Growing up had its normal challenges, plus some abuse that I found absolutely intolerable.

I was triggered by every injustice. That became a huge problem in my adult life because I carried it forward into my career in healthcare, and of course, into my relationships.

The one thing that happens when we play the victim card within is we get more of that from the outer world. The more I felt like things around me were unfair at work, in friendships or in a partnership, the more extreme my reactions became. Yet, I wasn’t really considering my reactions and how the outside world would receive them.

That got me into situations where people were then having more extreme reactions to me than to others, and I again felt like a victim. I couldn’t believe others wouldn’t stand up for what was right, and that was always putting me in “the hot seat” so to speak. I became a target. I wasn’t seeing that I was making myself a target.

Had I realized at a much younger age the reality of the world and culture I live in, I would not have had such high expectations that others would care as much as I do about righting the wrongs of this world, speaking truth to power and speaking truth to loved ones. As a result, I became the black sheep of my family and I also became a target of more abuse in my adult life.

The level of emotional pain in realizing that this viscous cycle was continuing in my life into middle age was excruciating. Being excluded first from my family, then from people I trusted, felt like the end of any hope I’d had for a good life. I was about to allow old wounds and bullying to cause me to give up on myself.

I Had a Choice to Make, Give Up or Get Up & Live.

At the age of 50 I really did hit a very unexpected midlife crisis. Even though I had lived life on my own and faced some really challenging times, including having a near death experience in my forties where I was alone to deal with an unexplained health issue, I still had strength, creativity and tenacity to carve out a really fun and productive life.

The problem was that I had too many unrealistic dreams and goals, and I especially had unrealistic expectations of others.

When it became clear to me that no matter what happened in my life, even of I faced homelessness, nobody was coming to save me, I was emotionally devastated. That was also a very hard pill to swallow. It was that pill, the pill I call Humble, which took me to my lowest low and I felt like I had no hope. I’d made it to my own personal hell.

I realized all I ever wanted was support. That’s what I seemed like I could never get. Yet, in my aloneness I realized that my perspective was way off. I’d chosen the life of the adventurer. I also chose to see people as differently than they actually are. I realized that this was harmful because it was creating pressure on people around me to be something they weren’t.

Then came the harsh realizations. Looking in the mirror and seeing the worst of yourself is not a fun task. Yet, when you have to force yourself through your own pain just to live, you can do it as a victim or you can do it as a self aware, respectable individual. The victim in me had kept me in the victim role, and I’d attracted the worst situations in my life because of it.

I’d actually gotten myself into more circumstances in life when I was younger, particularly in my 30s where I always trusted the wrong people because I wanted to be saved from the rat race. When you live as the vulnerable victim you attract manipulative types. It can lead to disappointment after disappointment.

Outside of love relationships, where I never settled or succeeded, I was drawn to bad faith businessmen and women. I was sexually harassed when trying to get investors for my local magazine. I was, at one time, getting to know an off grid community that ended up being a full fledged cult. And I was a doormat for a lot of people who used me because I was blindly generous. I didn’t see I was causing myself to get into these disappointing situations because I ignored red flags.

So when a list of harsh circumstances hit all at once later in life, for a brief moment I lost the will to go on. Yet, there wasn’t another choice and I also knew that. It was then – that I had to really ask myself – what is going to make me happy?

I had to keep asking myself what would make life at least tolerable for me during the remaining years, which could be decades. I felt like I had to really get serious with myself and set all the unrealistic dreams and goals aside to ask myself what kind of life I could create for myself that wouldn’t feel like a bad dream.

So I made the choice to live, first and foremost. I knew I had to find the strength to go back to the rat race and do whatever it was going to take to get my best life back.

Healing Became My Priority, and It Changed Everything.

Facing my fears, and my faults, was the beginning of my freedom. I knew I had to live. I had to go to a job that wasn’t ideal. I still had to do the dishes and the laundry. I absolutely had to get through my life even if I was full of anxiety and doubt.

I made a decision to be responsible, and alone, for my healing. I was not going to try to chase people down to listen to my victim stories. And for me, doing all of this without anger at others, even the bullies, was imperative. I knew I had to break my pattern of ruminating and wanting others to change. Others were not going to change.

I had to keep reminding myself that people were not going to change because I was uncomfortable with how they treated me and others. I had to focus on myself. I had to force myself to accept this was about me and not about other people, and that every second I wasted thinking about other people in my life, or in the media, I was not spending that time on my own healing, self care and personal progress.

I’m not going to say that this was easy. I had to continually redirect my thoughts back to myself. And I still do. There are many moments that I just cringe at the many injustices of this world both locally, nationally, and globally. I have strong reactions to people in my life who lie much more than they tell the truth. I have strong reactions to abuse, especially abuse of power. And I have very strong reactions to denial and enabling. It’s not easy to put those obsessions away after a lifetime of instinctually fighting the disappointments.

One of the things that made the healing accelerate when it seemed like I might be sitting in my own anxiety, frozen to myself forever, was accepting the people who had hurt me the most for who they really are, and not for what I want them to be. I didn’t require myself to approve of them, or even work again on forgiving them. What I did was reassure myself that these people are flawed in ways I refused to see for decades due to my own denial. And that I needed to focus on my denial, and be real with myself, instead of focusing on them.

This removed my strong reactions of not only blaming these people for my sore heart, but it stopped me from returning to the stories about how they actually rejected me, used me or somehow tried to ruin my life. Every time I tried to be a victim, I had to stop myself and say, “Moving forward, what is the life I want to create for myself? All others aside, what will make me happy?” I absolutely had to take others out of the equation of my happiness formula – and that was the best thing I did for my healing.

Focusing on Self Proved to be Both Challenging and Rewarding.

Looking in the mirror is not easy when you are doing it with the sole intention of shedding your victim skin. I absolutely had to really look at how I was playing a role in the movie of my life. If it was a nightmare, it was my responsibility to change the plot, rewrite the script and send my character, me, off into a happy ending.

It was hard to accept that it was me who needed to change, not others, if I really wanted to change my actual life. And I knew I could not return to my past. What worked for me in my thirties was not going to work for me in my fifties. And when I looked back, I was playing the victim even in my best moments, because I always wanted my mother to be proud of me. As immature as that sounds, it is true.

The family issues seem to stick with us into adulthood. In my work as a wellness coach, clients most often have deep wounds about the people they were closest to in life, whether parent, child or spouse. This seems to be something that most Americans have in common – we feel deeply hurt by rejection from the people closest to us. Rejection comes in many forms.

For the majority of my adult life, I did not recognize that I was being rejected by family. The “fake it til you make it” idea was a silent, unconscious family mantra. Some people fake their way through a relationship solely for what they can get out of it. If the other is doing well financially, they are much more likely to be agreeable and warm. If the other is in a tough spot, they are much more likely to be distant and critical.

This kind of dynamic made the Jekyll and Hyde routine familiar. So I attracted a lot of Jekyll and Hyde players in my adult life. And a lot of times what we connected on was family trauma, or at the very least, deep childhood wounds. Remaining unhealed had me attracting the unhealed. With my family, they resented the mere suggestion of healing – because that would suggest they are dysfunctional and should be accountable to do something about it. I had to step out of the denial – mine and theirs.

It’s emotionally painful to accept that someone you thought truly loved you to the core really only thought highly of you when you were at your best, otherwise they’d rather not invest any energy into your existence. I’ve seen this happen to people in marriages where the breadwinner has a bad decade and their spouse bails as soon as things get financially tough. Or marriages that fall apart after success is achieved through the partnership because one of the spouses decides to attract a new, younger partner with their newfound wealth and status.

Being thrown away by someone you love is heart-wrenching and gut twisting. And I never expected it to happen to me.

I’ve never been married, and perhaps I thought that alone might protect me from things like betrayal and lawsuits. Yet, I’d chosen to really live my life, so broken contracts, broken hearts and broken dreams were going to be a part of it by default. I had to get over the fact that some really nightmarish things had occurred in my cozy little life. I wasn’t special. I wasn’t getting out of the heartache of failed relationships and broken promises.

The reward, after facing all of the unpleasant feelings and thoughts that come with being real with yourself, was that I actually did finally heal from the old wounds. I actually did start living for myself again. I grew a thick, beautiful coat of empowered skin after I went through the shedding of my victim skin.

What does it feel like?

I feel ok again. I don’t really care so deeply about the past hurts. I don’t find myself thinking about the past relationships where I’ve been burned. I’m quicker to identify players. When I am disappointed by people I don’t obsess about it and ruminate on it.

When I find myself feeling anxious from disappointment, even when it’s intense, I recognize what is happening and I plan accordingly. I rest when I need to. I say “no” when I need to. Most importantly, I am keeping firm boundaries when I need to.

The payoff is huge because I actually feel more capable of handling the world around me. I don’t expect it to be different than it is.

When I am hugely disappointed I simply walk away and move forward. I might spend a day or two in a state of dismay over extreme frustrations. I notice it. And I remind myself that nobody is going to change because I am disappointed in them. I redirect myself to what I am grateful for in my life and I remember to focus on the life I want to create for myself.

The reward is more self confidence. The reward is knowing I don’t need anyone to save me from life, I am enough for me. Finally, I am enough for me.