalidating ground-level experiences like losing a loved one/suffering through a tragedy by using a transcendent spiritual perspective. By that I mean saying stuff like 'Being a victim is false, being fully responsible is true' when someone is suffering a tragedy. The fact that we're all one / Free will is an absolute is not true from an unconscious 3D perspective! I think this is called spiritual bypassing. There's potentially a lack of integration of the dualistic world there.

3. Demonizing someone for being in a state of defence. Why do you think they're trying to defend themselves from those around them? Because they're getting attacked!

4. Assuming that everyone rejects someone who's playing a 'victim role' (When that's you, you feel like you actually are a victim as opposed to playing a role). This is false.

Does this ring true to you? Any objections?

[Nickyy]

33 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

It seems to me that you are :

1. Taking the person who's 'playing the victim' as separate from yourself in this case (While expecting them to not do the same). Say I'm in a state of defence and you try to 'disengage the defence', that's gonna make me more defensive cuz I'll perceive you as an attacker! You would do that only if you're not putting yourself in my position.

Of course it causes a defensive reaction. But that's not my responsibility, that's the responsibility of the person who is playing the victim role. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. 

You are confusing healthy boundaries here. You have to be very grounded in what you are responsible for and what others are responsible for. I am not responsible for Molly coddling another person or manipulating them into trusting me. I am responsible for me, and they are responsible for themselves. 

By coming to a forum and expressing your issues is already accepting responsibility that you want to be helped.

I have already put myself in the position of the person playing the victim, this is why I have a crystal ball and can see that conflict with the false self pays off eventually at some point. The point of confronting the victim mentality head on is not to get an instant result ,but to plant a seed that they can fall back on when the time is right for them and they come to a place where they see for themselves that the roles don't work and close others down. 

It might take years. It might not happen at all, or it might happen more or less instantly. It all depends on the readiness of the person, which is again not in my control. 

33 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

2. Invalidating ground-level experiences like losing a loved one/suffering through a tragedy by using a transcendent spiritual perspective. By that I mean saying stuff like 'Being a victim is false, being fully responsible is true' when someone is suffering a tragedy. 

I have no idea where you got this impression. It feels like you are colouring what I'm saying. 

33 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

The fact that we're all one / Free will is an absolute is not true from an unconscious 3D perspective! I think this is called spiritual bypassing. There's potentially a lack of integration of the dualistic world there.

 

I have no idea what you're refering to.

33 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

3. Demonizing someone for being in a state of defence. Why do you think they're trying to defend themselves from those around them? Because they're getting attacked!

 

Nobody is demonizing anything. Maybe you're spritually bypassing here? In the relative domain playing the victim is ineffective. So it needs to be challenged. If we want to comfort ourselves by saying that from the absolute perspective playing the victim is ok, then by all means continue. But that doesn't solve the problem in the person's life. If you were having a heart attack would you tell me not to call the ambulance because the heart attack is perfect the way it is? 

Some people will demonize a person for playing the victim, but this isn't the same as discerning pathology from health and contracting appropriately. The contraction on the part of the person challenging the victim facade is healthy. It's the same reaction as putting a hand into an open flame. I feel you are demonizing natural reflexes and relative wisdom here.

33 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

4. Assuming that everyone rejects someone who's playing a 'victim role' (When that's you, you feel like you actually are a victim as opposed to playing a role). This is false.

Everyone rejects roles on some level. That's just a fact because everyone does perceive what is healthy and what is not and as a physical human primate we all gravitate to health and away from sickness. Contracting away from a victim role is healthy. 

Edited December 7, 2019 by Nickyy

[Nickyy]

@Parththakkar12 Im talking on a personal level here. You can have a false self on a personal relative level. 

Playing the victim is false, but being the victim of an insult or abuse is not false. 

I already explained this was where I'm coming from

I think you might have some unrealistic expectations of a highly developed person being some kind of perfect character who doesn't react to stimulation. 

The higher the level of consciousness the more you see. It's not like nothing affects you. The lower the consciousness the less you see

Edited December 7, 2019 by Nickyy

[Parththakkar12]

11 minutes ago, Nickyy said:

Of course it causes a defensive reaction. But that's not my responsibility, that's the responsibility of the person who is playing the victim role. You can lead a horse to water but you cannot make it drink. 

You are confusing healthy boundaries here. You have to be very grounded in what you are responsible for and what others are responsible for. I am not responsible for Molly coddling another person or manipulating them into trusting me. I am responsible for me, and they are responsible for themselves.

What I'm hearing is 'I'm responsible for myself, they're responsible for themselves so I'm not responsible for them, cuz they are separate from me!' I understand if you don't want to coddle/manipulate them. Are you sure you are taking responsibility for them here?

14 minutes ago, Nickyy said:

I have no idea where you got this impression. It feels like you are colouring what I'm saying. 

It's when you said that the reactions like 'Just stop being a victim'/'Just be confident' are not invalidating where they're at. You can't just be confident when you're a victim! What you actually need is for people to see this and respect this. For example, say you're going through a break-up and someone callously says 'Just get over it, you'll be fine. Everything is one, so you didn't really lose that person! All you have to do is open your eyes to that.' how will you react?

 

19 minutes ago, Nickyy said:

Nobody is demonizing anything. You're the one spritually bypassing here. In the relative domain playing the victim is ineffective. So it needs to be challenged. If you want to comfort yourself by saying that from the absolute perspective playing the victim is ok, then by all means continue. But that doesn't solve the problem in the person's life. If you were having a heart attack would you tell me not to call the ambulance because the heart attack is perfect the way it is? 

Why are you taking it upon you to fix them, as if there's something wrong with being a victim? It feels like an attack to me. It's like saying, 'You're having a heart attack? I'm not trained in this, but I'm gonna give you an adrinaline shot in the heart anyways!!' You don't know their situation enough for you to be able to fix it.

 

21 minutes ago, Nickyy said:

Everyone rejects roles on some level. That's just a fact because everyone does perceive what is healthy and what is not and as a physical human primate we all gravitate to health and away from sickness.

Assumption that it's a sickness/unhealthy. It's a perfectly decent and healthy thing for a lot of unconscious people to stay in victim mentality and have an okay life. It won't be a passionate life/high contrast life, but if they're good with it, who are we to say it's unhealthy?

[Nickyy]

1 minute ago, Parththakkar12 said:

What I'm hearing is 'I'm responsible for myself, they're responsible for themselves so I'm not responsible for them, cuz they are separate from me!' I understand if you don't want to coddle/manipulate them. Are you sure you are taking responsibility for them here?

You're trying to talk on the level of the absolute and confalting that with relative domain.

Forget about oneness. Either talk on the level of functional relativity or talk from the absolute. Stop conflating the two because that's very dangerous territory you are treading there.

[Parththakkar12]

Wait, aren't you wanting to integrate the two? It's okay if you don't want to, I just assumed that you wanted to.

We're all one on an emotional level, also known as the energetic level. This is where your emotions, desires, etc lie. This is what decides how you act in the 3D. What I mean by taking responsibility for them is, taking Responsibility (with capital R) for the Self (which includes them as a part of you) and acting from that space!

Edited December 7, 2019 by Parththakkar12

[Nickyy]

16 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

Assumption that it's a sickness/unhealthy. It's a perfectly decent and healthy thing for a lot of unconscious people to stay in victim mentality and have an okay life. It won't be a passionate life/high contrast life, but if they're good with it, who are we to say it's unhealthy?

No it's not an assumption that playing the victim is unhealthy. What you're saying right here is unhealthy and self deceptive.

Everyone knows on an intuitive and insitinctive level that playing the victim is not healthy. The same way that everyone knows that putting your hand in a hot flame is not sensible.

Being stuck in a victim mentality is not an ok life, and this is incredibly irresponsible of you to suggest this. What you are doing is called spiritual bypassing.

It's obvious to me that you haven't lived much..In order to actually have a meaningful discussion about these things you need to have experienced suffering in yourself and others. Rather than intellectualizing, it would be better if you got some real life experience. 

21 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

Why are you taking it upon you to fix them, as if there's something wrong with being a victim? It feels like an attack to me. It's like saying, 'You're having a heart attack? I'm not trained in this, but I'm gonna give you an adrinaline shot in the heart anyways!!' You don't know their situation enough for you to be able to fix it.

You just disclose that you know very litte about life yet. 

You really think that trying to help someone who has come into a forum to be helped is an "attack"?

Maybe it's time for you to move out of mummy's basement and start interacting with real people? 

[Parththakkar12]

I understand that you're trying to help people. But is fixing them helpful, or hateful? You will never be able to accomplish that feat. As for the definition of 'healthy', that's subjective and varies from person to person. Try telling someone who's suffering through a tragedy that their victim mentality is unhealthy!

I don't respond to personal attacks. You do that once more this discussion is over!

 

[Nickyy]

@Parththakkar12 Even an enlightened person who's permanent experience is non dual awareness will still see the ego in another and try to help them.

Your idea of non duality is purley conceptual and distorted. It's just a philosophy for you at this point.

[Parththakkar12]

Why do you say so?

[Nickyy]

1 minute ago, Parththakkar12 said:

I understand that you're trying to help people. But is fixing them helpful, or hateful? You will never be able to accomplish that feat. As for the definition of 'healthy', that's subjective and varies from person to person. Try telling someone who's suffering through a tragedy that their victim mentality is unhealthy!

I don't respond to personal attacks. You do that once more this discussion is over!

 

Talking about what is healthy and what isn't is not subjective from person to person. Just in the same way heart disease is not subjective. You have no idea what you're talking about and are just parroting things you have heard.

If you dont respond to personal attacks, then surely that's a very obvious and overt indication that you really don't believe what you are saying when you say that everything is subjective.

If everything is subjective then you wouldnt feel personally attacked. 

 

[Parththakkar12]

There's a difference between physical health and emotional health. You can find dysfunctions in physical health which have the same strategy to resolve for almost everyone. That's not true for emotional dysfunctions, where specific situations have specific resolutions. You cannot paint 'victim mentality' with a broad brush and have a common cure for it! Emotional dysfunctions are a lot more situational. In some cases, you need to tell someone that they're being a victim and that they need to see that they are responsible for their life. In other situations, you may need to understand that their feelings are valid (even though thoughts may not be valid) and tell them that you understand what they're going through!

I didn't say everything is subjective. But the definition of 'healthy' vs 'unhealthy' on an emotional level is subjective. When for one person, getting up at 5 am and running may be emotionally healthy, for someone else taking their rest may be more self-loving.

As far as me getting personally attacked is concerned, that was me stating a boundary. Boundaries are different from person to person. Our ego self has boundaries which are healthy to uphold and respect!

7 minutes ago, Nickyy said:

If everything is subjective then you wouldnt feel personally attacked. 

I don't know what you mean by this.

[Nickyy]

8 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

You cannot paint 'victim mentality' with a broad brush and have a common cure for it! 

Yes I can and yes there is. 

9 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

Emotional dysfunctions are a lot more situational. 

You're contradicting yourself.  By your own logic who you are you to call something dysfunctional? By saying something is dysfunctional you're also saying it's unhealthy. 

If you were intellectually honest you would have not even said such a thing.

11 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

In other situations, you may need to understand that their feelings are valid (even though thoughts may not be valid) and tell them that you understand what they're going through!

No you don't, you only think that because you obviously have no experience of what it's like to have helped a person move from victim mentality to a healthy translation of their feelings. 

You're making assumptions based on you yourself being a victim and wondering why nobody gave you a pass for your behaviour.

To empathize with a set of destructive behaviours is called enabling. The other term for it is called "idiot compassion". Idiot compassion makes the ego feel superior because it can keep itself locked into a co-dependent relationship with other unhealthy individuals.

15 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

I didn't say everything is subjective. But the definition of 'healthy' vs 'unhealthy' on an emotional level is subjective. When for one person, getting up at 5 am and running may be emotionally healthy, for someone else taking their rest may be more self-loving.

Something may indeed feel more healthy than others. But the two examples you gave are both healthy behaviours. Playing the victim is not a healthy behaviour, and if it's interpreted as a healthy behaviour then that person needs assistance in being able to translate their experience more accurately.

[Parththakkar12]

15 minutes ago, Nickyy said:

To empathize with a set of destructive behaviours is called enabling. The other term for it is called "idiot compassion". Idiot compassion makes the ego feel superior because it can keep itself locked into a co-dependent relationship with other unhealthy individuals.

There's a difference between empathizing and enabling. Have you tried empathizing with the criminals of the world? Leo explains that better in the video in which he talks about the brutality of Love, impermanence, etc. This doesn't mean you enable crime!

 

15 minutes ago, Nickyy said:

No you don't, you only think that because you obviously have no experience of what it's like to have helped a person move from victim mentality to a healthy translation of their feelings. 

You're making assumptions based on you yourself being a victim and wondering why nobody gave you a pass for your behaviour.

Holy shit do you hate victims!! Why do you hate them so much? Being a victim is not about a behavior, rather it's about feeling powerless and having faulty programming as to attributing your feelings of powerlessness to something external. You still get to decide what to do about it! I don't know what you mean when you say 'behavior'. I've had people be there for me and hold space for me when I was being a victim. Everyone needs that from time to time!

Edit : Maybe you hate the emotion of powerlessness. That's understandable, it's the lowest frequency there is.

 

15 minutes ago, Nickyy said:

Something may indeed feel more healthy than others. But the two examples you gave are both healthy behaviours. Playing the victim is not a healthy behaviour, and if it's interpreted as a healthy behaviour then that person needs assistance in being able to translate their experience more accurately.

Are you sure playing the victim isn't healthy for someone who lost their family in a Tsunami, in the moment when they're grieving their loss? Technically, they are playing a victim to this tragedy. Making generalized statements like this is kinda playing with fire.

Edited December 7, 2019 by Parththakkar12

[Nickyy]

1 minute ago, Parththakkar12 said:

Are you sure playing the victim isn't healthy for someone who lost their family in a Tsunami, in the moment when they're grieving their loss? Technically, they are playing a victim to this tragedy. Making generalized statements like this is kinda playing with fire.

It's very difficult to have a discussion with you if you don't even listen to what's being said.

 

3 hours ago, Nickyy said:

@Parththakkar12 A victim mentality is a set of characteristics that have evolved in reaction to having been traumatized.

So a victim mentality manifests as blaming, being argumentative.

Expressing vulnerability and sorrow is something different. 

Being truly vulnerable is talking about your feelings from a 1st person person perspective 

The victim mentality prevents integration of the experience, and true vulnerable innocent expression from the child's perspective facilitates integration. 

That's why it's always helpful to be called out for playing the victim role, because this encourages the person to drop the defensive role and just express there feelings of anger without the hostility.

The victim mentality is still striving to maintain control, the vulnerable admits that it has no control and therefore accepts the experience. 

The victim mentality is a kind of dissociative ego defence against feeling the feelings.

There is a difference between playing the victim (victim mentality) and true healthy expression of being victimised by a situation or abuse.

You still fail to recognise where I'm coming from.

[Nickyy]

4 minutes ago, Parththakkar12 said:

Holy shit do you hate victims!! Why do you hate them so much? 

This is a strawman. Not even a deliberate one, just an unconscious misrepresentation of what I said born of the fact that you don't listen to what's being said.