The power of professional victimhood.

This is a comment I left for Coach Robert Silverstone's Advice post, "Victim to Victor." I think my comment can stand on its own as a blog entry, so have decided to post it here as well.
Professional victims never acknowledge when they have hurt others. They have exclusive rights to the role of "injured party." When you call them on their behavior, they provide ample excuses for why they shouldn't be held accountable. Their excuses assign blame for their actions to someone else, usually the person they've wronged. Inside every victim is the aggressor.
The victim must be victimized. If you are not an abusive person, they will pull it from you (introjection) in order to play their script. They need to play innocent victim to someone's bad guy. It's the foundation of their identity.
I once dated a man who was a professional victim (clearly was working through my own issues at the time). What a mind ----. He was a 42-year old Peter Pan living in "Never-Never Take Personal Responsibility Land," which is bordered to the North by "The Land of If Only." I tried to help him make order out of his chaos. He liked his chaos. The chaos allowed him to perpetuate his distortions, which allowed him to blame his parents and everyone else for life not being as he thought it should be.
It all begins in childhood. His parents psychologically damaged him. He chose relationships with women who recreated his original family drama in which he felt inadequate, injured, and deprived all the while maintaining his exes were "good people." This is a fascinating aspect of the professional victim: They defend those who harm and exploit them and vilify and lash out at those who want to help and care for them. If they acknowledge the people who treat them poorly as “not good,” they end their ongoing victimization, which results in loss of identity.
Embracing those who want to help and care for them also means loss of identity because they will not perpetuate their victimization. You can't maintain victim status if no one is actively victimizing you; although this man tried to do so when he accused me of things that never happened. He spent 42 years being injured by "loved ones" and then along came me. No wonder I was placed upon a pedestal, initially.
This relationship could never have worked because the role of victim is a powerful one. When the victim isn't being victimized, the victim becomes the aggressor. The professional victim is ALWAYS the injured party. He goes through life feeling slighted and angry. The victim never has to take responsibility for his actions or his life. Wrongs are transgressed against the victim and the victim is to blame for nothing. Their only identity is that of victim: If they are not the victim, they don't exist. It's a matter of psychological self-preservation versus annihilation.
Toward the end of my involvement with him, I fought the pull to be verbally abusive. His crazy behaviors transformed the tenderness I felt into something ugly. I wanted to say cruel things to purposefully hurt him. Fascinating. Because he couldn't tolerate being treated with kindness, he behaved in ways that elicited a response within me that is antithetical to the person I am.
He needed to play the victim at all costs; if I'd let myself go at the end, I'd have verbally SAVAGED him. I recognized this in myself and walked away instead. This type of personality structure is unlikely to change. His behavior wasn't conscious. This illustrates how primitive the personality structure is; his unconscious was constellating his dynamic against my conscious will.
The flip side or shadow of the professional victim is the sadist. This exemplifies the duality of human nature. Individuals are capable of both great good and great evil. If you live a life out of balance, or if you're mentally unbalanced, these extremes are more obvious, especially if you deny the existence of these qualities within yourself. The more you deny their existence, the more you blindly act them out.
When the victim isn't being victimized, he becomes the sadistic aggressor. Of course, the victim can only act out against people who do not exploit and harm him. If they directed their anger and hostility appropriately toward those who have harmed them, they would no longer be the victim. I believe this is why they believe people who abuse them are "good people." They help them maintain their identity. The irony is the person who plays "the victim" holds others hostage and controls through guilt, emotional blackmail, and blame. It's been my experience this type of person rarely changes. When I come across them in life, I try to avoid them altogether or, at the very least, minimize contact.