---
title: Victim
description: The Victim defined and explained.
---

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# Victim

## The Victim defined and explained.

**Description:** Emotional and temperamental as a way to gain attention and affection. An extreme focus on internal feelings, particularly painful ones. Martyr streak.

**Characteristics:**

- If criticized or misunderstood, tend to withdraw, pout, and sulk.
- Fairly dramatic and temperamental.
- When things get tough, want to crumble and give up.
- Repressed rage results in depression, apathy, and constant fatigue.
- Unconsciously attached to having difficulties.
- Get attention by having emotional problems, or being temperamental and sullen.

**Thoughts:** 

- No one understands me.
- Poor me.
- Terrible things always happen to me.
- I might be uniquely disadvantaged or flawed.
- I am what I feel.
- I wish someone would rescue me from this dreary mess.

**Feelings:** 

- Tend to brood over negative feelings for a long time.
- Feel alone and lonely, even when I’m around people I am close to.
- Feelings of melancholy and abandonment.
- Envy and negative comparisons.

**Justification Lies:** 

- Maybe this way I get some of the love and attention that I deserve.
- Sadness is a noble and sophisticated thing that shows exceptional depth, insight, and sensitivity.

**Impact on Self and Others:** 

- Vitality wasted through focus on internal processing and brooding.
- Backfires by pushing people away.
- Others feel frustrated, helpless, or guilty that they can’t put more than a temporary BandAid on the Victim’s pain.

**Original Survival Function:**

- The Victim is sometimes associated with a childhood experience of not feeling seen and accepted, coming to believe that something is especially wrong with you.
- Victim is a strategy to squeeze out some affection from those who would otherwise not be paying attention.
- The moods mimic a false sense of aliveness

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