You may become conscious of your inner victim when you experience rejection, violation, injustice, inequality, prejudice, and blame for things you did not do. It is easy to point a finger at someone else, but to take responsibility for your actions, beliefs, and the roles you play in the victim drama is much more difficult, requiring you to grow, change your perspective, be courageous, and stand up for yourself and what you believe in.

It can be easy to allow the victim to take over when you feel that life is unfair. The victim can keep you safe, making you judge others superficially, holding on to past pain, or dealing with life destructively.

Shadow Victim: Life Is Too Hard!

When someone is in the victim state, they feel vulnerable, weak, and defeated. They are unable to stand up for themselves and create healthy boundaries. The victim enjoys getting sympathy from as many people as possible. Energetically, the victim drains whoever it is around and often finds reasons why nothing is going to work, why they will fail, or why they will end up in an unpleasant situation.

The shadow victim often avoids con?ict or confrontation but feels comfortable gossiping and speaking negatively behind people’s backs. This archetype also perpetuates the belief that life is too hard, that there is no point in trying, and that if you give things a go, you might end up alone and worse off than before. The victim makes you feel sorry for yourself.

Embracing the Victim: The Light Side

The light side of the victim is the victorious part that helps you take responsibility for your reactions and gives you the courage to take positive actions in challenging situations.

Through this archetype, you begin to understand your relationship with power, courage, self-worth, personal boundaries, honesty, endurance, and self-respect. As the victim often arises in personal relationships, the light side can teach you to hold your power without getting angry, nasty, or vicious with others.

People can misinterpret empowerment as aggression. However, genuine empowerment is about connecting to your intuition and acting from a place of wisdom and compassion. The victorious part encourages you to heal past hurts and see them as opportunities to grow and become stronger.

Stacey’s Story: Accepting the Victim

Stacey was a very successful stylist. In fact, she worked with the rich and famous, helping them look great! After twenty years in the industry, Stacey felt that her life was out of control and decided to take a break. However, deep inside, she felt like a victim, and without a job, living alone in a big city, and about to turn fifty, she found herself feeling miserable and useless.

Stacey’s parents lived in a different state, and she had not spoken with them in years, as she blamed them for a lot of the pain she had endured.

Stacey’s only daughter lived overseas, and they had limited contact. Stacey joined yoga classes and signed up for personal development workshops in order to get her confidence back, but she didn’t feel better, as her inner victim was too strong.

When she discovered there were no quick fixes, Stacey became angry, judgmental, jealous, and spiteful. She alienated all her friends by making nasty comments and pushing them away whenever they tried to help. In fact, she proclaimed that she was taking back her power, while in reality, she was disempowering herself and using anger to protect herself from feeling vulnerable and receiving help.

In her mind, Stacey told herself that she was better than everyone else. However, in reality, she felt depressed and useless. Her body was reacting through allergies, food intolerances, and eventually an autoimmune disease.

The more Stacey explored her shadow side and owned the victim aspect of herself, the more alive she felt. She understood that her patterns were coming from her family line — her mother and grandmother in particular. She also felt angry about how women had been treated for many centuries and was directing this energy against the men in her life.

Stacey decided that she would be gentler with herself, and that she needed time to process what was stored in her body and mind so that she could truly transform. She spent several years working with the shadow and light aspects of herself, forgave her family, and slowly improved her relationships with them. Eventually, Stacey went on a six-month trip with her daughter, where they reconnected, had fun, and shared new perspectives on life. While traveling, Stacey also met Christopher, a wonderful man who practiced Tibetan medicine and helped her heal her body and open her heart.

Although Stacey no longer felt like a victim, she knew that she had to be aware that her victim archetype would continue to show her areas in her life where she had difficulty taking responsibility or felt hurt.

Process for Working with Your Archetypal Energy: Meditate for Change

Sit with a straight spine. Take some deep breaths. Make a fist with the fingers of both hands. Place your fists just above your belly button, with both your fists and the thumbs touching.

Imagine that there is a red fire burning in front of you.

Next, imagine that the victim aspect of you comes and sits by the fire. Without words, it shows you moments in your life where you felt and behaved like a victim. It also gives you an insight into the choices you made based on a victim point of view and the consequences of those choices.

Now imagine a huge television screen materializing in front of you. A different aspect appears — one that looks a little like the victim, except it is confident, clear, and fearless. This is the victorious part of you. It turns on the television and shows you some potential futures you may experience if you choose to live your life from an empowered perspective.

©2013 by Inna Segal. Reprinted with permission 
from Atria Books/Beyond Words Publishing.
All Rights Reserved. www.beyondword.com

Article Source

The Secret of Life Wellness: The Essential Guide to Life's Big Questions
by Inna Segal.

Whether your challenge is physical, mental, emotional, or practical, Inna Segal helps you tap into your internal guidance system to achieve comprehensive wellness. With simple wisdom and easy and impactful exercises that can be integrated into one's day-to-day life, she clears away the complexity to offer 'must have tools' for healing, transformation and evolution. 

Click here for more info and/or to order this book on Amazon. 

About the Author

Inna Segal is an internationally recognized healer, professional speaker, author and television host as well as a gifted healer and pioneer in the field of energy medicine and human consciousness. She can 'see' illness and blocks in a person's body by intuitive means, explain what is occurring, and guide people through self-healing processes. Inna dedicates herself to assisting others in their journey of self-healing and empowerment. Her practical healing techniques, healing frequency, internet presence, and radio and television appearances are changing the lives of millions of people around the world.