My goals for my children have gotten more focused, a bit more grounded in reality (so I'd like to believe), and more practical. They are:
- Get them through college and at least a bachelor's degree. It's more than life is a struggle when you know things but don't have that degree - when you're young you have the chance to spend a few years focusing on education, and you'd damn well better take it while you have the chance before the raging currents of life sweep you away!
- Try to instill some good habits, good hygiene, people skills and other useful things... and
- Show them that there are alternatives to victimhood.
What we get from our parents imprints itself deep upon our psyche in a way that is hard to escape, even when we are conscious of it. We may "hate" one or both of our parents for things we decided long ago we couldn't stand. We may deliberately set ourselves up to be the opposite of what we saw our parents as. "Dad was a Democrat, so I'll be Republican." "Mom liked heavy metal, I'll only listen to Mozart." etc.
I would define victimhood as the sense that others are always to blame for your problems. Those who are afflicted with a sense of victimhood rarely think of themselves as irresponsible. Some feel sorry for themselves, sink into depression, and if they get the right kind of help, might pick themselves up and move on. The other type of victimhood I'm familiar with is a self-righteous one which picks up fuel from everyone it comes in contact with. It is very hard to deflate. We'll call this flavor of victimhood PriSI for Pristine Self-righteous Innocent victimhood.
There's not much that can be done for the fully entrenched PriSI victim. The best you can do is not get into playing the rescuer, because whatever you do, it won't be enough. All you'll get is resentment. If a PriSI needs money and you lend them some, it won't be enough. If a PriSI needs a place to stay and you let them stay with you, they'll resent it when you ask them to move on. If you're stupid enough to marry one, they'll go out of their way to make sure you suffer for it when you finally decide to move on and leave them.
The problem with PriSI is that it's infectious and self-covering. Since PriSI sufferers are "empowered" by a sense of the nobility of their own martyrdom, they keep themselves blinded to the defects in the way they deal with others. They have trouble keeping long-term friends because eventually that friend will try to provide feedback on something and will become an ex-friend for daring to suggest that the PriSI person is less than perfect.
But chronic PriSIs are by nature extremely insecure. All that self-righteousness is a desperate attempt to avoid facing the abyss of their own perceived shortcomings. They are often not at all bad people, but they have for one reason or another (perhaps childhood abuse or trauma) worked themselves into a mode of existence where they just cannot cope with
any reality.
The problem with those who have been infected with PriSI syndrome is that it is a disempowering approach to life. Blaming others for problems seems to work in the short-term because PriSIs usually become good at emotional blackmail, and are rewarded when others take on the role of rescuer, and will always go one step further to satisfy the PriSI. But in the long term, victimhood does nothing but ensure that we can never live up to our full potential, because it prevents us from taking responsibility for the important choices we make, and holds us back from meaningful friendships and relationships because true love and true friendship require the common ingredient of truth, which cannot exist in the atmosphere of denial and distortion which is necessary to maintain the feeling of totally superior martyrdom.
In short, victimhood sucks...
