Hey, welcome to The Young Faithful Mama Blog. My name is Justice Rodriguez and I helping young mamas like you stop feeling unqualified, overwhelmed, and chaotic so you can start raising your babies with more peace and joy. By sharing some of my experiences and things that I learned through my journey so you can become a Young Faithful Mama too as you navigate through your life as a wife and mother.
This is the first blog in a series to dispel victim mentality, something that I dealt with for many years and keep me from living my life to its full potential, I want to give a disclaimer that this mentality is not something you can be diagnosed with and I will not be using any of these blogs as medical advice. if you have any questions about certain things that pertain to a mental illness I always encourage and advise you to speak with your doctor. this blog is just informational and me sharing my own experiences.
Victim mentality is a belief that negative things are constantly happening to you, when you are in this state of mind you don’t take the appropriate responsibility for situations that happen to you and tend to play the blame game.
This mentality has a drowning feeling. Feels like you are being consumed by the things happening to you in your life. you not thinking about your present or future, you can’t help but keep reminding yourself of the past You may begin to have a “ Why me “attitude and develop no desire to even fight against it.
I can attest to those feelings. They were vivid and scary at times because it’s a battle at first to know that things can get better but honestly not being able to see how that’s possible for yourself. I don’t want you to get this confused with someone that’s just too lazy or too irresponsible to take responsibility for their actions. at some point, you may have been a victim in most of the situations but when you decide to sit in it and float on the sea of your sorrow is when you stunt your growth.
“for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.”
2 Timothy 1:7 ESV
This mindset can be contagious to those that may have also dealt with trauma, related distress, or offense. In some cases, you can get into this mindset simply from seeing it from someone who raised you or you were in close contact with or just trying to be there for a family member or friend not realizing how deep it would go. The best thing to know is that this mentality is learned and just like we learned to hold on to those emotions of helplessness or feeling like a lost cause you can unlearn that and take the steps to be free from it.
“Wisdom rests in the heart of a man of understanding, but it makes itself known even in the midst of fools.”
Proverbs 14:33 ESV
I became a victim at the age of 3 and it wasn’t until I was 6 that I had the courage and language to speak on what was happening to me. Immediately I was rejected and told to not speak about it. for the next few years, I would get questioned about the abuse, I assumed to see if my story would change but it never did and I started to question if I was dreaming all those times he took me into that back room.
I grow angrier and angrier, the feeling of being helpless had me in a chokehold that no one could see.
In my early teenage years, my mother shared with me that she had a similar experience and express to me how it affected her reaction to me telling her. As I learned more and more about the early months of my life I started to piece together my reasoning for why I felt rejected by her, why I was abandoned, and why I wasn’t worthy of her keeping me. all of this was the devil planting seeds in my mind that later turned, into my reasoning for giving up on myself before I even knew who I was.
I would act out and it was never my fault, my reasoning was always because my innocence was stolen, I was abandoned by my mother, my father wasn’t around, and I was left alone most of the time taking care of myself. no one understood me, or what I had been through. my rebellion was how I would show them that I was a victim my defiance will show them just how broken I am this is how I use to think.
“Whoever trusts in his own mind is a fool, but he who walks in wisdom will be delivered.”
Proverbs 28:26 ESV
A few years ago I learned that life is not about what happens to you but what you do about it I learned that just because all the bad stuff happened didn’t mean that it was a free pass to ruin the rest of my life because of situations I didn’t have control over. it was my job to heal from my past, leave it there and walk out the rest of my journey.
A victim mindset doesn’t have to be permanent but if we don’t get intentional about the changes that we need to make and the emotional, mental,l and physical work that needs to happen we can become stuck for a lifetime in something God didn’t have planned for us.
What are the signs?
These are some signs you are struggling with victim mentality :
- Feeling sorry for yourself feels better than actually dealing with a situation
- You think the worst going into a lot of situations and are waiting for things to go wrong.
- When things go wrong or not the way you believed things should have gone, you tend to believe it’s because everything is already against you.
- You find that when its time to make a change and apologize for your actions or behavior you find every excuse for why you shouldn’t have to
- You feel like other people are more responsible for how your life is going than yourself.
- You have a hard time seeing the part you played in certain situations.
If you have said yes to experiencing some of these signs , it doesn’t mean that there is something wrong with you or that your a bad person. It’s simply a evaluation of yourself and let’s you know that the things you have experienced in your life have effected you and you need to start your healing process to becoming all that God created you to be .
You shouldn’t have to walk around bound in your mind and the great news is that freedom is available for you in Christ alone .
Praying that this encourages you . If you aren’t apart of the support group I want to personal invite you now .
The Young Faithful Mama 