Victimhood as Identity, Manipulation, Coercion, Blaming Others, Failure to See Oneself Fully - 

Jealousy, Bitterness

The Journey

We all know the type.  They thrive on attention based on being wronged, and refuse to take ownership of their own life, or accountability for their own suffering... even when it is plain to see that they caused the harm to themselves.  They strive to be seen as special, twisting words and manipulating outcomes to be the unappreciated martyr.  We soon realize that the martyr's specialness was manufactured.

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✨Does this represent your own shadow tendencies, or those of other people or systems around you?

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✨If you have a martyr in your life - run.  

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It's easy to take people at their word.  As bleeding hearts, we don't recognize the stories they tell as lies, narrative flips or exaggerations in the moment.  We see a person who has suffered great injustice or hurt, and we want to help them - to listen, build them up, and get them to see the potential and strength that they don't recognize in themselves.

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Now, hear this - being emotionally dis-regulated is not a crime (god knows I've been dis-regulated) but those who lack insight or the ability to see from others perspectives, can become martyrs, relying on blame shifting to stay sane.  And if we, as tender-hearted people, are naive to this?  We may get caught up in games of power and codependent control, made to mediate the emotions of someone else, whether we signed up for it or not.  WE are made responsible for THEIR emotional regulation when they make everything our fault, when we had nothing to do with it.

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Once the mask slips, we can't unsee what is underneath.  They screw up a lie they've been telling, we see patterns of behavior that exaggerate pain, we hear a word of caution from someone else, without our asking.  And we may hear it again.  And again...  

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We need to be wise to the pity partiers who want to remain stuck in their manufactured sorrows.  We want to help others, but some cannot be helped - even though it sounds like they're asking for it. What they're really demanding is, "I need you to be my emotional regulator" - and that's not a burden we are called to carry.

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✨If this is you - take some time to breathe, and accept accountability for your own pain, even if it wasn't your fault.  Take some time to see yourself, accept yourself, and love yourself more.  It can be easy to slide into wearing our pain as our identities.  But we don't have to wallow forever -  find the parts of you that exist outside of this pain - rise up and dare to become a more healed, whole, beautiful version of your shining self!