A MOTHER WHO IS A victim will be in the habit of always focusing on what’s wrong with the people in her life.
She is projecting her own internal anxiety on others. She feels bad inside, so she looks outside for a “cause” to pin that feeling on. That way, she never has to reinvent. She never has to travel inward and grow strong and new, she just projects.
So when her daughter gets good grades in everything but math, she can’t stop talking about the math. When the family goes to a picnic with other family members and this mother is asked how Jennifer is doing, she says, “Oh pretty well! All her grades were quite good except for math. Right, honey?” she smiles at her daughter. “We’re going to have to work on the math. We’re very concerned about her math.”
Someone at the picnic joins the conversation midway and says, “Jennifer’s doing well in school?”
And Jennifer looks at her mother and says, in a shy voice, “Except for math.”
“Yes,” her mother says. “We’re very worried about her math. I don’t know whether we’ll be doing summer school or using a tutor.”
Soon, Jennifer’s entire self-image is focused on her trouble in math. Who Jennifer becomes to herself and to her mother is someone who is having trouble with math. Like Kevin Costner’s movie character took the name “Dances With Wolves,” Jennifer might as well take the name “Trouble With Math.” Soon we don’t even remember what her real name is or her good subjects were. She might have gotten an A in a particularly challenging English course, but that no longer has any reality to Jennifer because her mother is obsessed with her failure in math.
Without knowing it, Jennifer’s mother has actually reduced the chances that Jennifer will improve in math. In fact, what Jennifer’s mother is doing is pretty much guaranteeing that Jennifer will spend the rest of her life seeing herself as a girl named “Trouble With Math.”
Jennifer’s mother doesn’t do this because she is evil and wants to hurt Jennifer. She does it because she is projecting. Victims project their inadequacies on others.
Listen to victims speak, and it’s always about other people, and how disappointing they are.
All victims do this all day long. It takes no imagination, no courage, and no energy to do it. It is the default mechanism of the human mind, just as weeds are the default mechanism of the garden.
If Jennifer’s mother were to know that she is an owner of the human spirit, she would talk about Jennifer’s good grades everywhere she went. She would realize that what we focus on grows. Even if someone asked about Jennifer’s math, she would say, “Math is coming; it’s on its way to being great like the others. She’s going to be great at math because no one can get an A in an English class as hard as that one and not be able to absolutely do anything she wants in school.”
Now Jennifer would have the freedom to play around with doing a little better at math. There is no pressure. There is nothing wrong. There is nothing wrong with Jennifer! Imagine Jennifer living in a world where there is nothing wrong with Jennifer.
Victim mothers and fathers are always drawn to their children’s shortcomings, because they are always projecting their own. A criticism is a projectile.
Seeing other people’s faults is the easiest thing we do. It can be done with very little thinking. But it’s a habit that ends up damaging all our relationships.
Is Jennifer herself ruined by having a mother like this? Will she become depressed and try to take shortcuts to happiness for the rest of her life? No, not necessarily. Jennifer is free to invent herself in any direction she wants. But she’s beginning with something that feels like a disadvantage.
For Jennifer to invent herself as an owner she will have to learn for herself how the mind and spirit work. But that’s fine, because we all have to do that anyway. No matter how good the parenting was, this owner-victim thing has to be learned on your own. In the end, whether we put our energy into victim or owner, we must experience that as a choice to have any happiness at all. Happiness is in the energy choice.
Psychiatrist Peter Breggin says, “If a person has the energy—the vitality—to become ‘manic’ or ‘depressive,’ then he or she also has the energy to live an extraordinarily rich and satisfying life.”
When a child’s attention has been repeatedly directed at “what’s wrong with me?” it is very easy for the child not to enter adult life with a feeling of “I’m not good enough.”
However, in my workshops and ownership coaching I see, almost daily, people who completely liberate themselves from their self-image formed in childhood. I see people who decide to leave their personalities behind and build a life based on what’s right with them, not what’s wrong.
If you were shrunk as a child, don’t carry the work forward. Don’t continue to shrink yourself. Don’t pretend you are weaker than you are. As Nelson Mandela once said in a speech to his nation, “There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.”
The first step is total acceptance of the fact that your parents and guardians did the best they knew how and were only motivated by concern for your future. Blaming them only deepens your self-invention as a victim. Understanding your parents and the effects of their words on you is the way to gain freedom from them.
The second step is to revise your estimate of yourself based on the facts, not on hurt feelings. Study and highlight what’s good. Build on your actual strengths. And when you see something in you that’s weak, look at it as a welcome opportunity for new growth and adventure. Happiness comes from growth, not comfort. So why be sad about a chance to grow?
Don’t get hooked into the habit of sadness about your past. It’s easy to do. Sadness is an addiction. It is almost identical to an addiction to tranquilizers. Watch Glenn Close play Sunny von Bulow in Reversal of Fortune to see what addiction to tranquilizers does to the human spirit and demeanor.
Addiction to sadness mimics that addiction to chemical “downers” exactly. It’s a version of the same downer—the same slow, low moaning in the speech, the same sluggish and weary demeanor.
If you look in the mirror and see any form of this sadness, make a decision to notice it and let it embrace you. Do not resist. It’s just an invention anyway. Then, once it bores you because you’ve let so much of it express for so long, invent a new part to play. Give yourself a fresh start in this fresh moment. You will notice that if you don’t try to resist the negative, it will pass right away on its own. Your mind has an automatic refresh button.
You can ask, “If all the world were a stage, and I were playing a part, is this really who I would want to be?” Then, invent who it is that you really want to be. Take the actions that person would take. Just for fun. Just to reinvent.
Reinvention is about options. You have options. When it comes to who you want to be in any circumstance, you have options. Exercise your options.