We may have experienced being told that we are "too hard on ourselves," or that we are "our own worst enemy." These "diagnoses" do not offer us any insight into the psychodynamics of our self-punitive behavior. Why do we do this to ourselves? Perhaps now we can begin to see our self-criticisms and self-punishments as self-victimization, in a context of self-contempt. The facets of self-victimization become more apparent when we know where and how to look for them.
Sufferers from the "Blame The Victim Syndrome," often blame themselves for the negative things that happen to them. Cara, our self-harmer, falls into this category. This is one of her early recollections:
Cara (age six): "I remember one time I went skating when I wasn't supposed to. My father said that it was too dangerous and I was too young. He had a violent temper. I fell and fractured my wrist. I was afraid to tell anyone, so it just healed by itself. It didn't heal right. It still bothers me today." In this recollection, Cara actively chooses to suffer the pain of her broken wrist in silence. She feels that it is her fault for disobeying her father and she deserves to suffer in silence. Also, she prefers this physical pain to the pain of her father's violent reaction to her disobedience.
As an adult, Cara continues to make decisions, which turn out to be painful for her in the end. When she cuts her arm, it is not that she enjoys the pain, she is not a masochist. Her choices are consistent with the way she perceives herself; she is now, and has always been, the victim of herself. She is relieving the pressure of the anger in her bloodstream and is in control of the "punishment." She is making her pain happen at a time and place of her own choosing. She is creating mischief and excitement in order to relieve the unutterable "boredom" of her despair and self-contempt. She is maintaining the continuity of her life role as the victim of self-inflicted pain.
It is bad enough when others blame us for "permitting" our victimization through "negligence," "stupidity" or even our "dumb luck." It is even worse when we make the mistake of taking their assessment of us at face value and agreeing with them that we are the author of our own distress. Some of us are so well "trained" to accept guilt, fault and responsibility that, when there is no one around to pin the rap on us, we do it to ourselves. We compound our pain and exacerbate it with fictitious guilt and unwarranted anger at ourselves. We are the victims of us.
It seems so illogical. There is no reason for it. Not a rational reason, anyway. Some "reasons" are not intellectual, they are emotional and are derived from the subjective attitudes that we have about ourselves. For instance, one "reason" we inflict abuse upon ourselves is that when we are confronted with the choice of letting others blame us, which we have learned from experience that they are going to do, we beat them to the punch by blaming ourselves first. It hurts less that way. It is the lesser misery that we prefer, to the even worse pain of letting others punish us.
Dave (age eleven): "I'll never get over this. I've never told anyone, it's so embarrassing. I was in sixth grade and I was very shy and self-conscious. One day, I saw a new kid in the schoolyard waiting for the doors to open. We began to talk and really got into it. I got so carried away that I offered to introduce him to my friends and show him around. As we were going upstairs to the classroom, I realized that I didn't have any friends. I didn't know any more people than he did. I had done it to myself again. I bit off more than I could chew, trying to look good. The friendship was over. I never talked to that kid again. I just cut him loose to drift for himself. I've regretted the whole thing ever since."
Dave is describing a perfectly normal, but painful, example of overcompensation for his own feelings of inferiority, of dreaming himself momentarily into a fictitious popularity that he wished he had. His all too human good intentions for his new friend crashed around his ears. His secret "inadequacy" to socialize was exposed for all the world to see. It was devastating to his shaky, half-formed self-respect. He felt guilty and angry at himself for his "stupidity." He confirmed his previously held conviction that he was his own worst enemy, the victim of his own out-of-control tongue.
Verbal self-victimizers may have periodic "attacks" of self-sabotage throughout their lives. They may, under stress, find themselves babbling like a second-grader or saying exactly the opposite of what they intended to say. Afterwards, they feel like "kicking themselves" for their gaffe, which would compound the self-victimization they have already inflicted.
There is a range of severity to all of these facets of self-contempt. Some individuals may have an extreme case of verbal self-flagellation and put their foot in their mouth every ten minutes. Others may slip up once every five years or so. Yet another group may suffer from a situational form of the aberration. Under stress, such as a divorce or a death in the family, they may revert to a less self-respecting orientation and make slips that they would never have made otherwise.
In extreme cases, these painful "choices" serve the purpose of maintaining and perpetuating the individual's lifestyle as the "Self-Victimizer." If these individuals ever stopped victimizing themselves, they would lose the role that they have been playing all their lives. They do not know what would take the place of this unhappy role and they are afraid to find out. These choices are not made consciously or deliberately in the present. Some people imagine that these self-destructive choices "prove" that the individual "enjoys" suffering. They do not. Unself-respecting people feel that they do not "deserve" to make decisions that will make them happy and successful. Their lifestyle is not consistent with happiness or success. It is consistent with unhappiness and failure. They arrange to keep themselves unhappy and unsuccessful by the decisions that they make or fail to make.
The Negative Payoffs
The self-victimizer's only consolation is the "triumph" they experience when they are able to outsmart the fates, for example, by arranging to experience a lesser pain instead of a greater pain. They have no way of knowing in advance which pain will be which; they only imagine that they do and they behave accordingly. After every disaster, they can comfort themselves by saying, "It could have been worse." They have no hope of it ever being better. This "triumph," fictitious as it is, is their payoff for making the self-victimizing decision. They go on making these decisions, because they cannot see why they should stop. To them, it is better than no payoff at all. Besides, it is the only kind of payoff that they deserve.
For people who feel that the victimization is the result of their "stupid" decisions or choices, self-inflicted pain is perceived as the appropriate "punishment" for their crimes of stupidity. This, too, is a payoff. They imagine that they have arranged for "justice to be served" through their well-deserved punishment. "I had it coming." They have averted the guilt that they would have felt if they had failed to punish themselves. This way, their self-inflicted pain entitles them to feel morally superior to those who are not "strong" enough to mete out the self-punishment that they "deserve."
Self-victimization is mischief. It does not need to be done. Self-victimizers do it because it serves their private purpose. Their negative purpose, in turn, is consistent with their negative self-percept, their self-contempt. We all too often make the mistake of focusing our energies on the act of victimization itself and not on the purpose that the activity serves. Drug abuse, alcoholism, gambling, self-harm (arm slashing), teen pregnancy, job failure and gang involvement are all ways of committing suicide on the installment plan. They all guarantee an unhappy existence. The momentary excitement of self-destructive behavior is no substitute for happiness, but negative excitement is all that these luckless people deserve. Their self-contempt makes them "Allergic To Happiness." It does not make them "Allergic To Misery."
These are the negative, usually unconscious, goals of self-destructive mischief:
Attention & Service: These people may have learned that they can get (negative) attention from the home folks by behaving self-destructively. When people come running, their self-victimization pays off. However, when the wounds heal, they must find a way to open them up again. This attention serves the purpose of validating their existence in the world.
Power & Control: Unself-respecting individuals feel powerless and out-of-control. They cannot make anything constructive happen. What does that leave? It leaves them with the option of doing that which is destructive. They cannot inflict their destructive powers on another party because the role of the "Other-Victimizer" has been taken by their big brother or sister. The only option that is left is to victimize themselves. In fact, they can even control, to some extent, the time and the place of their victimization. They wait until Mother is coming up the stairs to take their drug overdose. She rescues them in the nick of time. That is power and control. They are flirting with the power of life and death. This is the big time. They have "won" this time, but their success does not relieve their underlying feelings that they are powerless and out-of-control. They must repeat the procedure until their self-victimization becomes permanent.
Revenge: Self-victimization is one way of expressing one's anger at oneself. These sufferers are getting revenge on themselves for a whole lifetime of guilt, recriminations and failures. By keeping their revenge just this side of terminal, they can prolong the revenge process for eighty years.
Withdrawal: Individuals who devote their time and energy to cutting themselves off at the knees are too busy to attend to the life-tasks of love, work and friendship; tasks at which they might fail. If they "fail" at the task of suicidal self-victimization, they often have the feeling that, "I can't even do that right." Their friends will be relieved at their "good fortune" in not dying, but they can always try it again. In the meantime, they are exempt from their life-tasks by virtue of their affliction, whether it is drugs, criminal tendencies or negative work attitudes. All of these activities are, to some degree, self-inflicted and self-merited. Happiness and success are not congruent with their perception of themselves as victims.
Antidote - The Third Choice
The antidote to the choice between the greater pain and the lesser pain is the realization that there is a third choice, namely no pain at all. People who suffer from self-contempt imagine that they do not deserve happiness; all they deserve is pain and suffering. They prefer to bring it about themselves. Self-respecting people, however, feel that they deserve to be happy, no more and no less than anyone else. The issue of pain becomes irrelevant. The issue of who will inflict what upon whom does not arise. Their negative purposes have been replaced with positive ones.
For example, Cara was able to break the cycle of endless self-victimization by doing homework on her own behalf. She saw that her self-victimization became more intense when she was angry. Instead of harming herself as she "deserved," she was able to make conscious, deliberate choices in the here and now. She chose to validate her anger as a legitimate response to the current grievance. She also chose to direct her anger at the person who provoked her instead of directing it against herself. She is now able to "sort it out." She can say to herself, "Wait a minute, I didn't do it, he did it. I'm angry at him and he is going to hear about it." She did not feel ready yet to tell her friend Wayne that she was angry with him, so she compromised. She wrote him an anger letter. She relieved the pressure of her pent up anger and managed it. That is a major accomplishment. Her constructive purpose has been achieved. It had nothing to do with straightening out her friend's problem, which she was not qualified to do. In writing her anger letter, on her own terms and for her own benefit, she had earned the right to replace her perception of herself as a victim with an identity of her own as a worthwhile human being in her own right. That is the "good" that managing anger does.
