How to Rid Yourself of Being a Victim- Global Psychologoy

Talking about guiding people out of their mental trap, one has to consider
the mental positions they have been operating in. As they assume that other
people can expose them, persecute, and convict them, they often feel like
victims. T. was one of them.
T. was a Jew who grew up in one of these neurotic Jewish families, where
the only way of protecting yourself is through passive aggression. He was
married and had three children. He was very much dedicated to his work
and did really well, but in private and social contexts, he did not fare
quiet as well. He kept being passive aggressive in most social relations,
held long speeches for the people he met, and was terrible at problem and
conflict solving since he did not learn how to deal with conflicts and how
to engage in dialogues with people as to create an emotional closeness.
With his wife, he did the same, bitterly accusing her for not listening.
On the other hand, he was very handy and effective in solving concrete
problems and even very glad in taking initiatives where he could do some
good by planning, executing tasks, and delivering concrete results. The
diversity and complexity of human emotions made him insecure, dizzy, and
anxious, and he tried to avoid them or make a hasty withdrawal wherever
and whenever he could. I had to help him bring into this “fluid” emotional
area with other people, some practical problem solving techniques that he
knew from his professional and practical life.
I helped him analyze social situations like creating dialogue with people,
and introducing a rule where he in any sequence was allowed to hold at
maximum two minutes of monologue and no longer, as to make people
willing to get engaged with him instead of rolling their eyes out of boredom.
Dining with his family, he was taught to be actively engaged and attentive
for at least fifteen minutes at a time, talking to them and listening to
them instead of withdrawing into his own world, as he used to do before,
thereby letting the family members ignore him. All the complaints of his
wife had to be translated into, what do you concretely want me to do or
to relate to?
In such a manner, anticipating certain situations and learning to deal
with them, he became much more self-confident. We added to his “manual”
two “garbage cans,” which I operate with in my contacts with people. One
garbage can is for stupid or nonessential comments, and the other one is
for “immutable” stupid or insensitive and cruel people. Using these two
garbage cans skillfully, he was ready to try his new “armor.”
Like many other clients, he told me that he had understood all of it
with his brain, but he was not sure he could keep himself on course and
drop altogether his victimizing strategy. I told him that it was too late to
withdraw back into doubt and defeatism. The cubes of his next moves
were already cast.
“Now, when you know what you have done wrong and the consequences
of your behavior, you will be much better at keeping your focus on the
strategies that will erode your former stupid and self-defeating behavior.
You can still choose to keep doing the same as before, but knowing better

that only your conscious struggle against your old patterns will do the
job, you are sure to stick to this approach. As in all demanding wars, the
front may sway back and forth, but in the long run, you will win more and
more terrain over your old pattern, if you just keep on fighting. This, I can
assure you,” I told him.
And it worked for him as I had assumed. He became much more selfdetermined
in his social encounters and the family dinners became much
more engaged and inspiring for him. And every time his wife will derail him
out of his “new style,” he would say something to this extent, “Well! Can
you come to the point? May I hear something concrete so I can relate to
it?” Your repetitive comments like “You always do so” or “You never do so”
are of no use. I am not going to waste my time on relating to them because
I cannot use them to something useful. May I hear facts, woman!”
So he came to win in the crucial battle of defining the premises for
their discussions and thereby freeing himself from his victim role.
How to Rid Yourself from Being God
There was this very handsome man, thirty-three years old, with charm,
wits, and noticeable charisma. He did fine in the cultural circles of the city
and as well as with attractive young women. He had though one problem:
he liked to discuss all kinds of matters from scientific and logical points
of views. He did not wish to win, as he claimed, but just to enlighten and
eradicate stupidity and lack of reflection. He tried in the same manner to
enlighten his girlfriend. One of their unsolvable discussions was about love.
He meant that love was clearly a function of chemical bonding and reactions
to certain cues of attractions. She got, as one might expect, provoked by
this view, believing solely in the romantic, God-blessed love. He rejected
her Christian view of love and compassion on scientific grounds and thus
provoked a crisis in their relations.
I told him that if he wished to enlighten people in this manner, by
pressing upon them his “scientific” views, he had better get a quick horse,
the escape instrument for those who insist on telling their cherished truth
even though it hurts others. Then I told him the story about the rabbi
who was involved in a quarrel with two people who had disagreed on some
money matters. Upon hearing the first man’s version, he told him that
was completely right in his case. Afterward, the rabbi told the same thing
to the other man when they were alone in the rabbi’s office. On hearing
this, the helper of the rabbi asked him, “How come you said to the first
man that he was right and then to the second one you said the same . . .
that he was right?”
The rabbi looked at his helper, nodded his head, and said, “You are
completely right yourself.”
I told my client afterward that people can have different views of things
and both may be right. Maybe he should learn to accept many forms of
being right besides the scientific view. I told him of Doris Parker who once
said that love is like having mercury in your palm. You hold it open, you
get it. You close your hand on it, you lose it.
Has he learned something of this lesson? I can assure you because
people who are not aware of what they do stupidly learn once you show
them the benefits of doing it differently. Only idiots and psychopaths do
not learn when being served a delicious insight on a silver plate.
Hopefully, you get my point, so I wish to remind you to keep your absolute
convictions strictly to your dialogue with God because with human beings,
there are often many right views.