How to Deal With Victim Mentality | Eckhart Tolle

The memory of what happened to you is more than just a memory. There is self identification with the memory. In other words, it's not perceived as just something that happened to you, but it becomes part of who you perceive to be. Now, almost everybody has in one way or another been a victim of other people. But in some cases, much, much more so than in others, some element of having been victim is probably present in everybody's life. In other words, you are surrounded by unconscious humans, and then unconscious humans present will inflict suffering on themselves and others. That's just how it is when you're alive on this planet. Childhood particularly is a place where many, many children experience abuse. Either minor forms of abuse, emotional abuse, or they live in a very toxic family environment. And then of course, there are other children who experience much more serious forms of abuse and really suffer and have this carry with them the memory, both mental and emotional memory of what happened to them. In some cases the memory is repressed because the child, the emotions may be repressed. The child could not deal with them and they had to repress them. And then later the possibility of remembering arises and then you remember what happened to you and how do you do. The question what do you do with what happened to you? What was done to you? How do you deal with what was done to you by other humans? Whether it happened in childhood or, or whether it happened later in life, whether it was a relatively minor thing or whether it was a very serious form of abuse. How do you, how do you deal with that? Now? The, the ego, the human ego is always looking for something to add to its sense of identity. It's looking for a stronger sense of identity because it always feels I'm not enough. So it's trying to add something that it can identify with or add to its sense of self. And it very often happens that the memory of having been abused is used by the ego and is added to the ego's sense of self. So that means you not only remember what happened to you, the memory of what happened to you, which is a bundle of thoughts and emotions that go with it, the memory of what happened to you is more than just a memory. There is self identification with the memory. In other words, it's not, not perceived as just something that happened to you, but it becomes part of who you perceive to be. So I am a victim of that. It's not that this was done to me, but I am a victim of. So it's the transition from memory to self that is the victim identity. The ego does that because victim identity is a very powerful form of identity, a very powerful form of ego. And particularly in cases where the the ego is always does not find sufficient things that it can identify with in this world. Because the most common form of identification for example is with the way you look. You look better than others, so you can identify with that. If you look worse than others, of course that could become part of your victim identity because you've been treated unfairly by life and life has made you look worse than others. That could become part of victim identity or that's not actually abuse. But it could all also be incorporated into victim identity however. So normally what people identify with or ego identify with identifies with is appearance which is physical appearance. The body, what you external looks, even what you put on the body is then regarded as part of the body. So clothes become something you identify with because they're on the body so they perceived as being part of you possessions. For commenting what what I own, I own this car, you don't. Therefore I feel a bit stronger in my sense of self because I have a Lamborghini and you only have a VW or bicycle. So I have a stronger identity compared to others. House any form of possession then we have social function in this world. Position that you have social position in this world you identify with that you feel gives you superiority. With every ego identification, the most important thing is superiority, a sense of superiority. The ego seeks that it cannot tolerate inferiority. So superiority, whether it's possessions, looks, appearance, achievement in this world, social position, oh yes, knowledge. Some people who are intellectual or highly educated, you can identify with that and feel superior to many other humans who know much less than you. So you you have identified with knowledge, identified with. You can identify with your ancestors in some countries more in the west not so much anymore. But in some countries still it used to be like that in the west, but in some countries still your ancestry is extremely important that like who your parents were and your grandparents and so on, you go back several generations so you can have that you identify. And again superiority is always implied. Now it's not many humans find it easy to find things in this world that they can derive a sense of superiority from. Well, children already start doing that. They have to look for something. I can jump higher than you, look at me. That's good. It's the developing ego. It's gives you a bit of superiority or whatever it may be. So many humans don't find a lot in this world that can does give them a sense of superiority. They don't Have a lot of possessions or no possessions. They're not particularly highly educated, don't really know that much. They're not great looking. So what, what else? The ego is looking for something. No, it could be, no, it could be things like resentment. So that's a great one. Grievances towards other humans. That's a big one that the ego can have anger towards other humans or groups of humans. He says, well, God. So the ego can get in there, identify with those thoughts and, and gives you a sense of superiority. You can sometimes, I don't know. You've all met people who are kind of considered half crazy who walking the streets and you have people, you see them often in big cities particularly they're shouting. They're shouting at everybody. They're very angry and they're shouting at everybody. You, you can see it's a rudimentary form of superiority. By being angry at others, it's implied ultimately you are superior to those humans, humans that you are angry at. So you, so even if you have nothing you can get you, the ego can make you angry about other people and you start shouting them and you feel suddenly superior to everybody, all these awful people out there. And that brings us already in the direction of victim identity. Victim identity. Again, you remember what was done to you and the memory becomes incorporated, as I said, into your sense of self. That becomes me, the victim of those people. That's me. I am the victim. So you become in your own perception a victim of this or that other people. This enhances your ego because by being a victim you feel superior to others, not only to those who inflict it suffering on you, whether real or imagined, but you also feel yourself superior to anybody else who is not as much as a victim as you are. It's an unconscious process. So if you can talk about your victimhood, anybody who is less of a victim than you is inferior. And so the, the superiority is a moral one, one could say, because if unjust things were done to you, then by being a victim of unjust deeds perpetrated by other humans, you automatically become morally superior not only to those humans who inflicted that on you, but also to other humans who are not victims or cannot claim, have not as much claim on victimhood as you have, so you are morally superior to them. It's a delusion. Every egoic identity is a form of delusion. So it's ultimately it's a delusion that the stronger the ego is, the more deluded you become about who you are. And you can also have collective victimhood as very common these days. Your group of people, who undoubtedly has people you identify with, whatever it may be, could be gender or race or a social class that was oppressed, whatever it may be. And certainly these things have happened. People, social groups have been victimized, so to speak, in the past. Suffering inflicted by humans or on other groups of humans certainly happened. And to remember that is fine. To recognize it for what it is, it's like similar to a memory of an individual person suffering abuse, injustice and so on. And now you, if it's collective, it's a very similar process. You remember what was being done. The question is, is it just a memory? And do you recognize what was behind it? What other? Or is it more than a memory? Is it something that becomes endowed with a sense of self, selfhood. Then you have a collective victim identity that is also very powerful. And this is to say that that's an illusion is not to say that these abuses did not happen. The illusion is what are you doing to yourself by deriving your sense of identity from this thing that happened in the past? The memory is fine. We need to remember these things fine. But do I derive my sense of who I am from being a victim either on an individual level, on a collective level? That is an enormous limitation on my life. Because immediately the implication when you are, when, when a significant part of your identity is that of a victim, the implication is that you remain a victim. There isn't much you can do because they've made you into a victim. You've made yourself into a victim. What can you do now? You are obviously morally superior to everybody who is less of a victim than you, but you condemn yourself almost to powerlessness when you any kind of victim identity. You want to remain powerless because to say that you can transcend your, your, what was done to you, you can overcome the effects of it, you can go beyond it. You, you have the power to go beyond the abuse that was done to you, which every human has. That power. You can never discover that power if you are trapped in a victim identity. So the power to transcend, to go beyond what was done to you, not to be held back by what was done to you on an individual level or collectively. The, the power to go beyond it. You do not have this power as long as you remain trapped in a victim identity because the ego does not want to let go of being a victim. Once something has been incorporated into the ego, the ego does not want to let go. It becomes part of your, it is precious to you. It.