In this article we will tell you:
- How to recognize a victim: typical signs
- Why do they marry victims?
- Victims are born or become
- I am a victim: what to do
How to stop being a victim in a relationship with your husband? A couple of years of psychotherapy will help change your behavior pattern. But it is long and expensive.
And along with sacrifice often comes financial dependence on a spouse. It is unlikely that he will want to sponsor such treatment.
You can always help yourself. It can be more difficult to cope on your own, but the more valuable the victory will be. How to recognize a victim in yourself and how to get rid of this character trait?
WHO ARE THE PEOPLE VICTIMS?
Individuals falling under this classification are divided into two groups. There are real victims who are bullied and humiliated by others, taking advantage of their defenselessness and weak character. At the stage of growing up and later, no one explained to such people how to protect themselves, and they do not have the internal potential to defend their boundaries. They can only endure... This is a special class of victims - they need the support of friends, and sometimes law enforcement agencies.
But there are victims of a completely different type - directors of their own humiliation. We'll talk about them today. Such individuals subconsciously create a triangle around themselves, consisting of themselves, the person who humiliates them, and the savior - the one to whom the victim runs to complain about the offender.
The meaning of this behavior is the pleasure that the director receives during the psychological play. The victim herself provokes her moral rapist to attack her, knows all his weak points and pulls the strings that will force him to start terrorizing her again, so that there is an opportunity to cry into the vest of the third participant in the play.
The roles in this production are usually played by the victim's relatives, as well as her friends and colleagues. The victims are unappreciated people who expected a lot and received little. They would like to be at the top, but it didn’t work out for them, so they had to become marginalized from the other side. “I may not be the best, but you will still notice me!” - this is the credo of such people.
Karpman triangle in psychology
The Karpman triangle is an interpersonal model that best describes codependent relationships.
A similar term was introduced back in the 1960s by a follower of transactional analysis, psychoanalyst Stephen Karpman. According to his thought, all interactions of participants can be analyzed through the roles they use in the relationship. A change of roles in this case is quite natural. In the case of a triangle, a pathological model of interaction is described, in which the productive development of a couple is impossible. The only option is to get out of the Karpman triangle, because in relationships roles are constantly changing and a codependent couple can move in one circle for several years, without progress or moving to another level.
A psychological triangle can revolve around two or three people or entire groups. Since all participants are manipulators in one way or another, the roles are constantly changing - the cycle can continue forever, causing each of the codependents a lot of inconvenience.
There are three roles of the triangle:
- Victim. The main purpose of the victim is suffering. This is an inert person who constantly feels injustice, uncertainty, and fear. However, the victim lacks the strength or resources to somehow change his life.
- Controller, dictator, aggressor or persecutor. Sees life as a source of problems. Constantly criticizes, controls loved ones, experiences anger and irritation.
- Rescuer. Feels pity for the victim and anger towards the aggressor. Takes on the mission to correct the situation, to help other participants, and therefore considers himself superior to others. In fact, his need is illusory, because he does not provide real help, but only asserts himself at the expense of the situation. Therefore, it is important to know, including how to get out of the rescuer role if you are an outside observer.
How does this codependency work and what is its essence? The aggressor controls the victim, criticizes and bullies. The victim suffers, suffers, complains. The rescuer advises, consoles, scolds the aggressor. Each participant sees the problem in someone else and endlessly tries to change the person to serve their goals. To understand how this can be dealt with and why the psychodramatic triangle seriously poisons life, let’s analyze it using real stories.
Stop complaining
Photo: Pixabay.com
If you suspect you are a victim, the first thing you should do is start crawling away from the edge of this funnel that is sucking you in. You became a victim by choice, it is your choice, and this means that it is also within your power to stop being one. To begin with, forbid yourself to complain, remember once and for all that everyone can’t stand those who endlessly whine.
If you are not happy with something in your life - your other half or your job, know that if you start complaining about it, even those closest to you will not say anything other than: “Quit and find another person.” Or maybe it’s worth understanding yourself? What if your loved one is annoyed by your always sour face, and at work you are not respected because you are always unhappy with everything?
Get busy
Switch from suffering to something diametrically opposite and truly important - go with volunteers to an orphanage, give some of your clothes to those in need. Take part in the restoration of the temple, feed the dogs at the shelter. Only a socially useful and socially positive act can make you rise above the situation and begin to experience new emotions.
Talking and going to psychologists will not help the matter; a person must see from his own experience how pleasant it is to be useful and needed and that the emotions from good deeds are much sweeter than endless suffering.
Photo: iStock/GettyImages.ru
4"Acceptance"
Enter into the process of becoming aware of the experiences and ups and downs of life. Treat it as a gift, accept it as an amazing gift from that still unknown of your own internal resource, which only now you are beginning to feel as your strength.
In this state, it is useful to apply, verbally or in writing, the formula of the internal attitude “accept this experience without judgment and release it into oblivion from where it came.” This formula was proposed by Colin Tipping, founder of the Institute for Radical Forgiveness (Atlanta, USA). You can apply the attitude of “accept this experience with gratitude and humility and open yourself to its amazing possibilities.” There are many options for adoption, find the one that suits your feelings at this very moment.
Learn to say no
If it seems that some around you are benefiting from your position as a victim and you are being burdened with additional work or simply being used as a cushion for sticking needles, you need to stop this.
If you don't agree with something, you should say no. And the sooner you say this, the sooner those who potentially want to crush you will agree with you. There are people who, seeing a timid person, begin to “ride” him. But before you start doing this, the potential victim first needs to undergo verification. And if you fight back during such a check, they will leave you without complaint.
Don't be afraid to speak your mind
First of all, you must formulate this very opinion. Very often, people are lazy to think and believe that they can do without them, thereby depriving themselves of a lot of things - career advancement, the role of the soul of the company. If you want to be taken into account, avoid uncertainty, read books, study what is going on in the world - develop yourself if you don’t want to be a faceless spot whose name everyone forgets a minute after meeting you. And if you don’t understand something, but want to understand the issue, don’t hesitate to ask for it to be explained to you. Intelligent people do just that.
Advice was given by Viktor Ponomarenko
Photo: Personal archive
Delirium of jealousy
Symptoms
Taking into account the above, we will further talk about delusions of jealousy in the male version.
To obtain gender inversion, it is enough to change the generic endings. The axial, syndrome-forming symptom of this disorder is the feeling of... well, of course. However, it should also be understood that in the phrase “delirium of jealousy” the key word is the first word, not the second. The rest is nuances, largely determined by the clinical features of the underlying disease. Thus, people with chronic alcoholism, age-related dementing processes or other organic pathologies often take a careless approach to collecting evidence. It is enough for them to “just know, that’s all,” or rely on simple lumpen-proletarian syllogisms like: “All women are harlots. You are a woman. Therefore, you are...” The definitions and accusations that the jealous woman hears against herself in this case would make the most unbridled organism from the gateway blush. In alcoholics and “organic” patients, in addition, for a number of reasons, the threshold beyond which a man ends and a formidable martial artist, fist fighter and severe punisher of unfaithful wives begins is much lower - sometimes impulsive, explosive and easy-going, and sometimes hardworking and conscientious , as a veteran of the witch hunts during the Inquisition.
It’s a different matter when delusions of jealousy develop within the framework of schizophrenia, especially if the patient has high intelligence or, God forbid, is related to power structures, which often remains possible for a long time due to the façade preservation of social and professional skills. In some cases, the collection of “evidence” is carried out using such technical means and, most importantly, with such inexhaustible ingenuity, in comparison with which the CIA would seem like a petty squabble at a keyhole.
A more or less universal, etiologically independent tendency can be considered humiliating and, more often, disgusting tests to which victims are regularly subjected. After each separation - it doesn’t matter whether it lasted three months, three hours or three minutes - the jealous person is obliged to present her handbag, clothes, hair, underwear, oral cavity, breasts, and genitals for detailed examination. At the same time, affective pressure, delusional induction and blackmail (“If nothing happened, just prove it!”) can be so powerful that the victim, with a literally paralyzed will, fulfills all demands. And then, after some time, most often it is difficult to explain: why, in fact, did she endure all this, if long before the resolution (of one or another) of this unbearable situation for her, she already “guessed that he was sick.” However, psychiatrists and pathopsychologists usually do not ask such questions: by that time the victim often has to be treated rather than questioned. And again, it’s a fact: our women, unlike Western women, under the influence of a number of reasons, peculiarities of mentality, internal motives and values, are much more likely to endure and hope to the end, stubbornly whispering with lips clotted with blood: “This is a woman’s lot,” or “I won’t leave him, he’s sick”, or “Everyone lives like this”, or the immortal “He hits - means he loves”, or even “It’s her own fault”, or even “He’s still my beloved and only one”. Often beyond the psychic capabilities of the victim there is a need to admit and tell himself: this is not jealousy, this is a disease, it is merciless and inexorable, it destroys, it is a poisoner; she killed the man whom I loved, whom I married and from whom I gave birth to children, he is no more and will never be, and if I drag out time a little more, tearing my pillow with my teeth at night, mourning and begging to come back, then me too it won't either...
Children who grow up in such families are one of the most difficult and intractable aspects of the problem. These scenes are not intended, in fact, for adult eyes, but they simply disfigure the child’s psyche, sometimes irreversibly. The worst thing begins when the child becomes a psychological, financial hostage (“If you file for divorce, I won’t give you the money, but alimony will be minimal, according to the official salary”) or a direct, in the most literal sense of the word, instrument of blackmail. Such situations are especially difficult for the victim in cases where the husband and father for a long time manage to maintain the same purely external, façade appearance of an ordinary, strong, friendly, healthy family (“No one will believe you anyway”). Fortunately, in most cases, the patient verbally declares his love and inability to live without his son/daughter/children, but as the negative apathetic-abulic symptoms increase, he gradually loses all interest in them, without forgetting to declare that the children are not his, but “brought in the lap” and “feasted on from lovers.”
Another common feature stems from the very essence of delusional disorder. The suspicions put forward, as well as “accusations”, “evidence” and especially “logical evidence” can be amazingly, fantastically absurd, but for the patient himself they are as real as, say, the weather outside the window or the amount of cash in his wallet is real for a healthy person . Therefore, to prove anything, to exhort, to make excuses, to appeal to common sense, to involve people who are authoritative for the patient as witnesses is not only absolutely pointless, but is also fraught with retaliatory aggression, auto-aggression, or some other reaction of this kind. The expected result from these conversations has never been seen before in history, anywhere in the world and by no one - unless, of course, this is really a delusional disorder, psychotic, and not neurotic or personal. Victims, friends and relatives who are aware of what is happening most often “understand this with their minds” and “intuitively feel it,” but cannot “believe it in their hearts and imagine how this is even possible.” Therefore, in different families, the same mistake is repeated again and again, the same desperate attempts to solve the problem peacefully, with persuasion, flattery, humility, joint efforts, endless patience - just not to wash dirty linen in public (what will people say?! ..) and do not take this rubbish to a psychiatric hospital, to the police, to the outside world. This mistake, alas, can be fatal for the patient himself, for the jealous woman or, in rare cases, for the alleged rival. And even if the opponent is physically stronger, that is, he tries to cure the jealous person with his fists (what else can an average man, even an intelligent one, come up with, if he is stronger and the same rigid archetypal programs speak in him?), the situation will not fundamentally change. The only difference is that in the eyes of a patient with delusions of jealousy, betrayal will be absolutely and unequivocally proven - and extrapolated to all other situations, which, however, did not raise doubts before and did not need proof. What is there to prove, if everything is already clear: today is Tuesday and an even date, so the plane over there in the window flew from right to left, and although she was sitting with her back to the window, she still finished her tea first and even sneezed on purpose. , to make fun of her further, then she put on a jacket and went to take out the trash, having received some kind of sign known to her (the lovers deliberately did not ring either the door or the phone - in order to deceive vigilance), and in three minutes at the entrance, wow, how much You can make it, she’s so tired, she’s back, and she doesn’t want to answer, she just cries, and even then it’s somehow unnatural...
There is an unofficial but quite apt jargon in psychiatry: “weave into delirium.” So, sometimes the most unexpected person, for example, a doctor, can be “woven” into the structure of monothematic delusional experiences by the patient. But here the logic is at least clear: he conspired with his cheating wife to “put him in a mental hospital, and only then”... (options - received a bribe, conducts a scientific experiment, persuaded or intimidated relatives, wants to take away not only his wife, but also apartment, etc., etc.).
Often, a divorce with a move does not change anything much: the patient, using already well-developed detective skills honed over many years, sooner or later finds out the new address and the entrance lock code, and an endless crowd at the door begins, endless conversations about the same things, nightly silences into the telephone receiver, streams of messages into email and social networks, broken windows (if the floor allows), and again attempts to “track and prove.” Again and again. Again and again…
If this is a delusion of jealousy, the patient will find irrefutable evidence of betrayal even in space, having lived together with the jealous woman for a year and a half on a space station and there letting her out of sight for five minutes.
And even if the delusion is realized, i.e. the patient observes adultery being objectively committed in reality, with his own eyes, or receives truly indisputable evidence - for example, from the victim herself, driven to the last degree of despair and “rising to a high degree of madness” - the process continues to progress at its own pace, thinking remains delusional, and the situation still unpredictable.
Who is right and who is wrong, and whether these wives actually cheat, and if so, why, and how strong are the reasons to be jealous in each case... all this has nothing to do with the topic of the article, believe me, not the slightest connection. These are redundant details, unimportant details that a professional wouldn’t even think of being interested in. It’s all somewhere out there, in the zone of conventional norms, conflict management, psychology of family relationships, and, in extreme cases, neurosology.
Delusions of jealousy are exclusively within the competence of the psychiatrist.
And really anything can happen.
When you work in a clinic for more than a quarter of a century, the law of large numbers comes into play. What was once a line in a textbook turns into human destiny. And there are more and more such lines every year.
Patient ***, 82 years old, is admitted with a severe traumatic brain injury, which was inflicted on him with a bayonet shovel by a jealous neighbor in the country (two years older, the jealous woman is four years older).
Patient ***, 32 years old, gathers the whole family in front of the screen to finally witness the fact of his wife’s infidelity (24 years old), allegedly recorded by a recording from a hidden video camera. According to the patient, his wife is cheating on him with his own brother (later it turns out that the patient’s first marriage broke up for the same reason, after several episodes of clearly inappropriate behavior), and the only people he, the patient, will trust is his mother with grandmother: “Now you’ll see everything for yourself, and as you say, so it will be!” The whole family lives in a large private house. The wife knew about the installed DVR. The patient is described by relatives as gentle, naturally intelligent, very neat, “boring,” but a caring family man and loving husband. The relationship with my brother is consistently good (!), family and, moreover, business-like - the brothers are partners in a small business. Absolutely nothing happens on the screen: an empty room and occasional distortions of a clearly technical nature (the day before the patient spent the entire night at the computer, supposedly clearing the recording of interference in a non-linear video editing program). Pointing to those present at the screen, the patient repeatedly exclaims with triumphant intonation and facial expressions: “Did you see? Well, are you finally convinced?” Neither mother, nor grandmother, nor brother, nor the “cheater” herself sees anything. At the time when the filming was taking place, the brothers were at work, and the wife and three-month-old son (a breastfed child) were at home, almost constantly in front of the patient’s mother and his grandmother, which they informed the patient about in a harsh manner. After viewing, the patient, even not particularly annoyed by the “blindness” or “collusion” of his closest relatives (he did not express either one or the other out loud), looks at his wife with a mysterious grin - and remains with his own opinion, because “saw everything he needed,” and will provide the rest with “a better recording next time.” It is known that during the year before the events described, the patient began to drink in the evenings in order to “drown out the unbearable mental and heart pain from his wife’s constant infidelities” (his wife was hospitalized several times during that period with the threat of miscarriage). Three months after the “viewing”, the patient is admitted to the hospital with a clinic of cerebral edema, and the available anamnestic information does not exclude a true suicide attempt [the word “true” is used here as an antonym to the much more common demonstrative and blackmail attempts - approx. Lakhta Clinic]. After a day of being in a comatose state - exitus letalis.
Nurse ***, 54 years old, who was present at a collegial discussion of a case of delusions of jealousy: “Rare? Yes, where I come from, every third woman lives like this, and everyone is silent; one over there hanged herself a month ago, her mother wrote to me, and another one went missing last year and is still being searched for, and her hubby in the end, they say, completely drank himself to death”...
Patient ***, 38 years old, serving in one of the control structures of the executive branch of government, is in a specialized department of the Forensic Psychiatric Examination - approx. Lakhta Clinic]. For many years he reproached his “too young and beautiful wife” (according to the patient’s own wording) for frivolous behavior, incessant flirting “with everything that moves,” and then for adultery. In the last 2-3 years, he somehow tapped the phone, installed a service beacon (subscriber location tracker), looked at all SMS messages, hacked an email account, then installed a wiretap and a security camera in his wife’s office (private notary, 34 of the year). In one of the filmed fragments, he allegedly saw, in the words of “a glimpse of a bare back, clearly a man’s, since his wife’s tattoo is different and in the wrong place.” On other videos I also saw a VAZ-2103 car not far from the garage, from which I concluded that the wife was making love to her “ex” in the garage, because He also “used to have a Zhigul” (the patient does not know which model). At home, he repeatedly stated that he felt close attention and, apparently, surveillance at work, but each time he rationalized his experiences by saying that “in fact, checks came later.” He began to drink, but practically did not get drunk [an atypical reaction to alcohol and other psychoactive substances is often found in schizophrenia - approx. Lakhta Clinic]. He continued to work right up to his hospitalization; According to his job description, he was distinguished by conscientiousness, balance, diligence, a high sense of responsibility, and often stayed late at work in order to meet deadlines for submitting documentation and avoid mistakes. At the same time, he turned to a family psychologist, a neurologist, a “psychic” for help, and then was even hospitalized in a private rehabilitation center for people with drug addiction, because... there was a psychotic episode with hallucinatory experiences and psychomotor agitation: he “saw” through the fence how his wife was having sex with two Caucasians in a park area, tried to break the fence, called his relatives (sister and her husband) - who, fortunately, happened to be passing nearby and managed to take the patient away before the police showed up. The next day I was discharged from the rehabilitation center, because there, in the words, “they wanted to turn me into a vegetable with injections, and I didn’t like being treated with drug addicts at all.” Three months later, he went to a private clinic to see a psychotherapist and insisted on an immediate examination of his wife, citing the fact that “it had become unbearable to live with her because of the constant lies and betrayals”; demonstrated a receipt found in her car from a hairdressing salon, in which the wife “should not have been at that time and on that day.” He expressed sincere bewilderment that his wife was going to move with her son to her parents because of “some kind of right to personal space.” At the reception, at the same time, he was quite calm, beyond the delusional plot, adequate, comprehensively oriented and even formally critical of his own condition, which he described as painful and in need of medical correction. He promised to “think about” the recommendation of the psychotherapist, who cautiously suggested hospitalization and promised assistance. Two weeks later, neighbors, alarmed by the noise and screams, called the police, whose employees, in turn, called an ambulance. As it turned out, the patient saw his wife’s car approaching the entrance, and by the latter’s gait he “suddenly realized” [describes the so-called “aha phenomenon” that occurs in schizophrenia - approx. Lakhta Clinic] that now she will cheat on him in the elevator in a perverted form. While my wife was going up in the elevator to the twelfth floor, I imagined in every detail, heard and even “almost saw” how this was happening. A murder was committed, the method of which...
...and all other details we leave for impartial analysis to forensic experts. There is an excellent saying that all mass media should adopt: “There are frames for television, and there are for a forensic expert, and one should not be confused with the other.”
And you can’t add anything significant to the above.
