Stepping out of a Victim’s Mindset

Recent news of layoffs at my company brought back memories of my own experience¹ with layoffs and how grateful I feel to have a job I love, a leader I admire, and a team I enjoy at this time. Speaking with a friend who was laid off also brought back my own feelings of helplessness that I felt at the time. The contrasting feelings evoked by my memories and current reality brought a question into sharp focus for me.

Why is a victim’s mindset so easy to inhabit and within reach while a victor’s mindset seems elusive and often beyond reach?

Why is the feeling of helplessness pervasive while agency and authentic power rare? What is it about our human condition that makes it so, and can we step out of this?

The Origins of Victimhood

Unconsciously, we cope faster than we evolve. It is like the frog that remains in a pot of water even as it turns hot². We adapt to circumstances first rather than consider changing it, or our response to it. Like the frog, we tend to stay put in environments — personal or professional — even as they turn unsupportive and toxic. One could blame this tendency on an overactive amygdala and a relatively young neocortex³, our ancient reptile mind overriding our younger thoughtful mind, but the problem goes deeper than that. We get used to coping and then attached to it through the psychological process of transference.

The result of the one-two punch of coping and transference is that we do not have an internal reference point for “good”.

Good is a subjective term and, unless you have consciously developed an internal reference for good, your wiring will default to what is best for your survival. It biases us to believe that familiar is good and unfamiliar is bad. This is as true of work as it is of relationships. Staying in a bad situation or relationship long enough, your wiring will use the fact of longevity to convince you it is “good”, suppressing your desire for change. This is true even if the experience was objectively bad and even trauma inducing⁴ leading to toxic second order effects.

Therein lies the origin of the victim mindset. The more time we spend in the victim mindset, the more identified and attached we get to it. What makes this an all-enveloping reality is a cognitive bias called, What You See Is All There Is⁵ or the “look no further” heuristic. Because of this heuristic, if we can somehow survive in a given circumstance we stop looking for exit signs. By itself, this is an intelligent survival strategy. If a prisoner was obsessed with escape, it would be dangerous for him or her. It is safer for the prisoner to accept that the prison he or she is in is all there is and get used to that.

Escaping Victimhood

Being attached, identified, and enveloped in a victim state is not automatic, however. It comes by first accepting an internal story that one is helpless, that one does not have the power to change one’s external environment and then extending that belief to one’s inner environment. The first may be true — depending how much power is available to you, you may in fact not have the power to change your external environment. You may need the job, the relationship, or have to work the insane hours.

You do however have the power to change your inner environment. This power is unpermissioned — no one has to give it to you, but you do have to earn it. If you did invest your time earning this power, you could be enveloped in agency instead of helplessness.

It starts by plugging leaks.

Rather than leak energy by blaming people or circumstances you choose, instead, to accumulate energy by taking radical responsibility. Think back to all the people who exude natural, authentic power and you will find the trait of taking radical responsibility in common. They blame no one, not even themselves. In doing so, they accumulate power.

Mining Power: Connection, Curiosity, Courage

Accumulated power is potential energy while expressed power is kinetic energy. What then propels the few who want to escape their prison — real or figurative — to even dare to think about it? What allows them to escape their own programming and imagine a better future? More precisely, where does their courage to imagine a different world come from? Two inner resources — also freely available — are needed: connection to spirit and curiosity. Accessing both opens the key to the third resource: courage.

Connect to Spirit

Humans innately have an inner flame that yearns for growth and happiness. This is the sense that things can be better, that we can be happier, even if we do not know how at the moment. In my experience, the body is capable of holding vibrations of peace and happiness much longer than it is capable of holding vibrations of anger and unhappiness. This manifests in the search for happiness and expansion, even — maybe especially — in the darkest of times.

Deep inside us resides a hope that life can get better.

We may quash this hope out of fear, but the human spirit is resistant to a permanent state of darkness. Connecting to one’s inner flame can seem unreachable when one feels frozen in fear or living through legitimately fearful experiences. Something more is needed before we can dare to dream, something that allows us to unfreeze⁶ and flow again.

Unfreeze with Curiosity

The portal between fear and courage is curiosity. My lived experience⁷ has revealed to me that curiosity and fear cannot co-exist in the same moment. Which is why a psychotherapist’s suggestion to just become curious about your inner state when fearful is good advice. Just the act of becoming curious about your state can activate the trip-switch on fear.

Curiosity and fear cannot co-exist in the same moment.

In practice, powerful emotions like fear create “doom loops” where thoughts and feelings reinforce each other, escalating fear and flipping you into survival mode, as your body prepares for the worst. The best way to stop this runaway train is to pay attention to your sensations⁸- heat, cold, tightness, clamminess, nausea — rather than your thinking. Becoming curious about and paying attention to the sensations happening in your body cuts off the supply of thoughts to your feelings, taking away its fuel and giving you a measure of agency over your state. You still have to decide what to do about these uncomfortable feelings but you are no longer hostage to the doom loop.

From personal experience this can create a second problem: it can be overwhelming to process intense sensations, especially if you have a sensitive nervous system. In such a situation, moving your attention from the core of your body, where most sensations are felt, to your hands and legs is helpful. This takes the attention away from where the uncomfortable feelings are located and encourages your limbs to take action. This is the beginning of unfreezing.

Moving first from a frozen state, to being unfrozen, and finally moving into a flow state requires courage but of a different kind than the battle-cry variety. It is courage with a small c or quiet courage.

Find Courage

It was a late Friday evening in March 2023. I was rushing back home after a long stressful day at work. My partner was out of town leaving me in charge of the care of our three animals: a dog and two cats. One thing after another kept coming up at work and I did not set my time boundaries well, leaving me increasingly anxious to leave for home, a forty-five minute drive back. By the time I left work it was late and dark. I was feeling guilty having left the animals alone for so long. To make matters worse it started raining, quickly diminishing visibility. Hurrying along the freeway through the rain, I saw the traffic jam up ahead too late and slammed on my brakes coming to a dead halt just in time. The pickup truck right behind me however did not have the brakes or the distance I did. It continued, slamming into me at 65mph.

I was thrown back into my seat which flattened on impact. The airbags had not gone off. Miraculously all I had was a bruising on my right calf from the impact which was quickly getting sore. I dialed 911 but they had already heard about the crash. The cops arrived soon and sent for tow trucks for both cars. Half an hour later I was dropped home by one of the tow trucks and hobbled home to meet my animals. It was a scary, lonely time and I was grateful to be alive. The unconditional love of my animals restored some normalcy to the situation. All they cared about was that I was home. I took my dog for a walk around the block, hobbling but grateful for the simple ritual.

Still flooded with adrenaline when I returned home, I knew enough about trauma to know that post traumatic stress (PTSD) was very likely to develop unless I did something right away. I lay down on the floor of my study while my dog lay next to me, allowing myself to feel my fear for the first time. It was scary, what had just happened. I could feel waves and waves of fear but I was still frozen and numb inside. All my instincts told me to remain as quiet as possible and not make a sound.

I was in fright-shock⁹.

As a part of my work, I run a managers program where we shape the next generation of managers. One of the strategies taught by faculty member Jane Chen, is to feel all your feelings all the way through to completion. The science tells you that if allowed, emotions last no more than ninety seconds. It requires tuning into one’s sensations and then matching the sensation with a sound¹⁰. Having used this before in everyday situations, I tried this first.

However, I was simply too terrified and no sounds would come out. But I could form words and tune into the part of myself that is identified as a scared child. I reached out to a group of friends on chat, including a gifted facilitator, Linda Thai, trained in trauma, to let them know what had happened, how grateful I was to have their attention, and that my inner child felt like it needed to be told, “That was so scary, but it’s over and you’re safe now.” The act of using my voice to reach out was an act of courage.

Linda responded immediately with advice from her own experience of fright-shock: we can stop breathing from fright-shock. Feeling pressure in the heart-collarbone-chest allows us to feel our body and eventually return to the land of the living where we can take a full breath (with some sobbing). She also recorded herself saying the words I wanted to hear. I played the recording on a loop, allowing myself to feel the impact of the words while putting pressure on my collarbone-chest area, feeling my dog as she lay next to me.

This combination allowed my inner child to exercise courage again and finally feel the full terror of the event. I sobbed uncontrollably as I repeated the words to myself. A short while later, I felt intense physical pain but also enough relaxation to go to sleep. I thanked the group and went to bed. When I drove next, I found myself triggered briefly whenever a truck of the same make was behind me or too close, but it faded of its own accord. From what I can tell I have no PTSD from my accident.

Build Up Courage

Curiosity was the portal that allowed me to move from the freeze of fright-shock to unfreezing, feeling all my feelings, and eventually flowing and moving into rest. The courage I needed was to overcome my own programming and choosing to make words rather than remain silent.

It was quiet courage, but looking back it was mighty for me.

Using my voice crystalized my courage into something more durable: a memory. I escaped PTSD because I used my voice. I used my voice when every cell in my body was saying I should be quiet. Having done it, I can forever draw on that memory to literally find courage when I need it. In that way, courage becomes a loop of its own. The more courageous things I do, the more courage I feel is available to me. You build courage memory by memory.

In the end, we find the courage to change, to dream of a better future, and to live and stand at our full height and be seen because we have done hard things and survived. But knowing how to go through hard things is a skill. You may freeze in the throes of fear, but you can always connect to your spirit and stop leaking energy by taking radical responsibility. Next, unfreeze with curiosity. Notice the sensations in your body and disconnect from the stories in your head. Finally, flow by finding courage, by using your voice. Do this successfully once and you have built yourself a memory of courage that you can literally find later. The more courage you find, the more agency you feel and the less attached you become to your victim story.

This does not mean that helplessness is far away but it also provides an opportunity to practice connection to one’s spirit, curiosity, and quiet courage. As you gain familiarity with these, the victim’s mindset gradually loses its hold over you. You may slip into helplessness every now and then but you will always be able to find your way back.

1. More on that in a separate post. ↩︎
2. Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth” ↩︎
3. The Relationship between Neocortex and Amygdala ↩︎
4. This is why it can feel mystifying to consider one would actually choose a relationship with a narcissist until you realize that your wiring unconsciously chose for you what it is familiar with. ↩︎
5. Daniel Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow ↩︎
6. From Kurt Lewin’s alleged framework for systems change. ↩︎
7. Research on curiosity has not gotten far enough yet. ↩︎
8. Conscious Leadership — Feeling all your Feelings ↩︎
9. A form of psychological shock that can result in PTSD. It does not get released on its own. More in Peter Levine’s In An Unspoken Voice. ↩︎
10. Watch Diana Chapman demonstrate it here ↩︎

Originally published at https://lifeinfirstprinciples.substack.com.