The Allure of the Victim Role
Why is it so difficult to give up the victim role and, along with it, suffering? As a therapist, I have asked myself this question many times. The answer lies in a variety of reasons, some more conscious than others, and the boundaries between them are often blurred.
1. Suffering Becomes Familiar
Suffering can turn into a familiar, almost “native” feeling that a person integrates into their life. It becomes so habitual that one may even feel comfortable with it. The end of suffering requires breaking a habit, which can happen through a conscious decision or a life-changing event.
2. Suffering as a Way to Feel Alive
For some people, suffering seems to be the only way to feel intensely alive. “I suffer, therefore I feel myself, therefore I live!” Suffering provides the strongest sense of being alive. Although suffering and vitality seem contradictory, this paradox is quite common. Often, clients who have “let go” of their suffering later complain about an almost unbearable sense of emptiness.
3. The Rewards of Suffering
Just like the classic case of secondary gain from illness, suffering is “rewarded.” While someone is suffering, they receive more love and attention. For example, after a heart attack, a person may become more significant to those around them, with everything revolving around them and their illness.
4. Suffering as a Moral High Ground
Suffering can elevate a person to a different position. By suffering, one may see themselves as better than others, which leads to a certain (often unconscious) sense of entitlement. Since this entitlement has no real basis, it cannot be satisfied, which in turn reinforces the person’s role as a suffering victim. “No one understands me” or “everyone is against me” are core beliefs of “chronic” victims trapped in a vicious cycle of suffering. In Christianity, for example, suffering for others is highly valued. Martyrdom, to some extent, is seen as a prerequisite for sainthood.
5. Social Recognition and Group Belonging
Suffering can bring social recognition and a sense of belonging to a group. “Poor abandoned women” often receive superficial sympathy from society, while “abandoned men” do not yet have a socially recognized right to suffer. “Abandoned women” form groups that provide compassion, validation, and motivation. If a woman gives up the victim role, she loses her place in this group. The same risk applies to self-help groups: often, group identity requires members to continue suffering in order to belong.
6. Passivity and the Challenge of Taking Action
Suffering is usually characterized by passivity. To leave this passive state means to become active and give up the victim role. Taking an active stance in this context means taking responsibility and “getting to work.” In my experience, in cases of family entanglements involving guilt in previous generations (such as murder, sanctioning murder, dispossession, etc.), it is especially hard for sufferers to become active. Symptoms like failure and unemployment are common. Maintaining the victim role helps these individuals avoid “becoming like their father or grandfather.”
7. Suffering as a Way to Restore Innocence
In a rather controversial interpretation, suffering can serve to restore one’s own innocence. Fearing to admit guilt, a person “hides” in the victim role and outwardly becomes innocent again. For example, many people in the Third Reich declared themselves victims after the war, claiming they “had nothing to do with it.” This position became almost a mass phenomenon and was accepted by society for a long time. Such denial of guilt by perpetrators leads to new suffering in subsequent generations.
8. Inherited Guilt and Loyalty to Ancestors
It often happens that, in compensating for the unacknowledged guilt of criminal ancestors, later generations experience a groundless sense of guilt. These entanglements cause people to stubbornly remain in the victim role. If they give up this role, out of loyalty to the victims among their ancestors, they feel like traitors. Only when a person allows themselves to feel love for the perpetrator can they leave the perpetrator’s actions on their conscience. Then, the need for self-sacrifice disappears. As for descendants of victims, they too remain in the victim role out of loyalty to their ancestors. Their symptoms are similar: severe illnesses and depression.
What Comes After Suffering?
In each of the situations above, one can ask the sufferer: “What will happen after the suffering ends?” The end of suffering always brings consequences that cannot be ignored.