To ask what causes someone to have a victim mindset?

[deflection]

One of my relatives seems to always seek to be the victim. She constantly feels wronged by other people yet is not very nice herself. She has behaved dreadfully towards me in the past, I step back (who’s got the time for silly antics) and soon she is back, either feeling angry that I should take issue with substandard treatment or devastated and bereft and worried I don’t like her and she has no idea why. Often bounces between the two.

Try to sit down and talk and it becomes extremely reactive and she just repeats ‘I am not the problem, you are for cutting me out/not being there for me.’ I calmly explain, ‘Jane, let’s just move on. For future I don’t like it when you look me up and down/call me boring/insert anything else that she has done’. She denies it, says I am sensitive and looking for trouble/the worst in her and says she feels sorry for me because I’ll never get over the grudges I hold. If I repeat myself, she says I am gaslighting her and invalidating her feelings. If anything surely it’s the other way round.

Other people either; do not show up for her enough, do not respect her, do not put equal effort in, she believes she is giver while other people ‘take’. She is quite assertive and bold and reposts things on social media along the lines of, choose people who choose you, know your worth or there’s the door etc. It is as if she has a genuine deep seated belief that nobody else is good enough, and it’s conform to her standards or else. No flexibility of thinking at all

Why would someone always feel persecuted like this?

This is exactly what my mum is like and there's no getting through to her, if you bring it up you're made to feel like you're attacking her. No idea why someone would be like this, maybe deep down they know they're not the greatest to be around so make out others are the bad person first?

When I think of my mum i think, how long before you reflect on the fact it might be you, given you have no friends and your family rarely want to spend time with you?

If Boris Johnson reads this he would think people from Liverpool.

I knew this was going to be a veiled attack on someone, it always is. You don't want to know, you want to bitch about someone, just own it.

Usually constantly being picked on put down or ordered about as a child and having no power to stand up for themselves and learning to say nothing so they don't get hit.

Most people with with mindset gave been victims and have unresolved trauma

I know people like this. It's draining. I just disengage.

It’s not really, I’m not sure why you would think that but I take it on board. I want to understand this person so I can try and push through my own discomfort to be around them, and hopefully support them. I like to try understand why people do what they do so I don’t unknowingly trigger anything or make the matter worse.

It's pretty clear why they'd think that and your reply comes across as thoroughly disingenuous tbh.

Okay then, thank you. It wasn’t clear to me but I can reflect.

I don't know, it's tempting to blame maladaptive behaviour patterns due to childhood trauma (unless there is an actual MH diagnosis).
My great aunt was like that. I mean, I have no personal experience of it because she was always the kindest woman to me but others in the family feel really differently. She did grow up in Poland and was about 5 when the war started so there was a lot of violence, homelessness and general hardship when they were growing up. She was always a bit of a hypochondriac and had a victim mentality. It probably didn't help that when they were younger, she invited a dashing young man to her birthday party. At that party the man saw her sister and lost his mind. The man and the sister are my grandparents. Great aunt, despite later marrying a high-flying engineer, spent the rest of her days being resentful of my grandmother. She wouldn't think twice of saying to her (in front of my great uncle, I must say) how lucky she was to have such a caring husband, such wonderful children, such beautiful house... while she was getting none of the care and support she expected marriage to bring. She would also always comment on my grandmother being fat and was very restrictive in her own eating and took great care of her appearance. She was always taking medication for imaginary illnesses and eventually made herself housebound and then bedbound. She blamed her daughter for not wanting to spend time with her, even though when daughter did, she would blame her for doing things the wrong way, being a selfish mother etc. It's a really sad story and I am only glad that she loved me as her own grandchild and none of these things ever affected me. I was always spoiled rotten by her and have nothing but good memories. Unfortunately these are not memories I can share with my family as they got the complete opposite from her over the years. Having lost her several years ago I feel deeply sorry as she must have had a very unhappy life. Whether it was of her own making or not, I don't know.

It sounds like a combination of never accepting responsibility for their own mistakes or worse, with a total lack of gratitude. AA says that not accepting responsibility is one of the typical characteristics of alcohols but I think it is quite a common human defect

I wouldn't waste my time trying to figure her out. Just give her a swerve, she sounds tedious.

It seems to be the trend at the moment, who is the most victimised and lets all show our allyship to them with flags and shit. I was brought up in a very different era when we were taught that we had to work hard and strive to be the best we could - now it seems to be a race to the bottom to see who deserves the most pity and “likes” on social media.

I kind of think it is the same old story of people wanting something for nothing. All those tv shows with massive cash prizes, the lottery, plus The X Factor, The Voice, internet stars, etc. etc., taught a generation that you can get a lot of fame/money by doing very little - and they all expected it to happen for them. When it didn’t, they are all left feeling hurt and like they’ve been hard done by.

All sorts of reasons, we're unlikely to be able to diagnose why as keyboard psychiatrists though are we?

Any if these "please help me understand why ...?" Is always mumsnet code for a savage attack. I thought that was common knowledge?

My MIL has a bad victim mindset. She's actually really nice and kind but definitely feels the world owes her a favour.

My dh reckons it's because her dad abandoned the family when she was younger then they got diddled out their inheritance when he died. Which is shit obviously, but it's sad that it has coloured her whole life.

One of my relatives is a bit like this. I think it’s because he centres himself in every situation so when someone does something that inconveniences or negatively affects him he takes it as a personal affront even though at worst he’s just collateral damage.

So she's angry, a terrible person, plays the victim, reactive, behaves dreadfully,always finding fault, thinks nobody else is good enough but you aren't being bitchy?

Maybe she's picked up that you hate her? Luckily you are clearly perfect and able to judge objectively from your superior position. Do her a favour and show her this post, she will never speak to you again.

Oh. I didn’t know, genuinely. I entirely see why it seems that way now….

My Ex H was like this. In his case it was due to a very extreme inability to accept any responsibility for anything that went wrong in his life. All of his problems were located outside of himself.

Funnily enough I am witnessing some of this in motion. My colleague is completely victimising her daughter - absolutely nothing is the daughters fault. She has been taught that any problem is the world and not her. Fall out with a friend - it’s them not you. Teacher tells you off - they’re wrong not you. Fail a test - it was the teachers fault for not helping you enough, get told off for talking in class - it was the other girls fault and not you…. And so on.

She has taught her zero resilience or how to take accountability for her choices or own up to her own mistakes graciously. The daughter is not spoilt per se but cannot handle any level of critique or hostility- and as a teenager she has the staying power of a toddler. School is too hard, falls out with friends and hobbies regularly, cannot cope with discipline. Absolutely mollycoddled to the nth degree.

it’s actually really sad to see, no doubt my colleague feels she’s protecting her daughter but of course she’s actually doing her a massive disservice. No one likes a perpetual victim. It’s extremely tiring and also unattractive.

So this is one example of how a person ends up being a victim - they are told that they are from early and don’t know any different

Well it's clearly not a sincere question. You don't want to learn, you just hate her and want to talk about how terrible she is.

But to answer the question, I think it happens when someone does experience something truly awful in which they really were a victim, but never grows from it to be sure they don't repeat it. Instead, they decide that this genuine suffering means they are owed by the world in general and can never be in the wrong because of it. The idea of suffering being a virtue in itself and now they'll always be in the right. I'm sure there's a clever way of putting it but I can't think of it right now.

This is basically my mum, and with her it’s wound all the way up to 11. There’s nothing you can do or say to make them understand, all you’ll get is DARVO (deny, attack, reverse victim and offender). They are entirely incapable of taking responsibility for their own actions or seeing how their actions impact you, I don’t really think they have the capacity to understand anyone else’s feelings other than their own. Everything is always about them and there’s nothing you can do to make them see you. I’ve had to cut my mother out because dealing with her was just too damaging.

Poor emotional intelligence and self absorption. Literally think everything is about them and how it impacts on them. It’s very tiresome. Often comes hand in hand with claiming they are “sensitive”, in reality just hyper sensitive about themselves with no thoughts about other people’s feelings, wants, needs etc

I can’t speak for her, but when I caught Victimitus (back in the late 80s) it was the seduction of not having to take responsibility for the rod I was making for my own back. I had been thrust suddenly, into very different circumstances. I was in a lot of pain. The road upwards and outwards was clearly marked as long, rocky and hard. And I was too hurt & tired to find that in any way appealing. Being a victim of X, Y or Z was quite a new buzzword. It looked like such a nice, soft “not my fault” place to lie down on and wait for rescue.

The problem with having Victimitus is that people will either say nothing, or make (sometimes genuine, sometimes on autopilot) sympathetic noises. But even the most sympathetic can’t walk the road to getting your life back on track for you. Those who say nothing probably did want to point out the bleeding obvious. But I think I clearly gave off the air of not being willing to hear it, and ready to cast them as a villain if they tried it.

The longer you stay in the victim identity, the harder it is to let go of it. Cos the original long, rocky, hard road became longer, rockier and harder due to all the flailing around done to avoid the first steps.

Lucky are those of us who finally realise that if you want rescuing, your only option is putting on your most stoic shaped shoes. To use on the road you’ve been pretending you can’t see. Cos it’s you that has to save yourself, not only from what was done to you, but also what you did to yourself.

Yep, all this. Suggesting they take responsibility is a majorly foreign concept for them

I detest people who misuse the word victim as a slur, especially when talking about traumatised people. It's a loathsome and harmful thing to do.