Welcome to spirituality and mental health. I'm your host Don Mackintosh and today I'm delighted to again have Dr. Daniel bias with us. He's the medical director for beautiful minds. And today we're going to talk about something that I think is very important and that is, how to deal with a victim mindset move moving from being a victim to a victor. Yes, I am. Thank you.

It's good to be here again. And I love talking about this topic because I just see it as a very pertinent one when it comes to all of us really, whether we're struggling with mental illness or just trying to improve our lives. So what is a victim? Well, a victim is someone that tends to blame. And I think this is some something that is inherent in us as human beings. I think about my three year old son, for example, and when I confront him with something that he's done, his automatic tendency is to say Eliana did it that's a sister.

So it's inherent. You know, I know that we are talking about the spirituality aspects and most people listening to this podcast in America at least 79% are coming from a Judeo Christian background probably goes all the way back to even the Garden of Eden. That's right. And if you look at Genesis chapter three, you can see that Adam and Eve first started out that way, the moment that they actually disobeyed what God had asked them to do. They their change came over them and they started blaming each other and blaming the serpent and really in a way blaming God because of their poor choices, and they're really acting like victims. So it's kind of a big victim mentality right from the very beginning.

And so are there any other true victims? Do we ever have people that actually have been victimized truly Absolutely, there's really two types of victims. And you know, there are true victims where something really tragic occurred in their lives. For example, maybe they were raped, maybe they were abused as children physically or emotionally. There's a lot of examples that we see of true victims in life. But then there's the other side where that I call false victims, and these are people that tend to blame others for their own mistakes, and their own negative condition in their lives.

And this is really what we see with the Adam and Eve example. Mm hmm. So do you have any you know, contemporary examples? I know the Adam and Eve example was here the woman you gave me she did this and, and or the serpent did this. But are there any other examples that you've kind of come across? Absolutely.

I mean, I think just even in our day to day interactions with others, it's so easy to get in the into this victim mentality. There's always the famous my dog ate my homework one that never worked out really well for me in grade school. I don't know about you, but and then you know what something that I actually commonly see, even with some of my clients that I work with is that they, they want to blame their past, like their parents or whatever for their current situation and their mental health problems, and theirs. And that can start to be really sticky. Because it is true that trauma and difficult situations can definitely pave the road for more depression, for more anxiety, for PTSD for even physical health problems too. But the important thing to realize is that even if bad things have happened to you, that victim mentality doesn't actually allow you to move past it.

And so there's a difference between Being a true victim and staying in a victim mentality. And that's really a big part of what I want to talk about today is how do we move, even if we have been truly victimized out of that victim mentality into a more victorious mentality so we can actually be empowered to overcome the results of whatever trauma or difficulties we've faced. So being kind of a victim is almost like addictive. I like this, this quote you sent me when we were preparing this by john Gardner and says self pity is easily the most destructive of non pharmaceutical narcotics. In other words, you know, something you don't get from a pharmacy, it is addictive, gives momentary pleasure and separates the victim from reality. So I can I can give you a kind of a rush to be able to blame.

Absolutely. And And really, that's a way of not needing to, you know, actually deal or maybe we feel overwhelmed to even able to deal with what we need to deal with to be victorious. And one of the things that as a psychiatrist I've noticed is those people that are actually the most successful in overcoming their mental health problems are the ones that say, You know what? I can't control what happened to me, but I can control how I respond to it. And I think that's that's very key when we're talking about breaking out of that victim mentality. Um, you know, when I was a kid, someone told me, he who is good at excuses is good and little else.

So you have to kind of move beyond this excuses. Let me ask you this. How long do you think someone should be able to be a victim? I mean, maybe I want to be a victim for a couple more days. What's healthy I know I know the the Bible for instance, when you're talking about being angry, which is kind of a an angry would probably be acting as though you're a victim maybe says Be angry and don't send a Don't let the sun go. On your rent, so you can be angry one day, but then move on.

But what would you say? Well, you know, I think in the victim mentality, I don't think that God wants us to stay there any longer than we possibly have to. So, you know, the less the better. I do understand that sometimes we need to process and talk about three bad things that have happened exactly go through the grieving process, go through the forgiveness process. But to me, these are not part of what we're talking about with the victim mentality, the victim mentality is is really saying, Hey, I'm just stuck. I can't do anything.

I can't move forward in my life because of all the bad things that happened to me or are continuing to happen to me. So regardless if it's true victim or false victim that you've talked about, are there any impacts that we have or how does it impact our mental health? Absolutely, and, and that's one of the really interesting things. There has actually been clear research that has shown when people have the sense that they are not empowered and that basically life is happening to them. And they don't have much say in what's happening in their lives, they don't have much power or control in what happens in their lives. There are several issues that the increase and are problematic.

For example, people that have those negative perceptions report lower well being, they're more likely to be depressed, okay, they're more likely to be anxious. And they have a hard time coping with stress. Mm hmm. And interestingly, they actually have weakened self control. And I think that's interesting because that shows us that if you have a sense that you have empowerment in your life and that you can, you can actually change something that gives you more social the ability to delay gratification. They've also been shown that being in that victim mentality actually leads to lower school achievement, juvenile delinquency, self loathing, and it really even increases things like crime.

Hmm. So really, this is not something you want to maintain, you want to move on as quickly as possible. And, you know, one study that you've mentioned to me talking about, like, the average college student back in 2000 2002. I mean, there's been an 80% increase of people feeling like they're out of control, like they're victims. It's not getting better, it's getting worse. There's more people just feeling as though they're victimized.

So this is actually a big problem. It is and and that particular study that you're referencing, it was actually done between 1960 and 2002. And what they what they saw is that there was a strong trend, that people are actually feeling more and more like victims that they feel like there's external circumstances in their life. They're just beyond their control and they are disempowered. And, and so it's it's a it's a troubling trend. And a lot of people felt like, okay, we're becoming more individualistic in our society and in our lives.

And, and therefore, we're going to have more of a sense of empowerment, but actually the opposite has taken place. That is people have become more and more individualistic, that they have actually started to blame more and more bad things that happened in their lives to external events. And then when something good happened, then they of course give themselves credit, right? But But the bottom line is that victim mentality, that blaming mentality is on the rise in our society, and it's a dangerous issue because it actually makes people fall into those problems like depression, anxiety, inactivity, poor self control, etc. Okay? So we've kind of defined it.

The types of victims so you know, a true victim, a false victim. We've talked about how you whichever victim you are, you want to move on and we've talked about why we need to move on in the science and whatnot. We want to take a break. When we come back, we're going to look a little more at those symptoms, but then the solution. We want to talk not just about the problem, but the solution. So join us when we come back