Something bad happened to me. Then I turned it into an identity.
At first, the event wasn’t optional. What came later was.
I didn’t just remember what happened. I became the person it happened to.
That’s where the trap was.
I blamed the attacker.
Then I blamed alcohol.
Then I blamed my family history.
Then I blamed life.
Every explanation kept me stuck because it all pointed in the same direction:
Nothing was my responsibility anymore.
That felt justified. It also made me powerless.
Here’s what I eventually saw.
There’s a difference between what happened and who I think I am because of it.
The memory is real. The suffering is real.
But when the memory becomes my identity, I stay frozen in it.
Victim mentality isn’t just pain.
It’s a form of psychological comfort.
As long as I was the victim:
I didn’t have to change
I didn’t have to risk failing
I didn’t have to take ownership
It also gave me a subtle sense of moral superiority.
If I was wronged, then I was right.
If I was harmed, then others were automatically beneath me.
That felt good.
It also guaranteed I wouldn’t move forward.
The turning point came when I noticed something uncomfortable.
I was replaying the story.
I was keeping it alive.
Not consciously.
Automatically.
The moment I saw that, the identity cracked.
I didn’t deny what happened.
I didn’t excuse it.
I stopped being it.
I realized this truth:
If my identity is “victim,” then my future is limited to recovery at best.
If my identity is awareness, I still have options.
Letting go of victim mentality didn’t mean pretending nothing happened.
It meant refusing to build my sense of self on top of it.
That shift gave me something back I didn’t even realize I’d lost.
Choice. I was keeping the identity alive.
Once I stopped deriving who I was from what happened to me, I could act from the present instead of reacting from the past.
See The Victim Loop