Hog’s head: Siphoning off thoughts to make my head a bit emptier – I

I observe a lot, which ensures that my brain is always overpopulated with thoughts. Most of these thoughts are disconnected and transient – they evaporate or flicker away pretty soon. But nevertheless, they exist, even if it is for a fraction of a second. So I decided to make an attempt at constructing a train of cohesive thoughts – organization out of chaos, basically. Over the past few days, owning to the experiences in my life, I have made a few observations about people who can be functional only when they believe that the world is lined up against them, or when they play the victims.

Lets address the first aspect first – people who believe that everyone is against them in a discriminatory and prejudicial way. To them, every situation is unfair, every individual biased. Believing that people hate them or are against them helps them make the difficult situations a little bit easier. For example, a person experiencing this syndrome (Also known as ‘persecutory delusion’) will categorically believe that the only reason he/she was asked to stay back late for work is because the boss harbors a personal grudge against him/her, or if someone else was chosen over them for a job then it was probably because the management is jealous or afraid of their capability or intelligence. Like I said, these delusional beliefs assuage the feelings of hurt or humiliation that arise out of these situations.

The second aspect – the “victim syndrome” is a complex bit of thought process which leads the person to always consider him/herself as the victim in every situation. They like to believe that they were wronged unjustly in situations that they had no control over. Classic example of people suffering from victim syndrome are domestic abuse survivors. While I have a lot of respect for them to have come out of abusive arrangements, I have to say that they are the prime example of a group of people breeding and perpetuating the victim syndrome. Because they were subjected to abuse for such a long time, and because they for a long time they could not do anything about it – they attribute all the problems in their life to this one particular experience. Lack of independence, excessive crying, not shouldering responsibility of their kids or loved ones, emotionally isolating their kids, emotionally and sometimes physically abusing their kids etc are all symptoms of this syndrome. As someone from the Indian subcontinent, I have come across such women far too many times in life.

People who play the victim love getting sympathy from people. They love it when people mollycoddle them and join them in justifying their actions (as a direct result of the injustice suffered by them) They find it hard to digest that there may have been another solution to the same problem that could have yielded better results. They usually consider themselves to be “helpless” and “without any choice” . Another important characteristic of a chronic victim is the tendency to play the ‘blame game’. Whenever something goes wrong, the victim needs someone to be their scapegoat. When they don’t find someone to blame, they turn into victimizers and victimize other people by unloading or venting on them, They channel all their frustration and anger on someone else whose connection to the problem at hand was probably remote. This is because the idea that they could have done something wrong is just too much for them to assess. Blaming or unloading helps them feel better and less guilty about their mistake.

Another trait that I have observed, while it is not widely published, is that people suffering from victim syndrome usually have anger issues and have trouble letting go of things. Their anger is like a silent volcano that erupts when the inner self can no longer contain it. When something wrong happens with the victim, instead of processing it objectively in their minds and rationally attributing guilt, they keep the incident raw and unprocessed in their mind, automatically blaming someone else or their past experiences. They convince themselves to not think about it. But when such problems keeps occurring over and over again, their resentment gets too much too handle and they burst out in violent ways.

They also have trouble forgiving others and letting grudges go. If you come across someone suffering from victim syndrome and ask him/her to recite some of their worst experiences, they will probably be able to give you a long lecture with rich detail.

Finally, if you know someone who struggles with persecutory delusions or victim syndrome – I know that living with them can be extremely difficult and frustrating, but know that they’re your loved ones and need help. Self victimization is learned process and can be unlearned through a systematic process. But it needs patience and time.

But if you still can’t deal with it, just leave them to their ranting and whining and go watch something awesome like The Amazing Spiderman, or any of the Marvel movies really.

One thought on “Hog’s head: Siphoning off thoughts to make my head a bit emptier – I

  1. people with victim syndrome are the most difficult ones to deal with, a few
    *try* to understand majority believes and indulges in endless ranting so
    the best way to deal with that is *what you just stated above*……..there
    is absolutely nothing one can do! believe me(p.so if you start a discussion
    you will not know when it will turn into an argument and then you will
    become the target, its better to just back off)

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