Victim Mindset
Ever since I was a kid, I lived in a victim mindset. Whatever happened around me felt bad, and I saw myself as a victim in a place where I never truly belonged.
I was once trying to open up to someone to share what I had gone through. They immediately labeled me as having "a lot of self-pity." I immediately stopped sharing as this person could not understand the depth of what I was trying to convey.
My therapist believes we're made up of multiple parts. So far, we've encountered numerous parts of my inner landscape—she makes me name and define each one with a purpose, a shape, a character. If I had to put a name to my victim mindset part—or self-pity part—I would call it the part that always assured me: Your circumstances are not normal. This isn't how life should be. What's happening to you is truly unfair.
So let’s name it the Pity part.
The Pity part protected me by constantly showing me: This is not alright. This is unfair. This is not how you deserve to be treated. It was my defender. My best support system.
But this feeling is wrong!?
In pop psychology—Instagram psychology, self-help books, all of it—the victim mindset has a bad name. It’s villainized and demonized. Treated as something inherently wrong within us that keeps us stuck in our heads, preventing us from moving forward. We’re always told to think positive, trash this mindset entirely, stop engaging with it. There are entire books on how bad this is.
Here are some examples of what we're told:
- The empty boat mindset
- Victim mindset is addictive—blaming feels safer than fixing
- Instead of "why me," ask "what now"
- Stop playing the victim card
- Don’t enable it—take accountability instead
Even my favorite author, Gabor Maté, writes in The Myth of Normal:
Compassion is not the same as pity, which on some level always buys into a preexisting story about oneself or another. While compassion guides the best social policies, pity empowers no one. To take pity on you, I have to first cast us in unequal roles—looking down on your misfortune from some imagined perch. Even if there is an actual power gap between us in the world—say, one born of a racial or economic hierarchy—treating it as if it is a permanent, essential fact about us does neither one of us any favors. Self-compassion, equally necessary, also has its unhealthy analogue: to 'wallow in self-pity' conveys the comfy but muddy trap of feeling perennially sorry for oneself. Self-pity takes a kind of solace in seeing oneself as an unfortunate character, beleaguered by fate. It undermines healing by reinforcing the stories that keep us ensconced in a world of hurt, and by discouraging responsibility for our own point of view. Self-compassion, by contrast, doesn’t resist how things are, nor swaddle the pain in layers of narrative gauze; it just says, 'I am hurting.'
In one of his most viral videos, he adds: Recognizing you are in victim mode takes you out of it. There is a payoff in being in this mode because you get not to take responsibility. He describes how identifying as a victim can offer relief—it lets us stay in the posture of the wounded child, protected from responsibility, protected from choice. In that place, nothing is asked of us except to be hurt. And yet, he gently points out, this refuge comes at a cost: it keeps us bound to the very patterns that limit our freedom.
But I beg to differ.*
If not for this part, I wouldn’t have survived. It would have meant that I deserved everything that happened and that it was my fault. It would have meant only an end to existence itself was the only way.
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If not for this part, I would not have made the resolutions to turn my life around. I would not have made conscious choices to avoid the same familiar environments. I would not have fought my family over not choosing the same familiar dynamics I was trying to escape. This part helped me make decisions I don’t regret. It helped me literally choose a different path than my past environment.
This part protects us by being our true advocate—the empathetic witness to everything we suffered, everything we felt was unjust. Without this part, we would forever dismiss or suppress our true feelings, afraid of being seen as self-pitying or victim-like. Because acknowledging its existence would mean it was real.
And pop psychology everywhere has told us: This is bad. This isn't helpful. Don't feel this way—especially because feeling it means you're not being accountable or responsible.
But here's what they miss: Unless we acknowledge that we were indeed victims of our childhood upbringing—without feeling the pain of that child who suffered, without understanding why this part feels the way it does—we can never truly be an empathetic witness to ourselves. Nor can we ever be true advocates for our inner child's feelings. Only then—only through that acknowledgment—can we develop genuine empathy toward ourselves. Only then can we truly know what our sufferings did to us, rather than denying them.
From everything I've read, only a few voices truly acknowledge this. Alice Miller is one of them.
In Free from Lies, she writes:
...I hear the voice of the submissive child, the child who was not allowed to see, feel or grieve over its parents' unjust behaviour and instead had to learn early on to regard all this as 'self-pity' and despise it.
Miller explicitly wrote that humans prefer not to know about their own victimization—not just in everyday language but as a psychological defense. Because awareness of childhood suffering is unbearably painful. The drive not to be aware leads to repeating patterns of abuse or directing unresolved trauma against others or oneself.
She also said: "Authentic feelings can never be 'stupid' or 'inappropriate'; they are an authentic part of ourselves. The contempt we were taught for our genuine feelings (the 'self-pity') is a betrayal of ourselves."
So if you ever feel you have this mindset—if you recognize the victim part within you—I just want you to know:
This part is trying to say something. You need to listen to it.
Not brush it off as "victim feelings" or "self-pity." Not force yourself to be "more accountable" before you've even understood what it's saying. But truly hear what it wants to tell you.
It's trying to say: Your feelings are valid. You are hurt—even if others feel it's not a big deal. You are someone who deserved better.
You can either brush it aside entirely, telling yourself you're "being accountable," and never listen—or you can pause. Listen. Ask: What is this part wanting me to change about my life so that I am no longer a victim of my circumstances?
This part is not trying to keep you stuck. It's trying to help you feel your suffering so that you can finally be free. Making those changes, those decisions, is not always easy. But you deserve to do it for you.
Feelings and compassion for ourselves are essential for us to find bearings in this world. — Alice Miller
*I could be wrong, I’m no expert 😅
