The words “powerless” and “victim” can be triggering. One patient of mine even has a hard time with the word “resilient,” despite the fact that the definition of this word is “tending to recover from or adjust easily to misfortune or change.” Some people see these words and their implications as signs of weakness. They conclude that if they view themselves as a victim or see themselves as powerless, then they must be weak. On the contrary, any one of us can find ourselves in a situation where we are powerless to help ourselves. Any of us may experience being victimized, such as when we are the victim of a crime. The situation we find ourselves in does not make us weak. People who are considered to be empowered, resilient people can fall pray to acts of violence and aggression and be powerless to prevent them.
I believe that part of this misconception has to do with the phenomenon of “blaming the victim,” in which people are considered somehow at fault for the terrible things that happened to them. This is most commonly seen in cases of sexual abuse, where women (and some men) are blamed for inviting the abuse upon themselves. This blame may take the form of accusations that the person was behaving seductively, dressed provocatively, and/or was drunk. In turn, many people who are abuse survivors internalize these messages and blame themselves for what happened. One male patient blames himself for not standing up to his father when he was being physically abused, even though he was just a small child at the time and could not have done anything to prevent the attacks. A female patient who was raped blames herself for not “knowing better” than to let her guard down and enter her perpetrator’s apartment. These people become hypervigilent, scanning the horizon for any potential dangers, operating under the false assumption that if only they had remained alert, then the abuse could have been averted, and therefore, at all costs, they need to prevent it from ever happening again.
One thing I have observed in these instances is that the individual who was abused may behave in self-punitive ways, even much later in life, as an unconscious defense against feeling powerless. In other words, despite how damaging it is to punish oneself with all kinds of negative, critical self-talk, it is still preferable to opening yourself up to how utterly terrifying it would be to acknowledge that you were powerless in the face of traumatic events. In other words, believing that you could have done something to prevent the abuse gives you a false sense of control. The woman mentioned above chooses to blame herself for the rape rather than acknowledge the sheer helplessness of that situation, because to do so would be to open herself up to feelings of intense fear were she to recognize that she was powerless to prevent an attack. She conducts her adult life by coming down hard on herself for every small error or lapse in judgement. To see things in any other way would be an acknowledgment that there are times when things are out of her control, and therefore it would be an acknowledgment that she could be powerless and could be victimized again. The man described above who was beaten by his father would sooner tell himself that he must have been a bad kid who deserved being punished rather than see himself as an innocent child who did not deserve the abuse that was inflicted upon him and which he could not stop. To do so would also open him up to all the rage toward his father that he has been holding onto and turning against himself, because to direct this rage toward his father would be profoundly terrifying. He experienced his father’s rage in the form of physical abuse, so he has learned to equate his own rage with the potential for physical violence.
Perhaps naming oneself as an “abuse survivor” is seen as a more acceptable label to many than “victim.” It implies that one is resilient, that he or she overcame traumatic circumstances and maybe even became stronger as a result. Still, I think that we can neutralize the negative views of words like “victim” and “powerless” if we shift our thinking to see that you can find yourself in a situation where you are being victimized even when you are a strong, resilient, empowered individual. What’s most important is what you tell yourself about what happened and the person you are as a result. We can reclaim these words if we see that there needn’t be anything shameful in having found ourselves in a position where we were powerless to prevent being victimized.