Stop Being a Victim!

Prologue

Do you know that you're a good person yet never seem to get the respect you deserve from others?

Do you always seem to end up in situations that leave you feeling like life's left you out again? Or worse, that it keeps repeating the same horrible stuff over and over again?

Do you hang out with people you think don't really fulfill your needs but you don't know how to find any new friends? Or you just keep getting more of what you already have?

Do the business people at your workplace avoid you like the plague? Except when they need work done? Otherwise they want little to do with you? They all head out to the pub but never ask you?

Does your job leave you wanting and your salary always leave you short?

Are you constantly frustrated? Do you want to cry?

Do you get depressed? Or anxious? Or fluctuate between both?

Why are you so unhappy?

You think like a Victim.

I'm writing this Psycho/Spiritual book for you, because I used to be there too. I used to think like a victim. I've spent my lifetime learning how to empower myself again and not to take the same awful stuff over and over again. I've learned how to look at virtually everything as a blessing!

I've read many books on victimization and I've spent years searching my thoughts to see where the thinking lay that kept me in so much pain. By overcoming this thinking, I've moved beyond victimization to a life more satisfying than I could ever want for. And because I'm so positive now, I know it will only get better and better!

This book has been written a bit differently than others on this subject. It's also a workbook. Instead of chapters, I've called each new subject lessons and in each lesson are exercises you can do to overcome this life-destroying problem.

Many books on victimization are written as if it's one psychiatrist talking to another psychiatrist. I haven't used psycho jargon in here. Instead it's just plain English from one layman to another. I've lived it. I've overcome it. And I'm passing on what I've learned so you can overcome it too!

Using the tools in this book, life will get so much better for you. You can start today, right now.

There's so much you need to learn and it will change your life when you apply it. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to share my experience with you and to help you. It makes me feel so much joy when I think what I learned is helping you now.

Sharon Stewart

November 2019

AWARENESS

Introduction

This book is written for the sufferer of Victimization. It is written simply, with clear explanations in everyday English. It assumes the reader has some knowledge of spirituality but does go into explanations.

Let me tell you how I qualify to write this book. I was a victim. A huge victim! I grew up in a severely toxic home with two narcissistic parents who victimized me. Everything I learned from them is in this book. I learned to manipulate, never ask for anything directly because I wasn't good enough to get what I wanted. I had a huge chip off my shoulder for much of my life and I worked very hard to change things around. And I did.

So. we've got to cover some basics before we get to specifics.

I've based this book on the principle that society is Codependent. You're not the only one with this problem – in fact you're in good company!

What is codependency? Codependency is the habitual focus of one's self upon others. In other words, you are always focused on others, and not on yourself. I believe victimization is part of the bigger umbrella of being codependent.

As a victim, however, you're not alone. You have company. To be a victim, and a codependent who focuses on others, you need at least one other party: the Perpetrator. We have all heard of Perpetrator/Victim relationships. You may be familiar with them.

They would be domestic violence cases, rape cases, child abusers and their children, yes, the pedophiles we're hearing about now would fall into this. Or just any person who seems to want to get a piece of you, one-up you in conversation or who puts you down, either mildly or aggressively. A detractor. Some call them predators. There are many other slang terms for these people that are used all the time, but we'll skip those in this book.

Anyone who's done anyone else wrong is a perpetrator and the one they've done it to is their victim.

Now there's still another party: that is the Rescuer. The rescuer is the one who sees the wrong in what is being carried out and comes to the rescue of the victim, to fight their battle for them. The rescuer is usually strong in their sense of morality and hates to see harm done to innocent others.

There is a psychologist, Stephen B. Karpman, M.D. who has depicted this interaction of the 3 parties in a triangle. I'm not going to put up a depiction of this because it's just a triangle. Imagine a triangle with each party on either of its points.

The triangle is interesting because either party can assume any position. Yes, they're interchangeable. So this means that the victim can also be a perpetrator, or a rescuer and a perpetrator can be a rescuer or a victim, it all depends on the thinking of the particular person at any given time.

This being said, bear in mind that this is a DYSFUNCTIONAL way of relating to other people. The fact that there is a perpetrator bears that out. The victim is further proof. This is a no-win way of relating to other people. And you're aware of that because of the pain that you're in now.

So it stands to reason that a better way of relating to other people has to be developed. And there are solutions out there.

You Need to Take a Good Hard Look at Yourself

Remember, you're the one who will benefit when you do. Fact is, to change everything you have to change yourself. It's your life, isn't it? It's not your friend's life that sucks that you're trying to change; it's your own.

It helps when you don't see yourself as being bad. Look at it this way: you learned to do the wrong things. It doesn't matter where you learned or who you learned it from, but you did. You're not flawed, as a matter of fact when you scrub these behaviours you're going to discover just how amazing you really are!

You have to keep the focus on yourself for this to work; be honest with yourself so it's best not to say, My mother taught me this! or I learned this from X. Yes, you might have, but the fact is, YOU'RE DOING IT NOW and it's hurting only you.

You've got to own it to change it. It doesn't change when you keep blaming it on someone else. You're the one doing it now. You're only doing what you learned, and this can be unlearned, probably in less time than you took to refine it to the point you're at now.

I can think of one boyfriend who introduced me to cherry cheesecake, which has been both a curse and a blessing simply depending on how I felt about eating it. I own it and any weight I might gain is not going to end up on his hips, is it? They're going to end up on mine so I have to take responsibility. I don't eat much of it anymore because I've taken my power of choice back. I have it occasionally and that's fine. Often it's even too sweet.

As it turns out, living what I'm teaching in this book has helped me with stubborn food habits and other problem areas of my life as well – because if you're anything like I am – you overindulge when you feel like a victim! So take away the victimization and the food habit abates as well! Or alcohol or drug habit, whatever your indulgence, I've found that my addictive habits have improved since not only using this as a way of life but realizing that I'm blessed daily, all the time! Cheesecake or no cheesecake!

Building Awareness

Information is power. So is acting on it.

The source of information for this course is going to be you. You're going to develop awareness of what you're doing, who you do it with, and what you say to yourself when, yet again, you're feeling victimized. You're going to know your habit inside out.

There are 47 lessons that will help you build awareness. You'll write the history of how you've reacted like a victim and who you've been victimized by. You're going to know your story in depth.

You can open a word processor or buy a special notebook – whatever you like – and get started now. More than likely you already have some idea of what you're doing so you can write that as the answer to question 1, below.

One thing you need to be aware of and guard against are the benefits of being a victim. It's called Secondary Gains by the psychiatric community. The biggest secondary gain of being a victim is being able to avoid responsibility for yourself. However, in my experience when I avoided responsibility for my own happiness, so did everyone else. Nobody said, You're a victim, so now let me make you happy! Instead they took advantage of me. Another is you get a lot of attention from people because you're suffering. They also might not want to upset you so maybe they do more things for you than they ordinarily would have. They also might not confront you directly for fear of upsetting you.

If you see the pity you get as people treating you lovingly, then you're going to have to continue the cycle of being a victim to keep getting it – rather than moving on and learning to love yourself and finding true love in turn.

So there are benefits but in fact it's a painful lifestyle choice. You are here now, reading this, so you agree with me. You're fed up of it because you know the negatives outweigh the positives.

Fact is, the antidote for being a victim is responsibility. Responsibility is your power. It is directly related to you using your conscious mind to direct your power. It's not an onerous thing and contrary to popular opinion, being irresponsible is NOT freedom. Using your power is your way out of a life you don't want to live.

You are responsible all the time already, it's just that you've not been responsible for your own personal happiness! When you get into a car and drive it, you are being responsible. When you show up to work on time and do your job, you're being responsible. You're already responsible much of the time. It's being responsible to make yourself happy you haven't done!

Connecting with your spiritual self creates an intuitive/intellectual system that will take you out of feeling like bad things always happen to you. The more you work this book, the more connection you'll develop.

Exercise:

1. List the victim thoughts you've heard yourself use in the past. This might be thoughts of feeling sorry for yourself: (ex. Why does this always happen to me?! "Do I have a sign on my forehead or something?! - one of my old favourites).

2. How do you see yourself benefiting from being a victim? List the ways.

3. What behaviours do you resort to when you feel sorry for yourself? Do you eat, take drugs or drink? Other behaviours? Turn on the TV? These are mind-numbing activities you use to stifle the pain. The only real solution is not a band aid – it's curing the disease.

4. How do you feel about being responsible, in general, and specifically for your own happiness?

Your Thoughts and Emotions

Your thoughts and emotions are very important to you. They are your guides in life.

Your thoughts create your emotions. When you think, Oh my God! That's awful! it's because you have reacted to something with shock. Something that you believe, which lies in your subconscious for most of us, has created this reaction of shock.

By using your thoughts and emotions, you can find your way out of this victim dilemma. Your emotions show you how you react to things, and what your underlying beliefs are about it, and if you're reacting in a way that you don't like, then you need to ferret out and heal the belief that leads you away from peace and happiness.

For example, you're out in public and people are being rowdy and you consider that to be offensive. I don't like people belching in public, for example. So for me, when they start doing this, I tend to get irritated. I don't believe people should do this in public. What you do at home is your business but in public there should be some kind of mutual respect.

If I don't choose to change my belief, and I don't, then I have to look at my response of irritation and understand that I don't want to feel that way. What I then do is understand that the whole world doesn't comply with my understanding of things and of my rules, which is to have manners, and in expecting them to, makes me feel like a victim.

So I can't change a whole world full of people, but I can change just one: myself.

So next time I hear someone belch in public, I just smile and say, Yeah, it's a wide wide world with lots of people in it. Everyone has their own point of view and they don't all share mine. I remind myself that some people are just going to do this. I can also look at it more positively and say that the diversity in this world has created the amazing cultural spectrum we see, as well as beautiful artwork, beautiful cities and more! We are diverse in our thinking. This is called Acceptance, and we'll talk more about this later on. But there are ways to accept what you don't think is right.

Acceptance helps you to not become a victim of your own attitudes.

The other thing is don't sweat the small stuff. Making a big deal out of nothing is just a waste of your time and energy.

The other thing that emotions can do is invoke crying. When you're healing from this role of being a victim, sometimes frustration can push you to cry. That's okay. Get it out. Release the negative energy. Learning lessons can be tough at times and crying is a natural release. Tears actually release toxic chemicals from your body which negative moods build up! So cry. It's okay.

Exercise:

1. Give yourself permission to cry right now. Know that when you need to, you have your own permission. Allow yourself to feel vulnerable. There is strength in vulnerability.

2. What are some things that people do that you could just accept and overlook right now? For example, is it really such a big deal that people wear pants that sag down off their behinds? Really? Could you overlook this?

3. Understand it's easier to change yourself than to change the whole world. Think about times you've tried to change or to help someone and they wouldn't accept your help.

4. Understand that when you change yourself, your world changes. You'll start having more pleasant experiences and the things that plagued you in the past will go away. It's metaphysical and it's true.

You Focus on Others: The Perpetrator

This is a large part of being a victim, because who could be a victim if someone else didn't victimize them? So we'll introduce the Perpetrator into your life now.

The Perpetrator can be anyone: family, friend, enemy, school mate, work mate, lover, spouse, child, cleaning lady, restaurant server, the government, health care, anyone who sends you a bill.... anyone! Anyone who you feel did something to you that you don't like. So you see how broad that could be. Anyone! Whether you know them, whether they're a concept, a person, an animal, tangible or not. You can be another victim's perpetrator as well.

The Perpetrator is the person you blame for upsetting you. Simply put.

There's the old fall guy, too. The one all the victims love to blame. Go into a coffee shop and listen to the regulars talking about their old foe: Life. Life takes a lot of blame for a lot of things! Life can sub in where a perpetrator can't be found. If you feel like a victim of life, then I feel for you. I was there too. I hated being alive and wanted to commit suicide. So I was there. I know how awful it feels. Suicidal ideation is someone trying to stop the pain. So is this book. I'm writing this book now so you don't end up where I was.

The world is full of people who are fighting an uphill battle against life. These are victims.

One awareness you have to realize is that you focus on others as a part of this process. You don't focus on yourself, which is the problem in the first place – you look at others as potential bad guys. You probably