[screeconc]

This is all really complicated, and telling the difference between those things is the hard part, even when you think you might know the answer.

This has been on my mind a lot because of some circumstances I found myself in that ended up being disastrous. When I complained to a good friend, he would often characterize me as just being too negative or something. For years what I would do is the stoic thing, sort of tell myself I was just making too big of a deal about it, and so forth and so on.

At some point though I realized my problem was the opposite, that I wasn't making a big enough deal about it, I wasn't taking enough action, and by the time I understood what was going on, it was basically too late.

In my case, I think the problem was that I didn't know how bad things really were, because I didn't have any frame of reference for anything else. I didn't know how it should be, so I didn't understand how far things were off. And my friends projected, assumed that where I was, things were like where they were at, that if I complained about Serious Problem X, I really meant Less Serious Problem Y, even though I actually meant Serious Problem X.

When this goes on long enough, and no one really knows what's going on -- you can't help yourself because you don't recognize what's happening, and no one around you is helping for whatever reason -- it can look like you're wallowing in victimhood when it's really just that no one is really identifying the actual source of the problem. There might not be any real victims involved, or maybe everyone is a victim. It doesn't matter.

At the risk of sounding pedantic, this is the essence of classical Western tragedy: no one is really a victim, they're just screwed in ways no one forsees.

[em-bee]

this is indeed a challenge. when you have no friends who take you really seriously, when you have no-one who can give you a frame of reference to your situation, when the issue is sensitive that you can't really talk about all the details with everyone, and you have no-one who you can trust with those details...

it's almost impossible to get out of that. you really need that friend that can validate your feelings and can help you confirm that you are taking the right steps to get out of that problem, especially when those steps are counter your intuition, or counter to what you think everyone else around expects from you.

[kelseyfrog]

Well made points. Expanding on one part, there is a social contingent who gatekeeps victimhood itself. In their eyes they see too much victimhood and decide that the solution is that less people should be calling themselves victims. Would some victims do well to shift the locus of control inward, sure, but that's probably best left to the victim to decide rather than being decided for them.

Part of this behavior denies victimhood as a form of social control. It's a malignant form of denying victim hood and it's most dangerous form

[s1artibartfast]

This raises the interesting question of why victims seek external validation in the first place.

I think it is often the case that victims are seeking something, so it seems natural for the cohort to gatekeep. If someone were to ask me for special consideration or treatment on account of being a victim, I want to know they are genuine.