Who Are You Becoming When You Let Go of Victim Thinking?
Strong Isn’t the Only Option
I’ve been thinking a lot about being a victim lately.
Several years ago, shortly after Mike was diagnosed with a rare autoimmune disease, my therapist told me he thought I was the strongest woman he knew. I looked at him and asked, “What are my other options? Because I’m tired of being the strong one.”
Without missing a beat, he replied, “You could be a victim.”
I thought about that conversation all the way home—90 miles. I turned it over in my mind, looking at it from every angle. By the time I pulled into the driveway, I’d made a decision.
Being a victim didn’t fit who I wanted to be.
Looking back, I realize that was a moment of tremendous awareness. It wasn’t that I had chosen to be strong. It was that I had decided how I wanted to respond to the circumstances life had handed me.
When Circumstances Feel Bigger Than You
Lately, though, I’ve caught myself feeling like a victim again. Not because of one dramatic event, but because of those quieter moments when life feels out of my control.
When plans change.
When someone needs me.
When another responsibility lands on my plate.
When I feel obligated to help, to say yes, or simply to go along with what everyone else needs.
Those moments have made me stop and ask myself a difficult question: Am I responding from compassion—or from victim thinking?
As I sat with that question, another realization surfaced. Over the years I’ve made excuses for why certain things weren’t working for me. “It’s an old boys club, and I don’t fit in.” More recently it’s sounded like, “I don’t know enough people to make this work.”
There may be truth in those statements, but when I repeat them often enough, they become stories that keep me from moving forward. They quietly shift responsibility away from me and onto my circumstances.
Honestly—and this is hard to admit—they sound a lot like victim thinking.
When I believe those stories, I stop taking consistent action. I hesitate, shrink, and wait for something outside of me to change instead of asking myself what I can do today.
That realization stings.
It also reminds me that I have a choice.
When Our Roles Become Our Identity
Photo courtesy Richard Ohmart
Being a caregiver makes it especially easy to slip into victim thinking. Life revolves around someone else’s needs. Plans change without warning. Emergencies become normal. Boundaries blur because the person you love genuinely needs you.
During Mike’s illness, there were times we had to drive across Kansas with almost no notice for medical appointments or treatments. It made it difficult to do my job as Tourism Director. Even more than that, I struggled with my own image of who I was.
Was I a tourism director?
A caregiver?
A wife?
Some days I wasn’t sure anymore.
After Mike died, those questions became even louder. We’d been together for thirty-four years, and I’d spent five and a half years caring for him. Without those roles, who was I?
Fortunately, another part of my life had already begun to grow. During the last two and a half years of Mike’s illness, I was training to become an Equine Gestaltist. Horses had been part of my life for as long as I could remember. They weren’t something new—they were something I was rediscovering.
Today, that work has become a significant part of my identity, but it isn’t the whole picture. I’m also a photographer, a designer, a writer, a singer, a mother, a grandmother, and a friend. Each role reflects a different part of me. None of them alone defines who I am.
Like a kaleidoscope, each piece matters. Together they create the whole image.
Who Are You Becoming?
The longer I sit with all of this, the more I realize that victim thinking rarely announces itself. It usually arrives disguised as obligation. As excuses. As fear. As the belief that someone else has all the power.
Awareness allows us to recognize those stories before they become our identity.
Awareness gives us a choice.
We can continue telling ourselves the stories that keep us small, or we can begin writing new ones that reflect who we are becoming instead of who we’ve always believed ourselves to be.
So, I’ll leave you with the question I’ve been asking myself.
Who are you becoming?
If the roles you’ve carried for years suddenly disappeared, what parts of yourself would still remain? What stories are keeping you small? And what new story is waiting to be written?
If those questions stir something inside you, I’d love to invite you to explore them with me through The Kaleidoscope Within. Together we’ll gently uncover the many pieces that make you who you are, helping you reconnect with yourself beyond the labels, expectations, and obligations you’ve carried.
If you’d like to discover more about yourself, click the button below to schedule a Zoom conversation. We’ll explore whether working together—and with the horses—is the right next step for your journey.
Every story needs a soundtrack.
This is the one I’ve chosen for this post—sometimes because of the title, sometimes the lyrics, sometimes simply the feeling it stirs in me.
