Victim: Don't Become Your Abuser!
Channel: Prof. Sam Vaknin
Date: 2020-12-27

Two wrongs never make you right.

If you cheat on your cheating narcissist - you are still a cheater.

If you abuse your abuser - you are an abuser yourself.

If you behave like a psychopath - then you are one.

If you mirror evil - you become it.

Stare into the abyss and it will consume you whole.

Being a victim is not a license to join the ranks of your tormentors.

Beware of self-righteousness and moral superiority: they are paving stones on the path to hell.

Are you victim – or narcissist – or covert narcissist – or borderline?

Cluster B consider themselves victims (alloplastic defenses, external locus of control)

Judith Herman who created the CPTSD diagnosis insist that complex trauma is indistinguishable from BPD. Kernberg, the father of the field, says that BPD is a form of narcissism, and Grotstein claims that BPD is failed narcissism.

Victims of prolonged abuse often introject (internalize) their abusers and convert them into permanent persecutory objects. Henceforth, they trauma bond with this inner tormenting voice even when the original bully is long out of their lives.

Victimhood becomes a cozy comfort zone and the victims is emotionally invested (cathected) in maintaining it pristine and operational. It becomes a determinant of the victim's identity and helps her to regulate her emotions and ameliorate her anxiety and mood lability.

Professional Victims tend to blame their childhood experiences for being eternal victims. Again, they are victims: this time, of their parents. 

We must begin to accept that a victimhood stance is narcissistic: grandiose, entitled, and replete with alloplastic defenses.

Perpetual victimhood serves four indispensable psychological needs:

1. It restores a sense of agency and self-efficacy and reverts the locus of control from external to internal. Many victims garner attention and make money from their newly found "profession";

2. It makes sense of the victim's personal history and of the world around her thereby rendering them meaningful: structure, order, and even a sense of "karmic" justice are restored;

3. It legitimizes avoidant behaviors. The world out there is challenging and painful: shunning it guarantees tranquility and an inert peace of mind;

4. Victimhood allows the victim to indulge her grandiosity and sense of moral superiority: it paints her as immaculate, angelic, empathic, supportive, loving, caring, compassionate, and, in short, perfect, blesmishless, and blameless. It is a morality play or a crusade and she is the warrior angel fighting off the demonic narcissists.

Victimhood affords the victim membership in tight-knit communities of like-minded people and a sense of belonging and being finally understood, vindicated, and elevated. It is an intoxicating mix and victims become aggressive if and when you try to take it away from them by alerting them to their own imperfections and contributions to their sad state of affairs.

With one or two laudable exceptions, unscrupulous "coaches" and "experts" online seek to perpetuate this state of victimhood: telling your clients what they want to hear and what they are willing to pay for is good for business. The truth and healing have a negative effect on their burgeoning bottom lines.

In 1995, I coined the term “narcissistic abuse” and gave language and voice to its victims. Listen to the original article I had written back then.

Have happier, healthier, many more years to come. Stay hale and well and sane. Don't let yourself become that which you had feared the most.

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