Compassionate Recovery from Indoctrination
Part III: Overcoming the Dangerous Allure of Victimhood Cults
[This is the third article in a four-part series. Read: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 4.]
A particularly pernicious feature of current cultish attractions for young people is the appeal and perceived (and actual) power that comes from claiming the exalted status now associated with being a victim.
Victimhood can be seductive as a means of making an individual feel, ironically, special. It can endow life with a sense of personal meaning. There are numerous reasons, however, why the adoption of a victimhood mindset or narrative is non-therapeutic at best, and dangerous at worst—even if it is temporarily effective at gaining sympathy, attention, and other attractive or instrumental benefits.
The following video clip offers a prime example of this phenomenon. Enabled by both her parent and her school principal, a “trans-identified” student celebrates a successful retaliation for ‘dead-naming’, exulting: “When you mess with me, you have to pay.”
[Excerpt from a US Department of Education webinar ‘Creating Inclusive and non-Discriminatory School Environments for LGBTQI+ Students’, June 21, 2023, h/t Higher Ground]
While acute trauma is real and some people have experienced damaging treatment and persecution, victimhood thinking is unique and inhibits recovery from encounters with adversity. According to Rahav Gabay, Victimhood-thinking has four distinct characteristics:
Endless recognition of one’s pain and self-characterized victimhood
Moral righteousness, or elitism, with rigid definitions of personal values
Lack of empathy for or recognition of others’ pain
Constant rumination or obsessive thoughts about past victimization
Gabay continues to say, it is natural and appropriate for victims of trauma to seek acknowledgment and recognition for their pain, but victimhood thinking involves endless rumination over the past and dismisses one’s own agency in defining how they view themselves or previous events. Exaggerated perceptions or claims of a lack of personal safety can turn into demands for extreme accommodations by others, inhibiting relationships and the development of inner resources. When people stay stuck in a state of powerlessness, they begin to alienate themselves from others, harbor resentment toward those who do not validate their pain or accede to their requirements, and fail to recognize a path forward.
Victimhood also leads to moral elitism where the “victim” feels justified in rigid judgment of others because their victimhood status renders them free from responsibility for their own actions and excuses their poor behavior toward those whom they deem the “villain.” These snap judgments flatten and erase the complexity of identity and experience into a one-dimensional villain-victim narrative, which increases anxiety, and can ultimately lead to violence.
Victimhood thinking leads naturally to a lack of empathy for others. When stuck in this mindset, a person may become so self-absorbed as to feel entitled to behave selfishly and aggressively and to project those behaviors on unrelated adversaries that may have nothing to do with them personally or with what they’ve suffered. This grandiosity paves the way for narcissistic qualities to emerge and strengthen, especially when people seek out reinforcing groups of like-minded individuals. When these feelings of entitlement are combined with a high individual-level tendency for interpersonal victimhood, social change struggles are more likely to take an aggressive, disparaging, and condescending form.
As an example of this, just listen to the student we heard from earlier. Witness the contempt for perceived enemies and the desire to expunge them from society.
Competitive Victimhood
A phenomenon called “competitive-victimhood” is an outgrowth of continuous rumination and misdirected rage or anger toward perceived predators or adversaries. People engaged in such a thought spiral may reinforce their beliefs by grievance mongering and injustice collecting, possibly even justifying interpersonal violence. Those cast as villains may become dehumanized in the mind of the self-perceived victim.
According to narcissism expert Sam Vaknin, some people adopt victimhood as an identity; they are proud of it and compete to showcase how much they have been victimized in a game of identity politics. Vaknin points out that such movements can be hijacked by psychopaths, and that perennial identification as a victim may lead to a sense of entitlement to special treatment and a tendency to become aggressive if this is withheld. The potential for aggression in victimhood movements is larger than in the general public; Vaknin points out that Nazism, Communism, and ISIS are chilling examples of what began as grievance-based victimhood movements.
Unproductive victimhood thinking fuels the ongoing crisis of mental health problems among youth and hypervigilance over perceived or imagined predator/perpetrator behavior. According to leading trauma expert, John Briere, some of the most effective ways to treat a victim of legitimate trauma are:
Addressing harmful trauma-related beliefs, assumptions, and perceptions, such as expecting to be victimized again and feeling permanently damaged by a transient occurrence.
Reframing harmful assumptions with reality-based facts.
Developing a coherent narrative about the trauma.
Increasing self-awareness and self-acceptance.
Taking personal responsibility for one’s growth and healing, and
Reclaiming personal power by rewriting the narrative.
Without adopting an unhealthy victimhood mindset, let’s acknowledge that today’s young people have been overly saturated with unhelpful victim-driven cultural messaging (with accompanying anxiety- and depression-producing side effects), and let’s start providing them with more empowering, freeing alternatives.
Controlling other people by demanding special privileges due to proclaimed victim status is a manipulative, triangulating substitute for authentic agency, and the reaction one gains from such behavior is unsatisfying, temporary, and illusory. It won’t last, and you’ll need a stronger fix in short order. True fulfillment requires assuming personal responsibility over the aspects of life under one’s control, including one’s own thoughts, feelings, and actions. This is the direction forward and the help our young people desperately need.
Neither of us is trained in deprogramming, but we are experienced counselors directing you to appropriate, helpful literature on this important topic.
Recommended resources:
Freedom of Mind Resource Center
Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves
Freedom of Mind: Helping Loved Ones Leave Controlling People, Cults and Beliefs
Ending the Game, a “coercion resiliency” curriculum
The Language of Fanaticism: Cultish
Beyond Cult Deprogramming: The New Goal is to Empower Reality Testing
Desist, Detrans & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult
A Mother’s Intuition About Gentle Deprogramming
More to Come
This is the third article in a four-part series. Part 1 is on Deprogramming Ideologically Captured Kids; Part 2 is on Destructive Influence Warning Signs; and Part 4 is on Targeted Interventions and Hope.
Bonnie Snyder, D.Ed. is trained as a school counselor and CEO of Terra Firma Teaching Alliance. She is the author of Undoctrinate: How Politicized Classrooms Harm Kids and Ruin Our Schools–And What We Can Do About It.
Christine Sefein, MA, LMFT is a training psychotherapist and Professor of Clinical Psychology specializing in grief, trauma and substance use disorders. She authored the chapter “Miseducation of Psychotherapists” in the book, Cynical Therapies: Perspectives on the Anti-therapeutic Nature of Critical Social Justice.
Neither of us is trained in deprogramming, but we are experienced counselors directing you to appropriate, helpful literature on this important topic.
 | A guest post by
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Teachers are increasingly required to keep secrets from parents. See this week's directive from New York State's Dept of Ed for one example.
It seems to me that the student in the video has open, honest relationships with both school administration AND her parents. How does this support your contention that achool personnel are keeping secrets from parents?