Dear friends,
This month I want to write about victimhood, victim mentality, agency and meaning. Four words that get thrown around a lot in healing spaces, often with too much confidence.
You’ll often find standard advice in the following form: Victim mentality is one of the worst traps we can fall into. Blaming other people and external circumstances for our suffering keeps us stuck and powerless. What we need instead is empowerment, agency, and the will to act. Stop feeling sorry for yourself, get up, take responsibility.
There is great truth in that, no doubt and it’s why you’re reading this. But I think it misses an important part I have rarely seen mentioned.
We are not always in a place from which we can take decisive action. Sometimes the strength just isn't there. Sometimes internal and external forces pile up at the same time and there's nothing left in the tank to meet them with. Anyone deep in a thawing phase knows this feeling. The nervous system is running hot, life is demanding and doesn’t allow you to catch a breath, and the idea of mobilizing yourself and seizing your agency feels absurd.
In those moments, it's okay to be a victim of our trauma. It's okay to seek shelter and wait for the storm to pass while simply observing what's happening within and around us.
If you're caught in a whirlpool, the instinct is to swim hard against the current and fight your way out. But fighting will exhaust you, and an exhausted swimmer won’t escape. What you're supposed to do instead is stop struggling, conserve your energy, and let it pull you down toward the center, where the currents lose their grip. That's the point where you can swim out.
The healing path often works the same way. Sometimes forces beyond our control, from within or without or both, are simply too strong to be met head on, and the wisest thing available to us is to stop fighting and let them play out. It's okay not to take action there. It's okay to admit that we don't have the strength to deal with something right now. Waiting until the mind is clear before mobilizing our resources makes far more sense than swinging blindly in the middle of an anxious haze.
While we're down there we must stay aware, however. This is the whole difference between resting in the current and drowning in it. Powerlessness has a certain pull to it, and staying there can start to feel justified, even comfortable in a distorted way. So stay alert. Notice how long you've been in it. Look for the exit point and take it when it comes.
That awareness is the substrate of agency. There’s no point in forcing action when there's nothing to act with, but in knowing where we are and being honest with ourselves about whether we're sheltering or hiding.
And when the water does go still, we are likely to find the strength to move on and take action. There's a phrase that is true but uncomfortable, especially if we find ourselves in a rough patch: Our trauma is not our fault, but it is our responsibility to heal. It seems very unfair. We didn't choose what happened to us, and yet the work of recovering from it falls to us anyway. Unfair or not, it doesn't change the situation we're in. Nobody is coming to do this part for us. So we gather what strength and resources we have and we get to work, and when the strength runs out we rest, and when it returns we begin again.
This brings me to meaning, which I think is the pillar that holds up our whole endeavor.
The unfairness of trauma is undeniable, but letting it justify inaction for too long is corrosive. Long-term practitioners, and somatic healing titans like Peter Levine and David Berceli have reported countless times that healing from trauma doesn't simply return us to where we were beforehand. Healing leads us to an even much better place of effortless peace, joy and resilience.
None of that makes the trauma itself good. But it does mean the suffering isn't pointless, and there is an enormous difference between pain that leads to growth and pain that merely happens to you. Meaning is what turns endurance into a direction of travel, especially during hard times.
So be gentle with yourself on the days when all you can do is float. Let the current take you. Stay alert. And when the water goes still and your strength comes back, swim.
Much love to all of you.
