People who victimize themselves, why does it happen?

Victimization is very common to observe in people around us or in behaviors in ourselves.

But what is victimization? How can we distinguish it from mere suffering?

The difference is between the term victim, and being victimized. Whoever is suffering and receiving aggression from another or from a group is a victim. Victimizing yourself is a person's doing that brings you certain benefits.

We are not referring in this article to victimization or revictimization, which is something that occurs in the treatment of victims of gender violence, for example, in judicial and institutional settings. In these cases, it is the system or others that victimize and re-victimize the person.

In this article, we refer to people who exercise the position of victimizing themselves, as a resource.

The difference would then be framed in this. The victimization we are referring to here is a use of the suffering position. The position is sustained because in this way the individual saves something. The present responsibility in what he is living is spared. 

This issue is complex because many times people who are victims of abuse are treated as beings who "victimize themselves", minimizing the magnitude of the aggression or placing both individuals on the same plane. That is why we say that the difference is subtle and has to do with the case by case.

Freud in his consultations located the "beautiful indifference" in his patients with hysteria. This indifference sustained them in a state of complaint and reproach to others, keeping them in a perpetual position of victims, of not taking charge of their own that was put at stake there. Today we have much more information, especially about the patriarchal biases that framed Freudian theory. We know that there are male hysterias and that women are unfortunately the focus of all kinds of aggressions and femicides, which occur with great regularity.

Having said that, we can extend what Freud observed and think about those individuals who, in general, seem not to notice their participation in anything that happens to them. It's all someone else's fault. The projection of all his ills abroad frees the person from internal conflict.

Victimization has to do with this. It is a state of recurring complaint and the location of all the ills in someone else. The position that generates great relief. Now, it is not possible to sustain this position in psychological treatment. The possibility of change is linked to the possibility of responsibility. The awareness of one's own dark aspects in whatever happens to us is the starting point for a change of position, for possible integration.

Jung conceptualized the shadow as that which is relegated to consciousness. Those rejected or undeveloped aspects of the Self constitute a separate entity, with its own autonomy. The personal shadow is projected on others, and only through them can we recognize it. The challenge of confronting the shadow and, later, integrating it, implies making that opposite movement, which we recognize as our own certain shadowy aspects or impulses. 

If the shadow is projected all the time on others and without awareness of this process, it is easy to fall into victimization and constant blaming of that other. The scapegoats arise, precisely, from the condensation of that group or family shadow around the same person.

Regardless of the theoretical perspective from which we observe it, victimization is exercised because there is satisfaction and a certain comfort that sustains it. But all deep psychological work requires being able to disarm this mechanism, finding the recognition of what is essential for change: one's own dark spots and one's own participation in what happens to us.

 

 

Thank You