I’m sure you are a very nice guy and a wonderful human being. That can all be true, and EVEN IN THE FACE of that solid REALITY, it is still possible for you to do things that trigger other people (their unconscious emotional baggage) and cause them to (temporarily) feel negative feelings toward you.
Consider that human lives are VERY FRAGILE … we’re all incredibly vulnerable to causality, fate and random accidents. This simple truth is very stressful to most all of us.
The Buddhists learned thousands of years ago, that when a person reflects a part of yourself that you don’t want to face/see/acknowledge (ie denial), that you will JUDGE and PROJECT those feared/resented qualities onto them. It’s the way your mind distances itself from things it’s not ready to feel or face. It does this to preserve homeostasis of identity and worldview.
And when you posture up, from the very beginning, with this “victim” energy, it reminds me of my own vulnerability. It triggers me to feel anxious and avoidant.
Don’t get me wrong … it’s my own thought process and interpretive framework that is translating your raw energetics (or words) of victimhood into internal distress. YOU ARE NOT RESPONSIBLE for that, I AM. But very few people are aware of how this works, or where personal responsibility truly lies. And so they’re going to blame and resent you, due to their own meaning-making apparatus.
The same phenomena is happening with all slurs and negative terms. It’s the underpinning of the cancel-culture and SJW movement. And it’s simply an error. Consider how many very intuitive and brilliant black people have commandeered the n-word. By making it their own, they have disarmed the rednecks and eliminated a psychological/emotional threat. Many of them see this quite clearly …
People blaming you for their inner (self-created) state, is not reasonable, accurate or fair, but that’s still the way our world operates.
I’m quite mindful and introspective, and I understand deeply how this all works. And yet, when I received 3 questions from you, all delivered with an energetic of wounded helplessness, even I (if I’m honest) felt some temporary resentment toward you.
And then I reminded myself that your posture is a gift to me … you helped remind me of what I’m denying and avoiding … what I’m hiding from myself. After that, I began to feel appreciation for you. But most people cannot, and will not do this. Again, it’s not your fault, but thats the universe we’ve inherited.
So if you REALLY want people to respond differently to you, you’re going to have to shift the way you relate to yourself. If you symbolize the thing that MOST PEOPLE REPRESS (i.e. victimhood and vulnerability) and deny (to themselves), then it’s not going to go well for you in the social realm.
I’m sorry to tell you this, but it’s just a bald-faced fact …
These are the three questions you sent me. Please sit with them and try to develop a “felt-sense” for how a self-reliant personality would react to this worldview. If you step into Charles Bronsen (or John Wayne) shoes, HOW does his body react when he reads these representations/narratives??
- In my childhood, why didn’t I know that people would falsely despise me?
- In real life, do victims often suffer extra harm?
- Why do I want people to know that I’m a victim, why don’t I want people to despise me?
Get some support and you can break this cycle … now that you understand it, you can see how it’s happening!! Good luck!!
Dewey Gaedcke’s answer to How do you teach people accountability and to stop being a victim?