Is the Thriver Model of taking 100% personal radical responsibility one of “victim blaming?”
Occasionally people tell us it is …
And there are times when I have received some very angry messages from people who are infuriated by the idea that we have to take any responsibility for the abuse we suffered.
I felt that it was time to write an article about this, and deeply look into it, and also to invite a discussion here after this is written.
My dear friend, Simone Waddell, and myself had a fascinating discussion about this in Japan.
Exactly about this topic … regarding people who feel it is wrong for people who have suffered harm at the hands of narcissists, to focus on changing and healing themselves.
These people believe this healing orientation blames victims and doesn’t focus on holding abusers accountable.
If ONLY the trying to force abusers to be accountable did work …
When we look around at the state of our world, the effects of abuse / abused and blame and punishment, we can see it hasn’t. All too often victims, despite all efforts to hold abusers accountable, stay wronged and stuck in ongoing trauma.
Why doesn’t it work?
Throughout this article my desire is to share with you exactly the reasons why, and how victims can and do find their way to relief and release for their trauma.
Is Our Healing Reliant On Abuser Accountability?
Do I believe trying to hold abusers accountable will heal us?
In fact I believe that the more you try to blame an abuser and hold them accountable, the LESS likely you are to get accountability and heal from the abuse. My beliefs even go as far to include: our righteousness about us being “right” and a “victim” and them being “wrong” and a “perpetrator” is what holds us in the indefinite pain.
The interesting thing is, even if people did get “justice”, if the justice was a condition necessary in order for that individual to get on with their life, the pain would still linger. The abuser being held accountable is not the magic healing pill they hoped it might be.
The reason why people regardless of whether or not they receive “justice” will still suffer the horrible effects of the abuse that happened to them, is because of not addressing the healing of the trauma directly in their body … believing that how they feel, and the state of their future life is determined by what does or doesn’t happen to someone else.
Sadly, nothing could be further from the truth …
The result of ongoing trauma is Universe’s away from the people who did deal with the trauma in their body (take personal responsibility for it) and then received justice. The justice in this case was “the cherry on the top”, an addition to their already up-levelled, relieved and released self that was unconditional in regard to what did or did not happen to the narcissist.
In short, up-levelled people do not need “physical justice” in order to heal. They have already generated it themselves within their own being.
The incredibly interesting thing is this – within this Community I have seen umpteen cases of “justice” happen for up-levelled people, as opposed to the people who feel they “need” justice and simply never get it.
I guess for those of you who already know my work, it is no surprise that I am very pro personal responsibility. For those of you who don’t know my work, you may initially find my viewpoints foreign, confronting and even highly triggering – because they may push against everything you have been taught to believe.
Yet, it is my deepest and humblest mission to present the truths as I know them and have experienced them personally … truths that come from the foundation of personal responsibility.
How can I not when that was the ONE orientation which saved my life?
This is what I know as a result of living my previous life in the victim orientation: every moment we spend reliant on the outcome of trying to force and get reform and atonement from unconscious people, who have no inclination to reform and atone their ways, is another moment we are denying ourselves our own healing, breakthrough and recovery from abuse.
A recovery which MUST be independent of whatever the abuser does or does not choose to do, in order for it to be real and empowered.
In fact, recovery HAS to self-generated and non-reliant, because the absolute truth is this …
We have NO power over what anyone other than ourselves does or doesn’t choose for their own lives … let alone ours.
And … as soon as we make the state of our self-love, self-approval, security and survival dependent on what another person is or isn’t granting us, we will hold them responsible for our life and DANGEROUSLY forgo that responsibility to ourselves.
This is the definition of personal powerlessness which leads us to be susceptible to being abused – point blank; and truly these are some of the deepest reasons in regard to our original emotional formative years that led us unconsciously into abusive situations in the first place.
I can nearly feel the triggers of certain people going off … please read on …
This is NOT because as “victim blaming” advocates would argue, I am saying “we asked for it”, but rather because the Thriver Orientation (my work) recognises and deeply understands that the parenting we received from our role models did not allow us to grow up healthily from our dependencies.
Our childhoods did not sponsor our ability to be a confident and “whole” generative source of our own life non dependent on the reliance of specific others.
“Others” who we are still assigning as “parents” unconsciously.
“Others” who we are handing the power of our life to, and then holding solely responsible when they don’t do a healthy job of it.
And if we have been on this trajectory because of having received unconscious parenting (incredibly common in a world of deficient emotional training and intelligence) we may have NEVER realized we are, because it became our “normal”.
The people who demand that taking ANY personal responsibility means you are being “blamed” for the abuse that happened to you, will tell you these things:
“You are not to blame at all, it wasn’t you,” and …
“The onus, blame and responsibility lies with the abuser wholly and solely.”
These statements means there was nothing about you that got you into that situation (it was random and senseless) and therefore there is nothing to change about you to get you out, healed and immune to it ever happening again.
And the nature of your healing now solely lies on what does or doesn’t happen in regard to the abuser in your life being held accountable.
Now here is the massive issue with this … after the initial relief of not being “to blame” and therefore being able to assign “all blame” to the abuser (who has been blaming you of course all long), you will find the relief does not continue and you will not be released from your abuse symptoms.
I know this, because I used to live it.
I initially gobbled up Abuse Forum and my psychologist’s statements which were totally about the focus on how bad he was and how I was the victim.
And my psychologist and the on-line Abuse Forums all told me how necessary it was for me to know that what he had said for years … “It’s all your fault Melanie”, was not true – because it was actually him all along.
But, why didn’t the relief of being told the problems in our marriage, his insane behavior and even the reasons he felt incensed enough to abuse me horribly “were not my fault” STOP me obsessing about him every minute of every day, wanting to change and fix him, being terrorized about how I was going to rebuild my life … or breaking No Contact constantly when that terror completely engulfed me?
And … yet I was fully “supported” … being told constantly and ADAMANTLY by abuse recovery “specialists” that he, the unhealable narcissist, was to blame and I was a Victim of Abuse who had nothing to do with generating the abuse, and who must get out and stay away.
Surely these “answers” should mean I would be able to disconnect, be resolved and get on with it?!?
After all … doesn’t the truth set us free?
It sure does … and if we’re not released it’s a sure sign we haven’t reached it yet.
In this Model I was nowhere near being free … and I consistently see this Model fail to deliver people to relief almost always.
Yes – I mean that … almost always.
Rather than this start a process of healing for them, in stark contrast I see them still mired in victimisation – meaning they are hooked, obsessing about the narcissist and what happened and still suffering intense abuse symptoms.
Just as I was.
Is this considered normal?
Is this what so-called recovery is supposed to look like?
I adamantly declare … NO WAY!!
What I live and facilitate is Universe’s apart from this level of “effectiveness” … because the Thriver Model of 100% radical responsibility works spectacularly virtually every time it is adopted.
Read on and I hope by doing so, you will understand why …
Personal Responsibility is Not Blame
Here is the BIG clincher … the thing that changes the understanding of the Thriver Model forever – the Thriver Model of personal responsibility has zero to do with BLAME!
And “blame” is the BIG thing that advocates scream out – “By asking people to take personal responsibility you are victim blaming”.
The Thriver Model is NOT about blaming people, it is about empowering individuals to heal the aspects of themselves that have suffered abuse so that they can evolve beyond the pain and never suffer abuse again.
Our human beliefs about “blame” and “responsibility” have not helped matters …
This is what Wikipedia has to say about “victim blaming”
Victim blaming occurs when the victim of a crime or any wrongful act is held entirely or partially responsible for the harm that befell them.[1] The study of victimology seeks to mitigate the perception of victims as responsible.[2]
Now let’s have a look at how the words “blaming” and “responsibility” are intertwined, which is a common societal belief.
The dictionary definition of blame is this:
Feel or declare that (someone or something) is responsible for a fault or wrong. “The inquiry blamed the train driver for the accident”
The definition for responsibility is this:
The state or fact of being accountable or to blame for something. “The group has claimed responsibility for a string of murders”
This is the interesting part – the synonyms for responsibility …
synonyms: blame, fault, guilt, culpability, blameworthiness, liability.
So we can see from this that “taking responsibility” to be the healer and the generator of our own outcomes independent of others (also known as the Thriver Model) can be interpreted as “being blamed” for what went wrong for us.
Anti Victim Blaming websites have a very limited surface level view of what “blaming” means …
Statements said by “victim blamers” such as:
“She provoked him”
“They both have big issues”
“She shouldn’t have stayed with him after the warning signs”
etc. etc. etc.
The Thriver Model has nothing to do with such “blaming statements” or simplistic surface level judgments that having NOTHING to do with how to access and generate true healing.
The orientation of personal responsibility takes place at a much deeper, wider and more profound level of truth.
Okay … so now I want to really get down to the brutal base note of these “blaming” claims.
Claims in relation to my work of: the recognition that there is something within us that unconsciously led us into abuse.
Meaning the DEEPER levels of self-partnering possible that enables us to heal, up-level and graduate our previous emotional unconscious programs to much healthier and solid ones in order to get us out of the pain of it and the possibility of it ever happening again.
In other words change our own life by changing the ONLY person we ever have the power to change – ourselves.
The “blaming” angle truly is childish … let me explain …
Maybe such “blaming” would go something like this … (Imagine this being said to a 45-year-old person who had suffered a long term relationship with a narcissist).
“You are such an idiot and totally useless for having unhealed wounds in your childhood that made you pick a narcissist and stay with him / her for 20 years. You did not leave when the mask fell, you endured, you clung on, you tried to change this person… you lost all of your resources, all of your ability to hold down a job, your health, your wellbeing, the respect of your children, and vital years of your life and you are to BLAME because you have issues!!”
(Please ….!!!! WHO believes the Thriver Model addresses people like that?!)
Now let’s look at the entire thrust of the Thriver radical personal responsibility Model. (This is the example of what is conveyed to the same 45-year-old individual, over a period of time as they work with the Thriver Model).
“What has happened to you is so painful, and what you are going through is incredibly traumatic.
(Validation).
However there is a deeper truth here, and a reason why this is happening to you.
(This is not just some random senseless, powerless act of “fate”).
The narcissist in your life is bringing you the evidence of your as yet unhealed wounds. There are unconscious painful programs from your childhood which represent this person, which keep you hooked to this person, and incite you emotionally to try to make them do it differently. What your subconscious is doing is trying to rewrite your painful childhood.
(There are definitive reasons WHY this is happening to you.)
When you let go of fruitlessly and devastatingly trying to get this person to do it differently and go inside your own body instead, to track, find and heal your original wounds – you will no longer be hooked, affected and trapped in the agony. You will piece by piece evolve beyond the pain and beyond the need or desire for this person to do it differently, or even be in your life at all. Also, your unhealed wounds will never need to get your attention via an abuser again – because they will be gone.
(There is a REAL way to get out of the pain and never have to relive it again).
You will also be freed of what has been holding you back in other areas of your life, because after cleaning up your original wounds you will become a higher, Truer, happier, more expanded version of yourself than you have ever experienced … even before abuse.”
(There is the promise of a more incredible and expanded life than was ever being lived previously.)”
Now here is the startling part – Victim blaming advocates state it is dangerous to suggest personal responsibility, because it further damages victims.
Really … REALLY?
I take the stand it saves people’s lives, and then grants them their True Life!
It saved mine literally and emotionally, and it has saved thousands upon thousands of other people’s lives in this Community literally and emotionally as well.
Every day I receive emails and posts from people stating the RELIEF that they now know there is something within them to heal, and thank goodness they can get the focus off the narcissist and onto and into themselves to actually do something about changing their life …
Because, before finding the information that this was possible, the victim model of zero personal responsibility was NOT helping them.
These people feel relief even before they start doing the work on themselves, because within themselves they now recognise, there was a reason for this, and there is a way out.
These are people who do not want to accept the prognosis of being a victim indefinitely, or for the rest of their life.
They want what they went through to mean something and elevate them to something.
They want what they went through to have a higher purpose.
People who state “victim blaming” believe that by taking personal responsibility we are saying the narcissist was not to blame and is not at fault, and they get off “scott-free” – because it was “all our fault”.
Pleeeaaasssee!!!!
That is sooo not true.
It is ANYTHING but the truth!
Our Thriver statement of getting healed, up and out and away and no longer feeding power to the narcissist is the MOST powerful declaration we could ever make.
It states POINT BLANK, “What you have done is NOT okay in my life.”
As is the power to take appropriate action against this person in custody and property battles because we are no longer terrorized and regressing back to a fearful child emotional container within ourselves.
When we are soild, adult and anchored in our own bodies without our original wounding, the narcissist comes apart – because they can only operate in our life when they can use our wounds against us.
That is when the narcissist is “held accountable”.
And it never happens when we are not healed on the inside and not in our power.
Another claim by victim advocates is this: “victim blaming” marginalizes the victim/survivor and makes it harder for them to come forward and report the abuse. In other words victims will be less likely to report the abuse if they feel “blamed” for it.
This could be the case for a nasty, childish surface “blame” model, but it certainly is NOT the case for a Thriver Model.
In stark contrast Thrivers learn to love, honour and respect themselves.
Their boundary function repairs as a result of doing the work inside their bodies that allows them to release and up-level the original childhood fears of abandonment, criticism, rejection and punishment.
The very fears that were threatening their sense of love, approval, security and survival that keep them bonded to abusers rather than report, assert and leave!
A Deeper Look into the Word Blame
I really believe the BIG issue with enforcing victimisation is with the word “blame” … it is a word metaphysically and on a quantum level which doesn’t serve us healthily at all.
The word “responsibility” empowers – the word “blame” disempowers.
The reason the word “blame” is a false premise is because it implies people know what they are doing, have emotional control over what they are doing, and are purposefully doing “wrong” – and should be shamed, held accountable and punished accordingly.
It does nothing to recognise people act out their lives emotionally in accordance to their own inner wounding and painful subconscious programs.
Hurt people hurt people, and until their wounding is addressed by themselves as adults they will continue to do so.
Shaming and blaming people is the LEAST likely way of making them take responsibility for their own healing. In stark contrast it will only make them more hurt and defend and push back harder.
What DOES work is when these people have nowhere to go but inwards to heal their own wounds.
That only happens when other people stop handing them energy and attention, and let them go. When abuser’s lives, including the drama of others that distracts them for being with themselves, can no longer go on as normal – THAT is when they would be most likely to recognize themselves as the generative source of their own life, and go to the only place left to go (inwards) and attend to their inner wounds.
This has NEVER happened because people are “blaming” them.
Look at the wars and fighting in our world on micro and macro levels to see the truth of what blame creates!
I have never seen anyone mired in “blame” (of others or themselves) be in a Thriver Recovery … EVER.
In fact I know it’s impossible.
The energy of “blame” is completely shut off from the deeper truths regarding consciousness and unconsciousness.
How does blaming others make anyone do it differently?
Blame and shame are both dark insidious energies that create more darkness and dysfunction. Look at the blame and shame the Catholic Church passed on sexually to people, and what THAT created.
It created people en-masse acting totally in accordance with what they were being blamed and shamed for. As a healer who has worked with numerous clients in Ireland affected by generational sexual incestuous dysfunction I can promise you – there is NO coincidence.
Blaming and shaming yourself or anyone has never created healing, reform and atonement. It has only ever created more of what the blame and shame is about.
Have we ever felt better or healed by using blame and shame as emotions to “move on with”?
No!
Did we think blaming another extricated ourselves from the blame? We are kidding ourselves if we think it does.
If you were to hook yourself up to the laboratory equipment that would register how your nervous system felt about “blaming”, you may be astounded to discover that physiologically and chemically (which means emotionally) your Inner Being knows NO difference between you blaming another or blaming yourself.
It is all the same dark, toxic emotions telling you FIRMLY you are in wrong-town when applying it!
People who advocate victim blaming are blaming abusers to escape being blamed themselves (unhealed inner programs of the trauma of being blamed as children?) … BUT they are swimming in blame regardless … and they are NOT healing.
Every time we say, “My life and world has been ripped apart by you, and it was your fault and you are accountable for it”, hands our power over.
Why?
Because we have to wait for that person to set us free.
What if they don’t?
How do we heal if they don’t?
How do we forgive if they are to blame and we keep holding them accountable? (Forgiveness is not a gift to someone else it is a gift to ourselves).
And how do we release ourselves from the trauma that we believe is someone else’s responsibility to fix for us?
How do we get “closure” when we are reliant on the narcissist to grant it to us?
The answers are … we don’t … EVER.
And there you have all of the components of victimhood in a nutshell – with every single one of them organised around the notion of “assigning BLAME.”
Believing What We Have Been Told Instead of What Our Inner Truths Are
Shouldn’t our truths be what our emotional gauge (God within) tells us, instead of what our outer world has programmed us to believe?
Maybe, just maybe we have accepted many “truths” that haven’t been working for us, and haven’t allowed us to take our power back and heal ourselves regardless of what other specific people are or aren’t choosing to do (which is the definition of real personal freedom).
Maybe the models of victims and perpetrators and blame and shame are antiquated models – with very few true healing results.
If we look around us we have to admit the contemporary healing model from abuse is frightful – there are far too many people sick and alive, who are merely attempting to battle symptoms and are reliant on systems such as psychiatry and medication to try to deal with their abuse symptoms – because they are never actually healing and getting free from them.
And as a result these people are living gravely diminished lives, way beneath their ultimate potential – all blamed on perpetrators – because these people are not doing the work in their bodies to up-level and release and relieve themselves of the trauma.
And … they believe there is NO need to do that.
This is the “no personal responsibility to take” path because they are the victim and all blame and responsibility lies with the perpetrator.
These people point blank are stuck in the vicious cycles of trying to deal with abuse symptoms that will never be healed.
What a wonderful way to feed the Big Pharma systems that our world is presently based on – narcissistic systems that strip away personal power, and the ability to be self-actualised and heal ourselves.
Systems that keep people stuck in their pain, and render people sick and alive and reliant on outside costly intervention in order to continually try to escape the pain.
As A Victim Powerlessness is Always Felt and Abuse is Always A Possibility
Another way to keep people powerless is by keeping them stuck in the fearing of things outside of them, as a result of not having found and activated their True Power within themselves.
If we are told, “It was not your fault”, “there was nothing about you that co-generated this” and “all of your painful outcomes had nothing to do with you and everything to do with the abuser” … then the abuse we suffered must have been random, and we must be totally powerless in all of it.
This also means there is nothing we can change about ourselves to release or relieve the abuse from the past, and there is nothing we can change about ourselves to stop the possibility of it happening again in the future.
This makes us terrified that evil exists, we are susceptible to evil, and we are powerless against it if it turns up again.
Naturally this makes us protect, close down, dim our radiance and not GO for life in the way a free, empowered, self-actualized person would.
The way a Thriver releases themselves in order to BE in life.
After suffering significant abuse, if we are not doing the work inside our body to release our original and accumulated traumas, the trauma is trapped inside us.
Then it takes on a life of it’s own, compounded with the fear of not just trying to survive it, but of more trauma happening to us again.
As a result, emotionally we are tormented, and battling depression and anxiety and a host of other nervous system disorders such as agoraphobia and C-PTSD.
Because we are not connected to Life organically in the ways that our Soul ecology always intended – love, inspiration, freedom and being a self-generative source of power – we are in emotional discord.
In fact, the further we are away from our True Self state the more it hurts.
To try to relieve the inner pain of this disconnection from our True Self and the trauma of abuse and the fear of it happening again in the future, we will continue to try to relieve our inner pain through outer substitutes.
Such as medication to try to shut our symptoms up, or addictions (self-medicating) that grant temporary relief but create long term dire additional issues.
This is the perpetual self-defeating loop of trying to avoid self that was caused by the original false premise of “zero personal responsibility” – meaning there are NO original traumas or faulty unconscious programming inside me that has kept me separated from self, trying to assign false substitutes to grant me my own wholeness, or unconsciously held me in difficult and painful situations that are not serving my highest being and greatest truth.
Such is the unconsciousness of the victim model – which declares that any personal responsibility is “victim blaming”.
The Power and Safety of Taking Personal Responsibility
In stark contrast Thrivers know that when they up-level and heal the aspects within them (unconscious programming) that made them susceptible to narcissists in the first place (even if they were born into a narcissistic family) that they will no longer be unconsciously handing power over.
They know they will SHOW UP completely differently. They are able to lay boundaries and speak up – facing and having the necessary difficult conversations if required.
Thrivers know they are developing themselves into the self-value to be authentic to their own truth and be able to stand firm in and generate with life what they need, and walk away if necessary in order to retain self-love and self-worth.
Because no longer are they assigning specific other adults as their source of love, approval, security or survival.
Not when they have firmly become that source to themselves as a result of growing up their wounded inner childhood parts to adult solid maturity.
Thrivers also get to experience the up-leveling of their outer lives which has expanded in ways they never previously had access to, as a result of the transformations they have made on the inside.
Thrivers start living on a life trajectory which bears no resemblance to their abusive pasts.
Abusers have lost all pulling power and emotional hooks … they become “benign” to a Thriver … and people and situations which represent wholeness, wholesomeness, and real support, abundance and love start showing up instead.
None of which would have been possible without taking the radical personal responsibility to meet and address the Thriver’s own inner subconscious programming and re-program it.
Soooo there it is … my case in regard to why the Thriver Model has NOTHING to do with victim blaming and EVERYTHING to do with empowering people beyond victimisation and mere survival into True Thriving.
No comments:
Post a Comment