KS&L 326 Victimhood Part 1

Personal power is that sense of energy, hope, and optimism that lives within you. It is also the personal dynamic of the sheer confidence in your ability to influence the world around you. To have personal power, you have to believe that you live in a basically safe world, that you are healthy and that you are a good person, worthy of the receipt of positive experiences.

But what if something terrible happens to you? What if you are a victim of any type of crime, including fraud, burglary, rape, murder or identity theft? What if a relative commits suicide? What if you are in an accident and you suffer a terrible injury that leaves you unable to function in the world you used to know? What if a debilitating illness strikes you and you cannot be who you used to be, cannot do what you used to do and cannot live the life you used to know?

All of a sudden, in any of the scenarios above, you become a victim of the event. If the event happens to your child, spouse, sibling or parent, especially in a situation where murder or suicide takes place, you are equally affected by the echoing aftermath of this catastrophic and emotionally crushing situation. Sudden death by any means of someone you love leaves you feeling as if someone has taken the very breath of your own life away. Sudden debilitating illness or injury for yourself or someone very close to you, means that the very life you used to have is now gone forever.

Victimhood means that you feel powerless to not only influence what is going on around you, but also to change what has happened. The trauma of the event keeps returning in wave after wave of sickening surrealism. You have to adjust to the reality of the event and then somehow figure out how to live with this gigantic emotional weight that has brought your life to a complete stop. How do you explain to people that your initial fatigue, is staggering? How do you ever feel rested and happy again?

This difficult situation exists all around you in the lives of other people, but you cannot see it because you aren’t meant to see it. It didn’t exist in your world before it happened to you. It happened to other people. Now, you feel alone in your situation. Once the reality of the initial event passes, once you regain some level of footing, you have to decide how to live with the label of victim, for yourself, or the label of victim for someone you love. The point here is that the word victim is just that, a label. But it is an exceptionally powerful label! The word victim, all by itself, embodies the essence of powerlessness, weakness, and cruelty. Life has seemingly dealt you a terrible hand.

Now comes the hardest challenge of your life: changing this dark, sticky, emotionally descriptive and destructive label. Consider that the word itself forces you to see yourself differently, shoves your face into the darkness of the event, over and over. How do you remove the label of being a victim for yourself or a loved one? You have to take your personal power back.

Taking your power back will stop the energy of the words victim and victimhood. It is probably the hardest work you will ever do, and it will take quantities of your energy, but it will be the most rewarding work you will do. Consider that you will have asked yourself a thousand times why this event happened to you, your loved one or family. You may not ever receive the answer that you think you want, a black and white: this is the reason. What you can decide to accept is that you are having a powerful experience and you can take your power back, by deciding with the free will you still have, how you will respond to this life-changing event. The first step is to begin to change the terminology you use to describe the event.

Stay tuned for Part 2