I suffer from a victim mentality and have a trick for getting out of it.

I am happy to share it with you but am acutely aware that things that work for some people often fail to work for others and even sometimes make other people feel worse.

So I hope you will read my post as a personal account of what helps me and not as any kind of "advice." I am NOT qualified to give advice.

There is a lady in my town who suffered a great deal of trauma growing up. Long story short, she ended up being a homeless person. In spite of her many misfortunes she kind of set herself a small mission in life.
All the money she receives by begging on the street . . . she gives some of it to charity every day.

Convenience stores and gas stations usually have little boxes on their counters where people can donate to the March of Dimes, the Red Cross, Muscular Dystrophy Foundation, St. Jude's Children's Hospital and so on.

This lady takes some of the money she gets each day from begging and donates part of it to charity.

She is a victim in many, many ways . . . from her early life, from her illnesses, from personal losses and misfortunes.

But she has risen above her victimhood. She has found a mission in life that allows her to transcend her victimhood . . . a way to transmute the horrible things in her life into something good and beautiful.

She is kind of a hero to me and has enabled me to find a way to emulate her and transcend my own past and present misfortunes.

Once I contracted an illness that required me to not leave home for a couple of years. It was a bad time for me. Movement out of my house was restricted to going to the mailbox and taking out the garbage, picking up food delivered to my house.

I was not doing so good financially, but I decided to help the animals who lived around my house: crows, pigeons, squirrels, sparrows, even ants. I would try to provide them with a little food and water each day.

I read an article about ants. Apparently ants are not allowed to leave their ant colony until they are elderly. So when one sees ants outside searching for food, those are the senior citizens of the ant world.

Being outside the nest is dangerous because those ants can be preyed upon by lizards. They can be stepped on by humans and animals. So nature has given that task to the elderly ants.

In my illness I decided to be careful when walking so as not to step on these ants. I got the idea from Albert Schweitzer.

It became a little "mission" of mine. No ants are going to perish because of my footsteps. My neighbors give me funny looks when they see me walking since I am taking circuitous routes. But I didn't care.

When I got better I continued this practice. No ants are going to perish today because of me.

By focusing on something in my present and future, it takes my mind off of how I have been and am victimized in life. It allows me to get out of myself and above myself.

Out of the garbage of my life I want something beautiful to happen. Out of manure beautiful flowers sometimes bloom.

It is my little way of saying that I am not going to allow my misfortunes to tell me who I am. I am greater than these misfortunes.

I have taken quite a beating by life, but I refuse to let that define me. I have the ability to transmute all the garbage into something nice.

Hopefully you will find something that helps you.

I always hope that people here with more knowledge, experience, insight and wisdom will see your post today and reply to it with better words than my poor words.

You help a lot of people here on these Forums. I think you are a heroic person . . . a person of high moral stature and dignity!