When I started university, I met a girl. She was funny, pretty, and kind, and I completely fell in love with her. It was an amazing feeling. The problem was that I was very shy and introverted, and sometimes connecting with others wasn’t easy. Because I didn’t have confidence in myself, and I was the only one who seemed to have this issue, I assumed that something was wrong with me.
All these insecurities, and the fact that it was the first time I fell in love, made everything difficult. Our conversations were boring and superficial, and I couldn’t find the way to get to know her. I wanted, but I didn’t know how. It was frustrating. A time later, I decided to tell her I was in love. She didn’t seem interested in me as much as I was in her, but I did it anyway. She said no, and that hurt.
This experience worsened my insecurities and led to me rejecting some parts of myself. Several months later, I was reading Edith’s book The Choice and found this.
Suffering is universal. But victimhood is optional. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. We are all likely to be victimized in some way in the course of our lives. At some point we will suffer some kind of affliction or calamity or abuse, caused by circumstances or people or institutions over which we have little or no control. This is life. And this is victimization. It comes from outside.
In contrast, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim’s mind – a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailors when we choose the confines of the victim’s mind.
Her words about victimization and victimhood helped me understand myself better. I realized that part of my shyness came from caring too much about what others thought about me. That’s a victim’s mentality. Being hard on myself when I failed at something is also a victim’s mentality. Being stuck in the past, wishing that I did things differently, or when I blamed others when things didn’t go as I wanted, is also a victim’s mentality.
Edith has another definition for developing a victim’s mind, “when we put the focus outside of ourselves,when you look outside yourself for someone to blame for your present circumstances, or to determine your purpose, fate, or worth.” When that girl rejected me, I thought the main problem was that she didn’t love me, but I was wrong. I was putting the focus outside of myself. The desire to love and be loved is human, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But I realized that the only place where I was looking for affection and approval was on the outside. The most important relationship is the one you have with yourself, and I completely neglected this. That’s what I believe Edith meant when she said that we develop a victim’s mind when we place the focus outside of ourselves.
“No one can take away from you what you’ve put in your mind.” These were the words Edith’s mother told her when they arrived at Auschwitz. These were also the words she repeated herself again and again when she needed to find strength under those terrible conditions.
What happened to Edith was unfair and shameful. But in a situation where most people would have broken down, Edith persevered. She was victimized, but she refused to act like a victim. Somehow, she realized she had something that no one could take away from her: to give meaning to her own experience.
Edith’s insights about how to deal with suffering are profound. They made even more sense to me when I discovered the story of the professional boxer Rubin Carter. In 1966, Rubin Carter was wrongly accused of a crime he did not commit, and after a biased trial, Carter was convicted of triple murder. Nineteen years and two trials later, he was released from prison.
Carter, too, knew the difference between victimization and victimhood. Later in his life, he explained what he thought about his time in prison: “Go beyond yourself in these arduous conditions. Don’t give in to your captors. Realize this is an opportunity, instead of a tragedy. It’s an opportunity because now you don’t have […] all the trappings of civility. You have time; you have space on your hands. Use it.”
Edith and Carter’s stories show that you may be experiencing something that sucks, but that doesn’t mean there is nothing you can do. There is a difference between victimization and victimhood. That no one can make you a victim but you is a powerful idea, one like finding a retreat inside yourself. You are not powerless. You can choose how you respond, and this is always within reach.