Do You Have a Victim Personality? 12 Ways to Tell
Being told you have a victim personality tends to cause defensiveness in most of us. We have suffered so, so much. How dare someone belittle our suffering?!
But they aren’t. They are trying to point out that, without even realising it, we are choosing to continue our suffering, and actually using it to trap ourselves. We are taking power from victimhood, but by so doing giving up our power to heal.
[Read our adjoining piece “what is the victim mentality?’ for more on just how this works.]
Admitting you are trapped in a victim personality is a necessary step towards taking charge of your own life.
It leaves you free to learn to live in ways that feel good, instead of the diminishing and exhausting pattern that victimhood tends to be.
So how to tell if you do or don’t live your life from a victim mentality?
12 Signs You Live Your Life as a Victim
1. You often feel helpless.
Notice how often you experience a feeling that life is ‘just too hard’ and beyond you.
An adult who takes responsibility for their own life feels briefly overwhelmed but does quickly see things they can do to manage things. Victims throw up their hands and do the next thing instead…
2. You have a tendency to complain.
Complaining replaces taking action, and gains attention and sympathy from others, things a victim inwardly craves.
3. You are rarely visibly angry.
One might think a victim would be furious all the time, and some victims can be.
But most often they unconsciously realise that anger tends to drive away other people, making it hard to gain sympathy and attention, which again are the true desires of those with a victim mentality.
If you are living your life from the space of a victim it’s more likely you spend a lot of time being meek or ‘all suffering’. Of course underneath that meekness is often a hidden storehouse of repressed rage.
4. You are, however, convinced those around you are always upset or angry with you.
Convincing yourself you can ‘read’ other people and are sure that they are angry at you can act as false proof that they are against you, and therefore responsible for why you feel bad.
It also means you can keep yourself helpless, because if you tell yourself everyone doesn’t like you, then you have an excuse to not ask them for help and move forward in life.
5. You expect other people to know how you feel.
With your own belief you know how others feel about you, you in turn expect them to also know how you feel.
Expecting others to know how you feel means you avoid real, heart-to-heart communication that can lead to having to taking responsibility for situations.
6. You talk about other people more than yourself.
Victims are constantly seeking proof that others think poorly of them, or are trying to ‘do them wrong’. This means they talk more about others than usual.
If they do talk about themselves, it will begin along the lines of “you won’t believe what happened to me”, but inevitably will veer into blaming others, i.e., talking about others.
7. You talk about events for a long time after the fact.
Do you run by situations with all your friends? And then a few of your colleagues just for good measure? And then with the person you just met at a networking event just to get their advice, too? All while actually never doing anything about it? So when that waiter is rude to you, you are still talking about it a week later (or heck, lets be honest, a year later even) but never actually call the restaurant to complain?
Overthinking is underacting in disguise, a way to keep yourself passive. And passivity is a core component of victimhood. Action, after all, means you’d be taking responsibility and admitting you have power to change things.
8. You believe that the world is a dangerous place.
By: Newtown grafitti
If you read this and immediately think, ‘but it is a dangerous place!’, it’s highly likely you are living life from the victim perspective.
If you are living in a first world country, life actually tends to be quite safe. A sense of danger is more often an ingrained core belief or something being created by your own choices (which victims can’t see they are able to change by choosing differently).
9. You just can’t get ahead no matter how hard you try.
Part of victimhood is a tendency to be passive – to mistake talking about things to taking action, and to not seek out the support you’d need to properly move forward.
If you suffer from a victim mentality you might also unconsciously self-sabotage, taking the wrong actions if you do take action, fulfilling your core belief that the world is against you.
10. When stressful things happen you can’t think straight.
Those who suffer the victim mentality often had stressful childhoods where they trained themselves to ‘tune out’ to survive.
This means that as an adult you might now have ‘brain fog’ under stress, still living with your childhood responses instead of being able to go into adult mode and using stress as a trigger to find logical solutions and take action.
11. You believe you are entitled to being treated well.
Although being treated nicely by others and by life is indeed nice, it’s not actually something anyone is owned. Assuming you are entitled to good things means you can avoid taking the actions and setting the personal boundaries that would ensure better things happen for you. And it means whenever someone else, or life itself, doesn’t meet your benchmark of how you are sure you deserve to be treated, you can play the victim and begin blaming.
Notice if the word ‘should’ is often involved when you talk about situations. “He should have called me”, “I should have been warned by my boss there was going to be a shakeup at work’, “there should have been a warning that the trains would be cancelled today’. The assumption is that you deserve things to go well, and by going over what the ‘right’ thing is you can avoid actually doing anything about the issue.
12. You often feel exhausted or have colds and flu.
Living your life as a victim means you repress how you really feel and think, as well as all your real gifts and talents for handling life. It’s like living your life while constantly holding a large beach ball under water – it takes more energy and focus than you might realise.
The end result is that victims often are tired or have lowered immune systems. Of course sickness is also a way to garner attention, and it’s also possible you are unconsciously choosing to be sick, a mind-body connection now being researched.
By: Stefany
Uh oh, sounds like me. What do I do?
Recognising you are living your life from a victim perspective can feel overwhelming.
But victimhood is inevitably a survival tactic you’ve learned to use from a difficult childhood, so admitting you are doing so should not be a way of shaming yourself, but as a positive step towards self-healing.
On a good note, because living life as a victim is something you learned, you can also unlearn it.
Of course because victimhood is often something you learned to do as as a child, either to get love or as a response to childhood trauma or abuse, it can have deep roots. Facing it can also mean facing many deep and repressed emotions, including anger, shame, and sadness.
Consider the support of a counsellor or psychotherapist when diving into your victimhood. They can create a safe space for you to understand yourself and learn how to step into your real personal power, instead of feeling you must gain it through sympathy from others.
Do you have a sign of victimhood we’ve missed? Share below. We love hearing from you.
I am a bit confused as to whether or not this applies to me. My boyfriend has recently begun saying that I “always love to victimize” myself when I try to explain the ways he’s hurting me to him after he gets mad at me. He often gets mad at me for no reason or severely overreacts to small situations.
For example, it was about to snow and we had just parked our car about 3 blocks from our apartment. Walking, we were one block from the apartment when I realized I forgot to put my windshield wipers up. I told my partner to go ahead (it as cold and he had only a light jacket (his coldness was even something we had just discussed), that I would run back to the car and put them up, and then meet him home. He freaked out yelling that he “doesn’t understand why people [me] always want to do stupid S*** that doesn’t make any sense, that I create too much trouble where it’s not needed, and a number of other things.
This type of situation occurs regularly (most recently because I asked him to do a small favor for my best friend– he yelled “why would I want/need to help ____, I don’t owe him anything” despite me not suggesting that he did).
When these things occur, I try to calm him down, talk it out, but it often escalates when this causes him to say very mean and personal things, which makes me upset (sometimes, increasingly more, I cry). He says I victimize myself and overreact to everything, and I am starting to believe it, but when I manage to take a step back I can’t help but feel that it is him who is overreactive.
Reading this is very interesting for me because I do match some of the symptoms (3, 4, 8-11). Especially #11. I have had a very frustrating couple of years, in which I have had two abusive jobs back-to-back (the first in which I had was told I was unintelligent and incapable literally every day and was even physically threatened, and the second of which I was sexually harassed, tickled, and asked for naked photos by my boss’ husband while she was away for 3 months traveling for work). I am now working outside of my field, taking care of elderly people for money (which I actually quite enjoy! I’ve made great friends) while I search for a job relevant to my background (my field is competitive). When I wanted to leave my first job (I didn’t leave until I was offered a new position), my partner told me I wasn’t being responsible or acting like an adult because everyone experiences bad stuff at work and that’s just life.” I personally do not feel that I deserve to be treated the way I have been treated in my jobs. I work hard and I know I am smart, despite what all these people have told me. It is hard to feel that way sometimes, though, and with my partner constantly getting angry with me over things that do not make sense to me, I cannot help but to feel a bit like a victim.
Am I someone with a victim personality, or have I just had a rough string of experiences in the past (almost) two years? Probably not a clear cut answer! But any advice would be appreciated.
Are you asking the right question? We don’t know you or your partner or the full situation so we only have what you say to go on. But the questions we’d ask are, what is the positive from this relationship? Are you happy? Or do you feel you am walking on eggshells? You don’t mention a single positive in all of the above about the relationship. What do you think love is? Do you think love is something you have to earn, or that you should be loved for just being who you are? Do you find that you are always in situations – work, romance – where you have to ‘prove’ yourself? Is this in fact a common in all romantic relationships? And is there a relationship in your childhood where you had to ‘prove’ yourself, always be good, quiet, whatever it was, or were you fully accepted no matter what your mood or thoughts? Was there a trauma that left you feeling not good enough? In summary, there feels to be a lot more going on here. We would actually suggest you seek support, it’s likely there is a strong schema (pattern) from your childhood that is constantly leaving you to choose jobs/relationships/situations where you have to put up with an awful lot and/or feel abused. A counsellor or therapist could help you get to the bottom of it.
for the longest time I have complained to myself, and some people around me (at embarrassing break down moments), not knowing what was wrong with me. feeling like shit and thinking depressing and overwhelmingly realistic (but wishing they arn’t) thoughts that would constantly cross my brain. but as soon as I try explaining them, the thoughts disappear and I’m left with nothing but “I don’t know whats wrong with me”. I can’t surface my feelings or understand where they are coming from. I can’t even begin to understand. I’m confused and don’t know my own mind. and literally almost all of these bullet points apply. I’ve tried therapy, but to me I will make it a good one session, then the next session I feel worse than I did before. I guess I just want to know if there is any other method besides counseling, at all. this blog and post I’m currently writing is probably the most sense I’ve made of my head in a long time.
Hi Jennifer, we congratulate you on your honesty and bravery for sharing this. It sounds like you are under severe stress. We don’t know you, and can’t diagnose anyone over a comment or without knowing them. But there is definitely heavy negative thinking here (assuming things are realistic but they will be a perspective). But the way your thoughts disappear as you try to explain does show high levels of stress. As does not knowing your feelings. These might point to a childhood trauma that has left you slightly dissociated, for example. You might want to read about long term PTSD from childhood trauma and see if it resonates. As for therapy being hard, guess what… it is! There is no short cut. We can’t snap our fingers and undo a lifetime of difficulty, sadly. God knows we wish that was the case but life just is not like that. It’s normal to feel bad sometimes with therapy. BUT, that said, if you do have PTSD, then some forms of therapy, like psychodynamic or general counselling, can be entirely wrong for you and make you literally worse as they re-trigger the trauma! If a counsellor or therapist is not trained at recognising long-term PTSD (and sadly too many are not, which is why it’s important to work with a good one) they can unwittingly be making things worse for you. If you had childhood trauma then consider EMDR and CBT therapies. They both work to actually reprogram the brain away from stress responses. Use the search bar on our site to read more about these types of therapies. Once you calm the physical and emotional response to trauma and can actually access your thoughts and feelings without feeling triggered into a trauma response, then and only then, other therapies can help. Other types of therapies that help with trauma response but which we can’t recommend as they are not licensed by the BACP here in the UK are hypnotherapy and BWRT therapy. Hope that helps!
I just want to say thank you for this website. I stumbled on it searching for other information last night (about adjustment disorders) and came across multiple blog entries that were informative and interesting. I am currently in therapy – and while I never thought of my self as a victim – I was surprised to find some of these examples match up to me, mostly #2, 5, 7, & 10. I think this will be something that I might bring up with my current therapist and see what she thinks. I feel like I’ve plateaued – and I’m looking for things to push me forward.
Thank you so much for the positive feedback Elissa! We really do our best and it’s so great to hear we have helped. Yes definitely something to discuss with your therapist. As for plateau’ing, it’s actually normal…. sometimes though it’s like an iceberg with therapy. We think nothing is happening but a lot is going on under the surface in our unconscious. Wait it out.
I read quite a lot of your articles, whilst feeling good that I can relate to so many things that are highlighted- co dependency, depression, anxiety, passive aggressive, over giver, victim, knowing myself and many more. It also makes me wonder will I ever feel normal and happy, I am 53 and feel there are so many layers to cut through am I just to old now to change? Is this playing the “victim”?
Hi there Sally. First of all, what is this ‘normal’ and ‘happy’ you speak of? While advertising companies love us buying into this myth, in our experience, there is no ‘normal’ and the idea that we are to be happy all the time is a very Western concept that is not really very helpful – take a look at our latest article on this here https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/being-happy-why-is-it-so-hard.htm. So perhaps it’s more about balance. Identifying the things you’d like to work on but taking time to also practice gratitude daily and engaging weekly in wellbeing activities. As for too old to change, 53 is hardly old, and personal change isn’t related to age, just the desire to do so, so get out there, find a counsellor you get along with, and go for it! All the best.
I think believing the world, the people should be good is something that has strengthens me being a victm. I realized that I want the world to have a good system. By good I mean people caring about others, people being polite…and that played two roles on me:
I would always expect that people were polite, assuming that beforehand, and then Id feel hurt when the opposite happened – This was crucial for me, because Id spend time on people, helping them, thinking that I was creating connection.
The second thing is that it hindered me from feeling anger. I realized this pattern on me, and have been looking for stuff about repressed emotions.
I suspected that something was wrong with me because I was always sick. I would get sick every month, and I was always cold somehow.
I realized that going deeper, playing the victm was much more than wanting attention, that are core believes around it.
I wanted to share a little bit of my experience, and thank for the article!
Hi Valesca, we are glad it helped! We’d offer one question here – what would it feel like if it was okay that people were just human? Not always good, not always bad, but just doing the best they can with what they have available? Something to think about. Best, Harley Therapy team.
I relate to the brain fog and disorientation under stress, but only under certain kinds of interpersonal stress. I’m normally fairly assertive and confident, and I thrive on stress at work, but when it comes to intimate relationships I get the brain fog if people have unpredictable moods. I fully understand the cause and I actually remember almost deliberately zoning out at home when I was a kid because back then there was nothing I could do about the environment I was in. Nowadays I am very aware of it and try to take action but feel frozen. I find it very frustrating and it makes me fear that I won’t act in my best interests. I have been in and out of therapy according to what is available on the NHS for around 15 years, and is been helpful for everything except this! I’m at a loss as to what to do about it. It disappears as soon as I leave the relationship but it just takes such a long time to get out. I have fainting spells and throw up a lot from the stress of being so desperate to leave and at the same time frozen. Is there a good technique to deal with this?
Hi there, great to hear you did reach out for support. Did anyone ever look at whether it was anxious attachment? From early years? Instead of just related to later household stress? Read our article on it here http://bit.ly/anxiousattachment. Anxious attachment means that relationships throw you into severe anxiety.
Was abused about eight nine years old, tried to tell Mum but, those days hard, and put up with it, and Dad if he knew would of killed him, both Paras was my uncle, crafty and touched me and done things I can still smell, had good marriage for forty odd years, my husband a true heart, died twelve years ago a hero, did try to tell family, but so long ago. 72 now, but still remember that awful man. Love my Auntie and would never let herknow what he was like.
Hi Maggie, sounds tough. Give yourself some credit for managing a long good relationship after that, many people who suffered with abuse can’t. Finally, age is irrelevant. It’s obviously still bothering you or you wouldn’t be googling and finding this article. It’s never too late to reach out for support to find some peace over all this. In fact some find that their ‘silver years’ are a great time to try some counselling as it’s the time a lot of thinking can be done and there is time to focus on you. There are all sorts of free to low cost counselling on offer these days, you can read our article here http://bit.ly/lowcosttherapy and if you are in the UK there is also a free hotline and service for seniors who need someone to talk to https://www.thesilverline.org.uk/. We wish you courage! Best, HT
Sounds to me like you’re just saying if someone doesn’t get out of a bad situation and they feel that they didn’t deserve it that its really their fault abd they are just looking for attention. There are plenty of attention seekers but not everyones situations are the same and shouldn’t be treated that way. Guess all abusers should get a free pass because noone is owed anything and if they’re treated negatively it is their fault for acting powerless. This article just seems harmful to sexual abuse survivors.
And how’s all that anger working for you? And throwing it around where ever you can find a place for it? We’re willing to be it’s leaving you lonely and depressed and far from reaching any sort of potential. If you read the article properly, as well as the linked article it mentions, you’ll find this article is nothing of the sort. And it’s actually written by an abuse survivor who, however, chooses to be empowered over living out rage non stop. That choice is one you have to make for yourself – or not. Best, HT.
I don’t know if I have a victim mentality or not?
My childhood was filled with all kinds of abuse, and my adult years had its fair share of trauma too.
I certainly feel the world is an unsafe place, and am a master at reading people’s body language to gauge if they’re a threat to me, or if I need to immediately placate them somehow etc.
I agree with all of the above except for feeling entitled and looking for sympathy.
I do feel deeply misunderstood however, and might bring up the fact that I have brain fog due to stress e.g. in order to just get some empathy. I also have a health condition which means I can’t do the same things as others and I feel like I’m desperately trying to get empathy from my family and people around me who judge without understanding. Is this the same thing?
I definitely don’t feel entitled, in fact I struggle with feeling like I deserve good things.
I feel deeply lonely at times, caught in a web of anxiety and if I bring up the past its my effort to bridge the deep chasm I feel between me and others.
Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t a victim mentality someone who is a constant bratty whiner? Who throws tantrums when every day things don’t go their way?
Am I this? I am open-minded and willing to change. Maybe I have a blind spot about this.
Hi there. Not at all, sometimes people with a victim mentality are far from being a whiner. They might, for example, choose to suffer in silence and then feel they are special for doing so. A victim mentality comes down to the thoughts and beliefs running through your head. Do you believe you suffer more than others? That nobody understands? That others or the world ‘owe’ you? That there is ‘nothing you can do’? That you are ‘helpless’? These kinds of thoughts arise from the victim mentality. Life is unfair. Bad things happen to good people. As children, we don’t have options. As adults, we do. So perhaps the biggest question is, are you using your power of choice as an adult to seek help to get better? Or are you choosing to suffer? We are not saying your suffering is not real. But we are saying that change has to start with reaching out for the help we need, or choosing to seek new relationships with people who we feel good around. And these things only change if we choose to make the steps forward. Nobody else can do that for us. Victimhood is passive. It seems you are taking actions to understand yourself, so you are on the right path! Best, HT.
While I acknowledge that I have the personality of a victim, that does not change it from being warranted. When I was young, my parents used to say that I was “gifted” or “very intelligent,” which led to a philosophic tendency. In this context the very term of “gifted” is wrong: why should I have to struggle with the thought of how futile life is purely since I was born like that? Why should I have to work to change that part of myself when I never asked for it? Life itself is a victim-hood. No one asks for their parents to decide to have a child, they just get left with the results. The world is cruel, unfair, and utterly meaningless. Simply to continue to survive requires work in the form of eating, drinking, staying clean, etc. It is easy to have a victim complex because you ARE the victim. By being born you are thrust into a world which will never be as good as you would like it to be, bound by a will to survive that has no basis. The entire reason that the fantasy genre exists is to escape the world, and no one can ever perfect anything. “What is the point of living” is a question that, though thousands of years have passed, no one has yet to answer. And, before you make the argument of “you have to make your life have meaning,” I should not have to. So much work for so little reward. If life is a struggle that you can never “win,” then why play at all?
Why would we argue that you have to make your life have meaning? It’s your life. And yet here you are, looking up the victim mentality and taking the time and effort to make this comment. So we’d challenge this entire thing entirely. We’d say the very point you are here commenting is you think life does have meaning, but perhaps by admitting it, and having to give up your addiction to this negative viewpoint and very one-sided story that you rely on for attention and to punish those around you, you wouldn’t know who you were anymore and that scares you. Much easier to go around leaving anonymous diatribes than face up to the fact it bores you and you want more from life now. But nobody else can make that choice for you. It’s up to you.
Victim mentality?
Come on now this is such a dangerous label and seriously degrades and devaluates the people who have suffered through horrific abuse.
Hi April, if you read the article, it isn’t about degrading or devaluing anyone’s trauma or experiences but rather about helping them heal. Just because the most horrible things happen to someone doesn’t mean they have to always see themselves as a victim. A great read here is “Man’s Search for Meaning” by Viktor Frankl, about his experience surviving a concentration camp. Best, HT.
I’ve been in therapy for about 5 years. I’ve had my therapists changed several times, they left to go somewhere else or I moved. My current therapist constantly tells me I’m stuck, which to be frank, despite 2 years of I still don’t fully understand why I’m stuck.
I guess it would be best to go over things that have had a significant impact on me. My childhood was not awful, but not good either. I was bullied in school since I was pretty small for my age. I was also teased and bullied by my extended family. They liked to make me cry and then laugh at me. When I was 6 my dad who only visited stopped coming around. My uncle who lived with me was drunk and high on marijuana all the time. My mom was immature and severely depressed. My sister was born when I was eight to a man I hated. It took a long time to be kind to her. We also lived with my great grandmother who was controlling. She passed from cancer when I was 10. Note I didn’t react to it at all, no crying or anything.
My teenage years were repressed by my own emotional and social immaturity, due to severe anxiety. I would say here began my victim mentality. I began dating at 14. A boy who treated me just like my family. His parents treated me like a burden. Looking back, I wish Someone was there for me to help me leave him. My only true friend was my dog. I had to put her down when she was 18 and I was 21. It was the most emotional I had ever been over a death, considering a few other family members passed during my teens. Luckily, I did well in school.
I started college at 17. My mother became involved with an abusive man. I’ll spare the details, but He threatened my mother’s life and made me feel worthless. At this point, I became severely depressed. I started having panic attacks, couldnt hold a job and quit college. Everything I held meaningful was berated by this man. The worst part was my mother did not stand up for me or my younger sister. I ultimately tried to be my sister’s protector. I struggled to become an adult.
Today, I am in my final semester of college at 30 for my bachelor’s degree. I still suffer crippling fatigue. I’m practicing radical acceptance that my therapist taught me. It’s hard to wake up everyday because I have tried tried a new diet, sleep hygiene, countless other techniques and taken steps for my mental health. I’m still depressed, I still hate myself and still feel like life has no meaning. I don’t want to be like this, but I fear this is how I will be, stuck.
Hi there Jackie. You don’t seem that trapped in the victim mentality here. You seem less prone to blaming others and rather just seeking to understand it all in a clinical, detached away. You are seeking the reasons outside of yourself, which can lead to victimising ourselves, but we think it’s also that you want to understand and feel deeply lonely and sad. What we see is a childhood with a lot of disruption and loneliness, and an inability to trust others to like you and want to take care of you. So there is a habit of focussing on the negative over a need to blame, perhaps? Perhaps as it’s easier to expect the worse as then you never get disappointed again? It seems like life has been full of disappointment for you, sadly with therapists who left and maybe reinforced that without meaning to. It takes a lot of courage to allow ourselves to hope for or notice good things if we grew up with constant disappointments. But the thing is, if we don’t take that risk, we end up living a half life. What could help you take that courageous step to notice what is working, every day? In summary, it sounds like you are making a lot of effort. What’s lacking is any self compassion. So radical acceptance sounds very useful and we hope you include acceptance and kindness to self in there. You might want to read our article on self compassion http://bit.ly/selfcompassionHT. A mindfulness practise would also help with focussing on what is going on here and now and what is working http://bit.ly/mindfulnessallabout. Finally, you are an adult in a Western first world country. Very few of us are actually stuck. We live in societies with freedom of choice, and can change our whole lives in a matter of days, if we actually want to. You aren’t stuck. You are just scared. Hardly surprising with all that chaos as a child. So work on taking small courageous steps and build from there. What one small fear can you face each day? Best, HT.