Transforming Trauma: From Victimhood to Personal Accountability

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What if the key to healing from trauma lies not in blaming others but in examining our own roles in the cycle of pain? Our latest episode invites you to join a transformative conversation with our guest, who bravely shares his journey from feeling victimized by life's adversities to recognizing his part in perpetuating trauma. With raw honesty, he recounts the struggles with alcohol that once defined him and reflects on the impactful relationship with his father, challenging the narratives he used to hold about being "not good enough." This powerful narrative urges us to reconsider the dynamics of victim and victimizer, and how our expectations can profoundly affect those around us.

Listen as we explore the courage it takes to shift from a victim mentality to one of personal accountability and healing. Our guest's insights push the boundaries of traditional healing by emphasizing the importance of acknowledging our influence on others’ traumas. This episode promises to leave you pondering the complexities of forgiveness, responsibility, and the mutual healing journey. Through this eye-opening discussion, we aim to inspire listeners to not only embrace their healing path but also consider their potential to heal those they once perceived as oppressors.

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

What you recommend to a gentleman that has been mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually abused himself? How do you help him? How would you help him kind of move through that? Anybody that's identifying with that is in a victim mentality. For one, I've been abused, okay. Well, maybe you have, maybe you haven't, but your mind is telling you you've been abused and that's well, maybe you have, maybe you haven't, but that your mind is telling you you've been abused and that's moved you to a victim mentality and, honestly, you've just made yourself the world's biggest magnet. The second thing is like you don't know what you don't know.

Speaker 1: 0:33

I dealt with this for a long time. I'll be brutally honest with you and share a little bit, if that's all right. Like I've had drinking problems in my life, you know, and it's like that's part of my story if you check any of my stuff out, I talk about that and for the longest time I blamed my father and said I was never good enough. I could never please him. I was never good enough. Recently I've come to the conclusion he was never good enough for me. If I'm being brutally honest. His job wasn't prestigious enough. The house he put us in wasn't good enough. The clothes he closed me in wasn't good enough, the food he put on my table wasn't to my liking, the hotels we stayed on didn't have enough stars, we didn't go out to eat enough, and I vocalized that to him over and over again. And it's like the number of times that I told my father he wasn't good enough I can't count. The number of times he told me I wasn't good enough was zero.

Speaker 1: 1:23

And for the longest period of my life I made the statement I had a drinking problem because I was never good enough for my father and I was trying to escape from that. But if I'm being honest, did my father have a drinking problem because he was never good enough for me and he was trying to escape from me? Is that the truth, you know? And it's like, straight away I'm like it takes me out of it, takes me out of the victim mode and makes me the victimizer. And again, for years I said I spoke in ways like my father's fixed his ways and we've made up and I've forgiven him. Like there's humility in me and I'm able to forgive. And the reality is it's like it's the other way around. It's the other way around. It's like for for 20 years growing up. I told him repeatedly he wasn't good enough for me. Never once did I think. Never once did I think that I was causing him trauma and I would I would encourage anybody that's in a position that's going I'm traumatized, okay, well, I understand and I accept that I was traumatized, but I caused the trauma, I was responsible for the trauma and I also inflicted the trauma on other people.

Speaker 1: 2:36

So I would encourage you to yes, you're traumatized, I'm not going to belittle that. But I would also encourage you to move out of that victim mode and say well, maybe I'm responsible as well for inflicting trauma on others and maybe it's my role to heal other people. Maybe it's not for me to sit here at this point and just take and saying you need to heal me because I'm traumatized. That that would be the productive position I would take.