Victim mentality and chronic illness

[emvipi]

Hi everybody

I was watching two of Leo's old videos about how to stop being a victim and I really liked it. For the last couple of years, I'm deeply immersed in victim mentality since I have a chronic autoimmune condition (IBD) which is painful, causes diarrhea, costs lots of money because of medications, I have difficulty in physical activities because of bone loss and ....

I basically gave up most of my ambitions in life because of this illness, and I settled for a below average life. I believe I just dealt a bad hand and I can't do big in life because of these circumstances.

In fact, seeing Leo himself dealing with his illness, and sometimes you can see the vibe of victim mentality in him about his illness gives me a bit of more hopelessness.

Can anybody give me a piece of advice on this issue and give me some insights about how to overcome this mental barrier? Especially someone who himself is dealing with some kind of disability or chronic illness. Thanks.

 

[Loba]

It's fine to be frustrated with things that are currently outside of your control, such as an illness or bad circumstance, this isn't victim mentality.

Victim mentality is left for people who are not in a bad place, but use previous circumstances to justify their lack of awareness or poor behaviour.  People immersed in victim mentality tend to repeatedly go over things from their past, and essentially live in the past and are not rooted in reality like a normal person.  It should almost be considered a mental disorder due to the level that it damages your ability to hold yourself accountable for your actions.

Person with a disease - a real, current problem - the person is still actively being victimized and ravaged by poor circumstance, in which it is natural to feel bad, that's a part of the process of grieving.
Person with victim mentality - has had years to go through this process, but refers all current situations to ones that happened years ago and generally doesn't want to/or ever will change this cognitive distortion.  True victim mentality, people generally get a lot from it - such as attention, validation, sympathy, caretaking - it's a get out of jail free card for such people.

Hope this helps.

[Vajra]

@emvipi "Chronic illness fuckin sucks!!!" 

Here is what you do: love it to death. Find the exact thoughts, perceptions that make it up - find the feeling of it, and be with that thing completely, directly.

Over and over and over, until no "attitude" towards it, or "way of handling" remains - just Pure Being with. That's Love.

When you reach that, chances are that the illness will go. But whether or not, Enjoy yourSelf

Good luck, 

V

[Consept]

IBD is a horrible illness, I have ulcerative colitis myself and was diagnosed about 12 years ago now, so i can speak from some experience. From a curative point of view there are now a lot of options of treatments, im on infliximab which has basically put me in remission apart from a flare up a couple of years ago, but theyre developing new drugs all the time so there is hope in that regard. Also, doctors cant talk about it but diet and exercise can have a big affect as well, its very important to try and learn what foods makes your condition worse, for example pasta and a lot of dairy affects me, yours might be different but theres probably something. You can also take pre-biotics and pro-biotics, do some research into these, but generally you want to do everything you can to have a really well functioning system aside from the condition. 

What helped me mentally is of course being positive but also I read somewhere that the people that tend to recover from illnesses or at least dont let them affect their life, are those that actively look for solutions and take responsibility for their health, those that have a negative mindset and just expect some medicine to cure them have a much lower chance of recovering. It has been extremely difficult especially when Ive had flare ups, there were even times when i thought i would die. But you could also see it as a blessing in that this condition really forces you to get on top of your health and stop all the nonsense you were doing before (i used to drink 2 litres of coca cola daily), as well as address stress and deeper lying issues. My theory is that the illness is triggered and gets worse through bad diet and stress, so these need to be addressed. 

It also could be a good idea to join groups, i joined a couple facebook groups to do with crohns and colitis, you do get some negative posts but there are also incredibly positive ones of people running marathons after surgery for example. There are also people on there who are so much worse off, which makes you feel bad for them but also grateful that you could have had it a lot worse. 

Dont settle for any kind of life that you dont want, aside from everything ive posted, look at someone like Dr Stephan Hawking, of all the terrible hands you could be dealt health wise he mustve had the worst but his spirit was fucking amazing and look at what he contributed to the world. This isnt to minimise your condition but i can imagine you have a lot to offer so dont limit yourself, good luck!