How to Break Free of Negative Patterns

When it rains, it pours. And your umbrella broke last week.

No one understands you. You’re constantly bending over backward for the benefit of others.

Everything seems out of your control and it feels like you’re bearing burdens no one else has to. You might even be asking yourself, why does this keep happening to me? Why do I keep repeating the same patterns?

If your catchphrase has become “Why me?” you’re not alone.

What’s tricky is once one of these things happens to you, it seems like you can almost predict it’s going to keep happening.

At some point, we all have a Victim mindset. Having a Victim mindset is a term used in Conscious Leadership, it does not mean you are a victim.

Having a Victim mindset means you are “below the line” and responding to your life circumstances in this way.

You will know you are in a Victim mindset in the drama triangle when you feel everything is happening to you and you can not change it.

Once in a Victim mindset, you usually stay there waiting for someone else (a Hero or Rescuer) to fix the problem. But only YOU can fix the problem. Only you can shift your mindset.

You are more powerful than you probably even want to admit. You are allowed to experience – and allow others to experience – yourself as fully powerful so that you never have to take you-know-what from anybody ever again. You can stop being a victim, break out of the drama triangle, and take back your power.

What is the Drama Triangle?

The drama triangle is a social model created by Stephen Karpman. It is often referred to as the Karpman drama triangle. This is a model of human dysfunctional social interactions and the roles humans tend to play. There are three different flavors of powerlessness in the Drama Triangle, and they are the Victim, the Hero (Rescuer), and the Villain (Persecutor).

Now I want to be clear. We are talking about a victimhood mindset, a stance that says, “I am not the creator of my circumstances. I am not the creator of my reality and I’m not responsible for what’s happening around me.”

That is very, very different from the use of the word victim is completely appropriate and real when you are the victim of oppression or circumstances truly out of your control. This framework is not describing being a victim in that sense.

Victim mode in this context refers to a loss of accountability, a loss of power, and an adaptable mindset.

What is Victim Mode?

The Victim mode is the prototypical drama experience. It’s a mode where you feel like life is happening to you and you are living at the effect of your circumstances.

Typically in victim mode, you don’t see that you’ve had any role in creating the circumstances. In this mode, you’re going to say things like “this is hard”… “I have to”… “They made me”… “There’s nothing I can do.”

At the heart of victimhood, you stop claiming your full power. And when you are not claiming our full power, you suffer.

In fact, it’s the only thing that ever leads to suffering. When you’re not claiming your full power, you are not owning your full responsibility or your full creativity.

By adopting a victim mindset, you have the potential to create harm and suffering around you. Victims invite others into drama and act in ways typically working against them and what they most desire.

When you’re in drama, you can get obsessed with the forces you believe are working against you.

You’ll stop noticing all the things working for you. You stop noticing the resources and opportunities around you. You are not able to make a positive impact.

How Victim Mode Becomes a Self Fulfilling Cycle

When you go into victim mode, you give your power away.

You are the only one who can give your power away. When you don’t realize you are giving away power, you become a magnet for further erosion of your power, pleasure, creativity, success, fulfillment, and aliveness.

Labeling yourself as weak and powerless and helpless facilitates a victim type of life. You become a magnet for negative circumstances arising around you.

You become the creator of negative circumstances around you.

Bitter pill, right?

This is hard and life-changing work. Hardly anyone wants to acknowledge you are responsible and you created the circumstances you are claiming not to like.

It all starts with you…. always.

The AWESOME thing is you are also responsible for creating your positive and healthy circumstances.

You always have a choice.

First Steps To Getting Out of Victim Mode

Here are the steps to helping to resolve this negative spiral when you go below the line.

First, become aware.

Where are you? Where are you in terms of your context? Are you in powerful mode or powerless mode?

Then get specific. Are you being a victim, a hero, or a villain?

It’s crucial for conscious leaders to notice when you are in victim mode, not owning your power and not taking responsibility for your choices.  Noticing is a step towards being able to make conscious choices.

The second step is ownership. Take responsibility for making non-conscious choices because you were scared, tired, or whatever reason.

Now recognize you’re still lovable!

You are lovable, in all forms and modes. Even though you get scared sometimes and make choices non-consciously – you are always lovable and perfectly human. You can learn and grow.

You are allowed to go into victim mode, but once you recognize you’re doing it, you’re also allowed to make a different choice to shift.

Power is Simple

Power is simpler than we often make it out to be.

Power is not about your body language. It’s not about your clothes or your height. It’s not about your title or accolades. You have access to power, influence, resilience, creativity when you are present.

Why?

Because the here and now is the only place where action can happen. Here and now gives you the moment of choice.

Choice is the action of the powerful. You can make conscious choices benefiting you.

It can look like eating a cookie or choosing not to drink that Coke. It can look like choosing not to go on vacation or choosing to quit your job. It’s not about the activity you’re doing, it’s about your inner context as you make choices.

Start by finding your context and then shift your choices.

XO,