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Universally, human beings are always searching for a better feeling. We are wired to connect with the peace and love that we are made of. And when we have feelings like victimhood, they are pointing toward exactly this innate drive within us.

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Show Notes

• Examples of how we might feel like a victim
• What the feeling of being a victim is pointing toward
• How we can recognize our innate well-being when feelings like this come up in ourselves and others
• How understanding the innate drive to feel good can increase our compassion for others

Transcript of episode

Hello explorers, and welcome to Q&A episode 39 of Unbroken. I’m Alexandra Amor.

I’m here today with kind of an odd question, it may look like it has nothing to do with resolving an unwanted habit, but it actually does.

The question is why does being a victim feel good?

This came up for me, because there are a couple of situations going on in my life. So the first was that I experienced someone in my life, not in my immediate circles, but kind of someone I know very occasionally and casually, who I could tell really feels like a victim a lot of the time, and almost tends to create situations in her life where she’s victimized. And then that reinforces that she feels like a victim.

I was reflecting on that, and reflecting on the wisdom in that feeling like a victim, and we’ll talk about that in just a second.

Then I had a situation where I had a moment of feeling like a victim. I was planning to get together with a friend, and it wasn’t coming together. And I hadn’t heard from this friend. I noticed some feelings of victimhood, not in a huge way, but just in a tiny way, like, geez, this person isn’t getting back to me, I’m feeling a little ignored. That kind of feeling. And maybe she doesn’t like me, that kind of thing.

I noticed this little frisson of pleasure in that feeling of victimhood. And so I thought to myself, well, now, isn’t that interesting? What’s that about? So because these two things that happened quite close to one another in terms of time, I just started reflecting on this.

What I realized was that that feeling of being a victim, whether it’s in a small way, or a large way, really points to everything that we talked about in the three principles, understanding and our innate health. And it may seem like those examples, don’t point to that toward that at all. But I’m going to explain why they do.

What’s happening when we’re feeling like a victim?

That’s what that was where I started, with that question about myself and about this other person in my life. And what I realized is that there was that little bit of pleasure that I felt was because it felt like a bit of nurturing. So feeling like a victim in that moment, for me felt like a little bit of nurturing. I was taking care of myself.

‘And there’s the element of protecting myself against the big bad world. There’s that part of it. And then there’s just this kind of folding in feeling of protection, of protecting myself from whatever’s going on. And it seems to me that that’s where the little feeling of pleasure came from.

For the woman who’s peripherally in my life, I can only imagine that that that she gets a similar feeling from that, and I can sort of tell that she’s a person who feels unnurtured, who feels victimized, who feels on the outside and other people are on the inside. And so I can only imagine that feeling inside herself and setting up situations where she feels like a victim is one way that she is able to nurture herself.

What that points two is that we, as human beings are always, always searching for a better feeling.

We’re searching for that home base feeling, that is our innate wisdom and well being, and the true source of our experience of life, the light that we are, the love that we are. And so feeling like a victim is a misguided way to connect to that feeling of our true nature, our true essence. But it’s, in a way, it’s not misguided, because it’s serving that purpose. It’s connecting us.

We’re coming at it from a weird, funny angle. But it really is ourselves making an attempt to connect to  that to a good feeling to a feeling of safety, and warmth. And all those things are the essence of who we are.

It all comes back to love, doesn’t it?

We are made of love and the source of where we come from is love. And so we’re always trying, it seems to me to connect to that feeling. And as human beings, it’s difficult. Our journey in this life is full of complication. And it’s a real challenge. And there’s no end of challenging circumstances and difficult circumstances that we get ourselves into, and feelings that are challenging as well. And we do whatever we can, it seems to me to, to connect to a good feeling to connect to love at all times.

So though it looks like someone who’s feeling like a victim is troubled or misguided, what I can really see in myself in that moment that I had, and in this other person who’s in my life, what I can see is that that instinct, or that impulse, really points to the source of who we are. And when I reflected on that, and thought about this for a little while, it, it created a greater sense of compassion in me for both myself, and for the other person in my life who I noticed is feeling like a victim.

I noticed too, that she’s caught in a cycle of creating situations where she becomes the victim. So again, that can look kind of irritating and annoying, and it can be frustrating when you’re on the outside looking into that. But me being able to see that what she’s searching for is a good feeling. She’s searching for home base, she’s searching for a connection to the love that she is, that hopefully will enable me to feel much more compassionate toward her.

And that gives me a good feeling. Instead of pushing up against what’s going on for her and feeling judgy about it, or impatient or whatever it is. I can sit in the feeling of oh, she’s searching for love, essentially. And rather than meeting her with judgment and criticism, even just mentally, not that I would say anything out loud, but just mentally being in a place of judgment and criticism, she’s going to feel that.

Instead, I can just see that she’s doing what comes naturally. It may be a little bit unskilled, but still it’s natural what she’s doing. It’s instinctive. She wants to feel a good feeling.

Knowing that about her, I’m just curious what if anything will happen?

If I If at anytime I happen to be with her, if I sit in that good feeling, knowing that that’s what she’s searching for, and knowing that that’s what we all have access to all the time. And knowing how natural it is for us to want to connect with that feeling. I’m just curious. I wonder. I don’t have any expectations about the outcome, but it’ll certainly feel better to me, too, to be in that good feeling rather than judging her.

Same when I’m dealing with myself. It always feels better to understand that there is wisdom in everything that we’re doing. And we’re always trying to connect to home base, which is our natural state of being.

I hope that’s been helpful. And that it helps you to be a little more patient with yourself, no matter what’s going on. I hope you’re doing well and taking good care and I will talk to you again next week. Bye.

Featured image photo by Sergey Shmidt on Unsplash