Q&A 39 – Why does being a victim feel good?

Universally, human beings are always searching for a better feeling. We are wired to connect with the peace and love that we are made of. And when we have feelings like victimhood, they are pointing toward exactly this innate drive within us.

You can listen above, on your favorite podcast app, or watch on YouTube. Notes, links, resources and a full transcript are below. 

Show Notes

* Examples of how we might feel like a victim

* What the feeling of being a victim is pointing toward

* How we can recognize our innate well-being when feelings like this come up in ourselves and others

* How understanding the innate drive to feel good can increase our compassion for others

Transcript of episode

Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A; episode 39 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.

I’m here today with kind of an odd question, it may look like it has nothing to do with resolving an unwanted habit, but it actually does.

The question is why does being a victim feel good?

This came up for me, because there are a couple of situations going on in my life. So the first was that I experienced someone in my life, not in my immediate circles, but kind of someone I know very occasionally and casually, who I could tell really feels like a victim a lot of the time, and almost tends to create situations in her life where she’s victimized. And then that reinforces that she feels like a victim.

I was reflecting on that, and reflecting on the wisdom in that feeling like a victim, and we’ll talk about that in just a second.

Then I had a situation where I had a moment of feeling like a victim. I was planning to get together with a friend, and it wasn’t coming together. And I hadn’t heard from this friend. I noticed some feelings of victimhood, not in a huge way, but just in a tiny way, like, geez, this person isn’t getting back to me, I’m feeling a little ignored. That kind of feeling. And maybe she doesn’t like me, that kind of thing.

I noticed this little frisson of pleasure in that feeling of victimhood. And so I thought to myself, well, now, isn’t that interesting? What’s that about? So because these two things that happened quite close to one another in terms of time, I just started reflecting on this.

What I realized was that that feeling of being a victim, whether it’s in a small way, or a large way, really points to everything that we talked about in the three principles, understanding and our innate health. And it may seem like those examples, don’t point to that toward that at all. But I’m going to explain why they do.

What’s happening when we’re feeling like a victim?

That’s what that was where I started, with that question about myself and about this other person in my life. And what I realized is that there was that little bit of pleasure that I felt was because it felt like a bit of nurturing. So feeling like a victim in that moment, for me felt like a little bit of nurturing. I was taking care of myself.

‘And there’s the element of protecting myself against the big bad world. There’s that part of it. And then there’s just this kind of folding in feeling of protection, of protecting myself from whatever’s going on.