The Perils of Seeing Yourself as a Victim

Part 1 of 3 in the series “The Victim Trap: How a Culture of Helplessness Took Hold”

Something powerful happens when a person begins to see themselves as a victim. It doesn’t just shape how they interpret the world — it shapes who they become.

In therapy, I’ve watched people recover from immense trauma once they reclaimed a sense of agency — the feeling that they could influence their own lives. I’ve also seen others sink deeper into despair when they made victimhood their identity.

The difference isn’t what happened to them. It’s how they understood what happened.

1. The Loss of Agency

The first casualty of victim thinking is agency — the belief that your choices matter.

When someone becomes convinced that their suffering is entirely someone else’s fault, they begin to feel powerless. Over time, that belief solidifies into a mindset. Life starts to feel like something that happens to them rather than something they participate in.

Psychologist Martin Seligman called this learned helplessness: after enough experiences of uncontrollable pain, the mind simply stops trying. Think of an animal that has been shocked in a cage with no escape. Even when the door is later opened, it doesn’t leave — because it has learned that effort is futile.

Humans do the same thing psychologically. Even when their circumstances change, the sense of helplessness remains. People stop acting not because they can’t, but because they’ve learned that trying doesn’t work.

2. The Seduction of the Victim Identity

Victimhood can feel strangely comforting. It offers a simple, satisfying story: “I’m suffering because they wronged me.”

That story brings sympathy and moral clarity — two powerful emotional rewards. It can even give life meaning for a while, especially when pain otherwise feels random or senseless. The problem is that, over time, this identity replaces growth with grievance.

When the victim role becomes part of one’s personality, it begins to demand constant confirmation. Every slight, disappointment, or setback becomes further proof that the world is unjust. In relationships, this can look like chronic mistrust — interpreting neutral behavior as betrayal.

It’s a trap that trades short-term comfort for long-term paralysis. The more we tell the story, the more we become it.

3. Blame as a Refuge from Responsibility

Blame is a refuge. It protects us from guilt, uncertainty, and the anxiety of freedom.

If we can point to someone else as the cause of our pain, we don’t have to face our own part in it. Yet this comes at a heavy price. Without responsibility, there can be no empowerment.

Responsibility doesn’t mean self-blame; it means reclaiming authorship — the power to choose how to respond. In therapy, progress often begins the moment a person stops asking, “Why did this happen to me?” and starts asking, “What can I do with what happened?”

That subtle shift — from passive to active, from blame to authorship — marks the true beginning of healing.

4. The Emotional Cost of Victim Thinking

Living as a victim is emotionally exhausting. It keeps the body in a constant state of alert — scanning for unfairness, injustice, or disrespect.

Each time we perceive ourselves as wronged, the body releases stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. Over time, this constant vigilance wears down the nervous system. Sleep suffers, digestion falters, the immune system weakens.

Psychologically, the effects are just as corrosive. Chronic resentment hardens the heart. Cynicism replaces curiosity. Trust becomes dangerous. Eventually, life starts to feel like a battlefield where every encounter carries the potential for harm.

When that happens, even joy feels suspicious — as if it could be taken away at any moment. Gratitude becomes nearly impossible.

5. Gratitude as the Antidote

Gratitude and victimhood cannot occupy the same space. One looks for what’s been taken; the other notices what remains.

Practicing gratitude doesn’t mean pretending injustice never happened. It means refusing to let it define you. It’s an act of quiet rebellion against despair — a way of saying, “You may have hurt me, but you don’t own my perspective.”

Even small acts of gratitude — writing down three good things each day, thanking someone sincerely, noticing the ordinary kindnesses that surround us — begin to loosen the grip of grievance.

Gratitude shifts the focus from what’s wrong to what’s possible, reminding us that healing begins not with fairness, but with perspective.

6. The Loop of Confirmation Bias

Once victimhood takes root, the mind begins to filter reality to fit the narrative.
Every perceived slight becomes proof. Every kind gesture from “the enemy” is dismissed as insincere.

Psychologists call this confirmation bias: our natural tendency to seek evidence that supports what we already believe. It’s how belief becomes identity — and identity becomes destiny.

This loop can be hard to escape because it feels truthful. The more you look for injustice, the more you’ll find. Eventually, you stop seeing anything else. The mind edits reality until it mirrors the wound.

7. Reclaiming Agency

Freedom begins with the quiet realization: I can choose my response.

That one insight breaks the spell of helplessness. It doesn’t erase the past, but it reclaims the present.

When people rediscover agency, they stop waiting for justice before living again. They stop making peace conditional on apology or fairness. They act from strength instead of grievance.

We cannot rewrite the past, but we can decide what story it tells about us — tragedy or transformation. The choice is ours.

Closing Reflection

We live in a time when victimhood is often rewarded — socially, politically, even financially. It’s praised as awareness, celebrated as moral insight. But the personal cost is enormous.

It steals joy, isolates the heart, and locks people into a story that keeps them small.

The truth is, pain is inevitable; helplessness is optional. And the moment we reclaim our authorship, even suffering can become a source of strength.

In the next part of this series, we’ll explore how this same mindset expands beyond the individual to entire groups and movements — how collective victimhood becomes a kind of moral currency that shapes modern culture.

Men Are Good.

When “Helping Men” Comes With a Hidden Asterisk

A new article in the American Psychological Association’s Monitor magazine, titled “Rethinking Masculinity to Build Healthier Outcomes,” looks, at first glance, like progress. The author, Efua Andoh, highlights many of the crises men’s advocates have been warning about for decades: higher male suicide rates, educational decline, loneliness, and the massive toll of economic insecurity. It’s a relief to see mainstream psychology finally acknowledge that men and boys are struggling.

But as you read on, a familiar pattern emerges. The compassion is there — but it’s conditional. The sympathy comes wrapped in ideology.

And beneath the glossy language of “healthier masculinities” runs an unmistakable undercurrent of misandry.

The Frame: Men’s Problems as Men’s Faults

The piece centers on the claim that men’s suffering largely stems from their “rigid gender norms.” This “man box,” we’re told, traps men in emotional stoicism, dominance, and self-reliance — all of which supposedly lead to loneliness and self-destruction. The solution, according to the experts quoted, is to “deconstruct masculinity” or “redefine” it in more emotionally expressive, prosocial terms.

But this framing quietly does something damaging: it pathologizes masculinity itself. It treats male distress not as the product of a culture that devalues men but as a symptom of how men behave.

Nowhere does the article mention the broader social neglect of men — the fatherlessness epidemic, male-biased education systems, family-court disparities, or the stigmatization of male vulnerability. These aren’t small oversights. They’re central to understanding why men feel adrift. Yet in this “rethink masculinity” framework, male pain is repackaged as a self-inflicted wound.

That’s not empathy. That’s therapy-speak misandry.

The Experts: One View Allowed

Most of the voices quoted — Smiler, Wong, Addis, Hoffmann, and others — belong to the same ideological circle that helped craft the APA’s Div 51 2018 Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men. Those guidelines were widely criticized for implying that “traditional masculinity” is inherently harmful.

There are other scholars — Mark Kiselica, John Barry, Warren Farrell, and countless clinicians who’ve spent careers understanding men’s psychology from a balanced, non-ideological perspective — who see things differently. They view masculine strengths such as stoicism, protection, and risk-taking as potentially healthy traits that can be used for good when understood in context.

And she briefly mentions Kiselica and Englar-Carlson’s Positive Psychology/Positive Masculinity Model but then swiftly pivots back to “deconstruction” — the view that masculinity itself should be dismantled as an identity.

Imagine telling any other group that the path to healing begins with dissolving their sense of self.​

 

​​The Language: Gentle Words, Sharp Edges

The article’s tone is polished, inclusive, and sprinkled with compassion. Yet phrases like “manosphere,” “hostility toward women,” and “hypermasculinity” reframe large numbers of men as potential threats rather than people in need of understanding.

This rhetorical move — concern on the surface, suspicion underneath — has become the default stance of establishment psychology toward men. The message to boys is: “We care about your pain — as long as you agree it’s your fault.”

It’s hard to imagine a less effective therapeutic approach.

The Core Problem

The crisis in male well-being is real and urgent. Men are dying younger, lonelier, and more disconnected than ever. Yet when institutions like the APA approach that crisis through a feminist lens, they end up moralizing it rather than understanding it.

The truth is simpler: most men’s struggles are not caused by being “too masculine.” They’re caused by a culture that no longer values what men naturally offer. When men’s roles as protectors, builders, and providers are dismissed as relics, when their achievements are mocked as privilege, and when their emotional pain is politicized, men withdraw — not because of “toxic norms,” but because they no longer feel welcome.

That’s not pathology. That’s heartbreak.

What a Genuinely Male-Friendly Psychology Would Do

A psychology that truly helps men would start with respect, not suspicion. It would recognize the adaptive strengths of masculine behavior — courage, duty, persistence, loyalty — and build from there. It would invite men to heal without demanding that they surrender their identity in the process.

It would also take seriously the biological realities that shape male psychology. Research has long shown that testosterone — so often caricatured as the hormone of aggression — is in fact primarily linked to status-seeking and social hierarchy navigation. Men’s drive to compete, to achieve, and to earn respect among other men arises from this deep biological impulse. Far from being pathological, this striving for status underlies much of men’s cooperation, innovation, and willingness to shoulder responsibility within male hierarchies.

When understood through this lens, many so-called “problem behaviors” make sense as expressions of an ancient human drive to contribute, excel, and be valued by one’s peers. A healthy psychology of men would not shame this drive but would help men channel it toward purpose, service, and integrity — recognizing that status, when earned honorably, is not vanity but meaning.

And it would acknowledge that masculinity, like femininity, is not a pathology to fix but a deep and necessary part of human wholeness.

“Rethinking Masculinity” claims to offer compassion. But what it really offers is conditional acceptance — a quiet insinuation that men will be worthy of empathy only after they stop being who they are.

That isn’t progress. It’s the same old prejudice, just with better PR.

Men Are Good

November Is Men’s Equality Month

#GenderEqualityForMen

November is Men’s Equality Month, and November 19 marks International Men’s Day — two celebrations that recognize the contributions of men and boys while raising awareness about the areas where they continue to face disadvantage.

These observances are growing fast. International Men’s Day began in 1999 in Trinidad and Tobago. Building on that success, the International Council for Men and Boys (ICMB) inaugurated Men’s Equality Month (MEM) in 2024 to expand the recognition of men’s issues across the entire month of November.

This year’s theme is simple but powerful:

“Celebrate Men and Boys.”

Breaking Through in 2025

On November 5, ICMB will hold a Press Conference and Summit in Washington, D.C.
Theme: “Breaking Through: Advancing Equality for Men and Boys.”

The movement is gaining traction. In 2024, over 300 events were held in 20 countries, reaching millions of people on social media. Two countries — Australia and the United Kingdom — have already launched national organizations to support International Men’s Day, and more are joining each year.

Why It Matters

For decades, we’ve been told that gender equality is a one-way street — that it means focusing solely on women’s issues. But true equality includes everyone.

Men and boys face serious and often overlooked challenges in areas like education, health, fatherhood, mental health, suicide, homelessness, workplace safety, and family law. These observances are a chance to open honest conversations about those realities — and to celebrate the men and boys who quietly give so much to families, communities, and society.

 

Ways to Take Part

Here are some ways you can help raise awareness during Men’s Equality Month and International Men’s Day:

• Host a talk, roundtable, or podcast about men’s health or fatherhood.

• Encourage local officials to issue proclamations or statements of support.

• Share posts with #GenderEqualityForMen on social media.

• Write an op-ed, blog post, or video celebrating the positive role of men and boys.

• Organize or attend a local event through a community, church, or school.

• Simply thank the men in your life — fathers, sons, brothers, mentors, friends.

Even small gestures can help normalize appreciation and understanding for men and boys.

Want to Get Involved?

The ICMB is inviting groups to serve as Country or State Coordinators for Men’s Equality Month. Coordinators help organize and publicize local events, connect with allied organizations, and report activities for global recognition.

If your group is interested, contact:
📧 Bob Thompson — [email protected]
🌐 Learn more: menandboys.net

A Final Thought

Men’s Equality Month and International Men’s Day aren’t about competition — they’re about balance. About saying that compassion, understanding, and fairness belong to everyone.

Let’s make November a month to celebrate men and boys — and to remind the world that gender equality isn’t complete until it includes both halves of humanity.