The Survivor Mentality

{2:54 minutes to read} One of the things I enjoy most about my profession is the opportunity to meet with incredibly strong individuals, who have endured tragedy, trauma, and abuse. Unfortunately, many of the individuals I work with don’t recognize their inner strength, or their ability to endure hardships and challenges. As a result, in the early stages of therapy, they may take on a victim mentality.

A victim mentality is when an individual perceives him/herself as the target of the trauma, tragedy, abuse, etc. to the point where it negatively affects his/her well-being. Victims often identify with negative, self-defeating emotions such as shame, guilt, anger, resentment, etc. A victim mentality promotes self-defeating thoughts such as:

• I should have known better than to trust this person
• I probably deserved it
• I deserve to feel this way
• Everyone always takes advantage of me
• I always get treated badly
• Nothing ever goes my way

Self-defeating thoughts focus on the negative activating events and can be falsely applied to reflect something negative about the individual.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) challenges this notion that people are valued conditionally and promotes unconditional acceptance. That’s where my work of encouraging self-enhancing thinking and empowerment comes in, to assist individuals in developing a survivor mentality.

A survivor mentality focuses on overcoming the negative activating events and promotes the individual’s adaptive behaviors. A survivor mentality includes thoughts like:

• I am a survivor.
• I can adapt.
• I am resilient.

and

• I survived an abusive relationship. It doesn’t define me. I can adapt to future relationships.
• I survived being treated poorly and am proud of myself for being able move on from it.
• I can survive and adapt to dealing with difficult people.
• I am a survivor of abuse and trauma; therefore, I know I can survive/overcome future challenges.
• I can survive things not going my way, or unfortunate events; I am resilient.

By focusing on our ability to survive, we can overcome the obstacles and challenges we face in life instead of being defined by them. Rather than being an abuse victim, which suggests continued vulnerability and helplessness, it is much more adaptive to be an abuse survivor, which promotes one’s resiliency and strength.

Have you felt like a victim? Have you experienced abuse, trauma, or witnessed tragedy? Recognize your resiliency! Acknowledge that you are a survivor!