WHEN everything looks dark
When sad you can play the role of the victim, or fight the actual sadness with what you decide to think.
"I cannot get out of bed. The one person who took care of me died", Joan told me while sobbing over the phone. Her father passed away a couple of months back, and his death triggered other emotions in Joan that she was not aware of. Emotions she was responsible for, -we feel what we think, the thoughts come first, emotions come second-, so Joan was in a downward spiral of victimization. She kept repeating to herself and others, "I'm alone, I don't have a job, my kids are far away. I feel empty and abandoned. No one cares if I live or die, my father was the only one who would actually ask if I was doing okay."
Sadness, feeling down or unhappy in response to grief, discouragement, or disappointment is normal, but if persistent, can lead to depression. Joan admitted she has been feeling like this for over a month. Sadness was now ruling her life. She wouldn't eat, she stopped exercising, she wouldn't get out of bed until noon. She isolated herself from society, or society cut her out because she was so immersed in her sadness that it was depressing to be around her. I could see her life was far from being the worst -as she claimed it to be-, Joan is healthy, lives in an affluent environment, has healthy kids and three gorgeous grandkids, but yet what she didn't like of life, well that was luck's fault.
The tricky thing about victimization is that when we victimize ourselves, we are giving in to the pain. We allow negative emotions to take over freely without resistance, we now can feel anxious, angry, or depressed, and do nothing about it, because anyway "life is shit". But here is some light at the end of the tunnel; no matter what happened to you or how big the wound is, the moment you start to refuse the role of the victim, you will begin to heal.
“The way sadness works is one of the strange riddles of the world. If you are stricken with a great sadness, you may feel as if you have been set aflame, not only because of the enormous pain but also because your sadness may spread over your life, like smoke from an enormous fire.”
Of course, it's easier, to say "I have the worst luck, I am a victim of life, everything happens to me" than actually taking responsibility for your life. We cannot fix death, but feeling isolated, abandoned, without purpose, those things we have the power to change.
Accepting the adversity, and owning the difficult situation, putting the power of your life into your own hands is the way to achieve fulfilment. Self-victimization will only extend the pain, so the sooner we face the reality of why you are where you are, the sooner you will be able to change it. Find the serenity to accept what cannot be changed, the courage to change what can be changed, and the wisdom to know the difference. So own your life, own your situation and focus on what you are capable of changing, it will be much more than you think.
With love,
Xxo
Rebeka