Over the course of more than four decades in pastoral ministry, I’ve been on teams with people who had a variety of personalities and temperaments. I’ve collaborated with both introverts and extroverts. I’ve worked with some that were deep thinkers and others that were intense feelers. I’ve worked side by side with individuals that were quite people focused and others that were very task driven. I’ve co-labored with those that were great planners and did things in advance as well as those who seemed to do their best work at the last minute when the pressure was on. I’ve been teammates with those who were invigorated by change and loved to mess with the status quo as well as those who really struggled with it and had to summon a great deal of emotional energy when change was required of them. I’ve been partners with those that handled conflict quite well and others who avoided it like the plague. I’ve had some colleagues for whom criticism seemed to effortlessly roll off their back and others who were virtually paralyzed and crippled by it.
Bottom line—I’ve been around people of all shapes and stripes, all bents and persuasions. And one of the most difficult, frustrating, and destructive of all the personality characteristics I’ve encountered is the “victim mentality”—the person who routinely sees themselves as being the recipient of unfair circumstances, external forces, or others’ malicious intent … who automatically interprets impersonal and/or neutral information as discriminatory and hostie … who habitually feels like he or she has been wronged and then blames others for their failures and life difficulties … who sees minor setbacks as major personal affronts and feels helpless to do anything about it … who has difficulty receiving constructive criticism and tends to become hyper-defensive while deflecting responsibility and refusing to be accountable.
Granted—all of us probably feel victimized from time to time. Bad things happen on occasion. We all go through terrible experiences not of our choosing and deal with the associated fallout—war, disease, a flat tire, a layoff, a tyrannical government, etc. We all have our ups and downs. Life is not a perpetual rose garden or a leisurely stroll down a primrose path. When you deal with people, you should expect to incur hits from time to time. The world can be unjust and unfair, and when we’ve dealt with a particularly difficult experience or encountered some random or unpredictable obstacle that others haven’t had to contend with, it’s easy to feel like a victim.
But it’s one thing to experience this kind of thing on an occasional basis and it’s another for us to embrace a fatalistic mindset that believes trouble stalks us and follows us wherever we go. It’s one thing to be a genuine victim of the harmful and hurtful actions of another and it’s another to possess a state of mind and routinely reframes situations to make it look like things have been “done to” us and we’re the unwitting recipient of the injurious actions of others. It’s one thing to experience a tough situation where we are dealing with forces and factors that are partially beyond our control and it’s another to develop a defense mechanism where it’s never “our fault” as a means of coping with pain and adversity. It’s one thing to experience short-term or situational helplessness because we’ve been blindsided and don’t know what to do and it’s another to have a sense of persistent or learned helplessness. Victim mentality is this entrenched and ingrained mindset of “Life is unfair and I always deal with its unpleasant fallout—I’m the designated recipient of its indiscriminate injustice”.
I used to think people who demonstrated this frame of mind were people who’d been deeply wounded in some way. Perhaps for some of them this kind of behavior had been modeled during their impressionable and formative years, or there was something about their family of origin that was dysfunctional and “off”. Maybe they experienced excessive criticism or had parents who railed on and on about the injustices of life or had some important person in the life who repeatedly betrayed their trust. But I tended to believe something happened in their childhood or adolescence that scarred them deeply and left them with an unusually low self-esteem that manifested itself in chronic feelings of self-pity and helplessness—feelings which caused them to recall past events in a way that villainized their enemies and reinforced their victimhood. I believed there were some unresolved issues within them to where these recurrent feelings that the world was against them and they were its designated scapegoat had become a favored coping mechanism or strategy to receive a level of personal validation to which they thought they were entitled but had been withheld.
No doubt—the world can be a dangerous place. There are numerous instances of neglect, abuse, betrayal, and trauma that go on in our world which, left unresolved, can negatively exert influence on the lives of those on the receiving end. I’m certain that many of those who exhibit learned helplessness and use victimhood to gain sympathy have something in their past they haven’t come to grips with that helps explain this penchant. Or they are trying to minimize their exposure to future feelings of guilt or remorse. For if I can rationalize things and make the case that what happened isn’t my fault, then I don’t have to assume any responsibility for any negative or destructive outcomes that might emerge down the line. And if I can convince myself that the bad things I experience are the fault of someone else and they are going to keep happening, there’s no point in me changing my behavior or seeking to grow.
But as I was reading a book the other day, the author said something I’d never considered before—that in a number of people victimhood is not a reflection of their brokenness so much as it is a skewed and distorted expression of narcissism that some people embrace in an attempt to acquire power. He went on to explain that just as some groups work hard to communicate that they’ve been subjected to an inordinate amount of injustice over the years in hopes they’ll be entitled to some form of compensation, so the adoption of a victim mentality is an effort by an individual to make the case they’ve been unfairly snubbed and slighted in a manipulative attempt to gain something they perceive they’re lacking and deserving of. Because we as a society tend to view victims of injustice as entitled to some form of reparation, the demonstration of a victim mentality is a passive-aggressive attempt by a cunning individual to achieve additional authority or power. It’s an underhanded effort by a manipulative person to enhance their influence or clout. People who behave in a passive-aggressive manner are typically angry but either don’t want to acknowledge it or directly confront the source of it, so they resort to playing the blame game. Their adoption of a victim mentality is an underhanded ploy to bring about an elevated measure of personal influence or heightened moral status through emotional blackmail.
It is both hazardous and infuriating to interact with these kinds of people, for what they do is try to draw people in and get their assistance. Their addiction to, and talent for, drama draws a certain type of person to them like moths to a flame. Granted, most of us don’t like seeing people in trouble and want to help if we can. When someone is suffering, the sense that they are not alone imparts feelings of solidarity and support. But once we’re drawn in to the orbit of the person with victim mentality, we tend to get burned as they have a way of skewing reality and turning things upside down to where we become the one who is at fault and causing the problems. Our actions are the ones that are injurious and need to be addressed, while they can sit back and disparagingly cast judgment while reassuring themselves they’re in no way responsible for the backlash and fallout that’s going on. They can become a spectator to the uproar and turmoil that is taking place while contenting themselves with the belief they’re occupying the moral high ground.
I recall a particular instance at one of my churches where I dealt with this. As a congregation, we were in the unenviable position to having to scale back staff salaries in order to create a balanced budget. When I informed the church board of this, I said, “It’s not fair for us to expect the same level of output for less compensation. We need to amend and reduce job responsibilities accordingly. Lets decide what’s most important and let those things that are not mission critical drop off or be picked up by the ministry of the laity.” In relation to one of those staff members, the responsibility the board chose to eliminate was a pet project and, frankly, a key piece of her personal identity. When I informed her of the board’s decision, her victim mentality almost immediately kicked in. A couple of days later, she set up an appointment with me to discuss the situation. I resolved, in the interest of openness and transparency, to give her as much time as she needed to understand and process the board’s decision. Never in my wildest imagination did I imagine the meeting would last four hours!
At first, I got the sense her agenda was to get me to reconsider the job description modification so she could continue her pet project—something I wasn’t going to do as I’d worked through this with the board. My credibility would be shot if I didn’t follow through on what we’d agreed together we were going to do to navigate this difficult situation. So at some point I believe her agenda changed and it became finding something she could use to play the “poor me” card. In the course of the conversation, I said something she could skew and distort into a “he lied to me” statement, and the following week she submitted her resignation with the explanation I’d lied to her face and she couldn’t work for someone who’d do that. Her decision to step away was not because she didn’t want to work under a revised job description but because her leader was not a person of character and integrity. It was obviously a concocted rationale designed to establish a sense of moral superiority and elitism as well as remove her of any accountability or responsibility for whatever might ensue. As a church, we tried to be gracious and send her off with a sense of gratitude and thanks for her years of service. But a number of people who’d been drawn into her orbit ended up leaving the church the Sunday after her last Sunday. Rather than opening themselves up to hear from the board how we’d gotten there and what steps had been taken to try and deal with a difficult situation, they wholeheartedly embraced her narrative and walked out the door.
It was painful to see that many people exit. It was painful for me to have my character questioned and allegations about my integrity, or lack thereof, become the subject of a public narrative. But I learned something during the journey over the next few weeks and months. The moment that attitude walked out the door, we became a healthier church. The moment we were no longer dealing with someone in leadership who had a victim mentality, we were a more healthy and robust congregation. Granted—we were a smaller church, and there were some challenges with that—volunteer gaps to fill and finances to replace. But people who’d been languishing in the shadows stepped up and began to serve. Leaders who’d been sitting on the sidelines rose up and got into the game. Gifts that had been squelched and suppressed began to be expressed. And we were much healthier. When the big tree in the forest that had been soaking up all the moisture and hogging all the nutrients got struck by lightning and came crashing down, those seedlings on the forest floor that had been struggling to stay alive began to grow and emerge.
It has been a number of years since this event happened. And here’s what I learned: While some folks experienced legitimate personal trauma that left them feeling preyed on and victimized, there are many who assume the role of martyr in order to cover their own aggressive and selfish inclinations. Adopting a victim mentality combines helplessness with self-protection. As I mentioned earlier, the world is a dangerous place where unpleasant and nasty things happen from time to time. But we have a choice as to how we interpret them and what we do in response. People with a victim mentality strike out in surreptitious ways to defend themselves against the aggression of others—even when that aggression isn’t there. And such an attitude is absolutely debilitating and toxic to the culture and atmosphere of a local church.