How do we Talk About the Hard Times?
Did you know that you’re allowed to not tolerate being treated like dog shit?
This is a recent revelation, for me.
I hear people talk about “Victim Mentality” a lot on the internet. And I think that a lot of the criticisms of it are very fair. A lot of people use “being a victim” as a convenient cover or excuse for shitty behaviour. [1] Or as a means of justifying a lack of ambition, motivation, drive… Not to mention that people have weaponized therapeutic language before - and they’re going to do it again. The “Poor Me” defence is used constantly, so I just want to be wary of it, and hold myself accountable before getting properly into this missive.
I don’t think that I have a Victim Mentality, but I have wound up gaslighting myself into being a perpetual victim. I was bullied a lot growing up - worse than most that I know, but no where near as badly as others I have heard of. I never really understood why [2], other than the fact that I was a sensitive kid with a larger vocabulary than most of my peers. [3]
(Which definitely isn’t a flex; all it did was paint a target on my back and out me as “a weird kid”.)
And even now - that last sentence, that last parenthesis - is an example of what I’ve grown up doing constantly. I have an awful habit of this self-gaslighting and making excuses for other people who treat me shitty.
I would almost self-soothe by telling myself “Lots of people get bullied - you don’t have it any worse than anyone else.” [4] And maybe that’s true, but it also wasn’t a way of actually processing the ways that I WAS being mistreated.
I think I used it as a coping mechanism to not feel worse or feel weird. Bad enough to be emotionally tormented every day at that place I hated going, I didn’t also want to be the only one going through it. That makes them mean and you sad. [5]
So I pushed it out of my mind.
I accepted it.
I knew I didn’t like it, but I told myself “I guess a lot of people get abused and mistreated for their entire life, I must just be one of those people.”
Which is a horrific thing to accept as a child. Because Bullies don’t just exist in school. It’s not like everyone grows up to become functional adults - we just become bigger versions of the people that we were. In some cases, Bullies become Bigger Bullies. In my case, I became a Bigger Target.
That’s part of the reason I hate that the word “Bully” has such an infantile quality to it. We deal with “Bullying” in schools [6] but that locks it in place in our minds as almost a childhood-exclusive problem, when it isn’t. We know that this isn’t the case, but societally we do think in these reductive terms. A bully isn’t a bully in the board room - he’s a CEO. A bully isn’t a bully in a bar - he’s assertive.
There are bullies literally everywhere - but to call them out does sometimes feel like you’re that kid on the playground again, a tattle-tale, surrounded by friends and authority figures [7] who are incapable or unwilling to stop objectively bad behaviour and outcomes.
Even worse, some people applaud bullies! Can you believe that?
Some people - vote for them.
I accepted bad treatment as “Normal”. And all that does is open the door of your soul to future abuse. I have since been bullied by Employers, Partners, sometimes Friends… As my therapist put it; “You got so used to being mistreated, that now it feels comfortable.” Which is - when you think about it - such a sickening, tragic thought.
But now I’m in the midst of this discovery, and it IS uncomfortable. The discomfort I’m feeling now is the result of something unfamiliar; Standards.
I ask this hoping that the answer is “no” - but do you know how strange it is to suddenly have to hold up standards that aren’t comfortably, reliably, very low? Where ”The Bar” is so low that you’d have to dig to find it? You spend your whole life believing you’re someone who deserves sub-par treatment, and suddenly people are telling you that you need to advocate for yourself?!
That’s so much pressure! Can’t I just continue to be a 6’5” whipping boy?
I never had one of those moments like in the movies, where the nerdy underdog finally stands up for himself and never gets harassed again.
There are a half dozen jobs that I kept working just because I already had them - when I definitely could have been paid more, worked easier, and been appreciated at all - if I’d just gone out to find a place where the employers don’t treat their employees like shit. [8]
I could have ended my last relationship way earlier if I’d had any standards for how I should be treated as a person.
When you’ve lived a life of “this is how it is”, it’s very difficult to suddenly shift gears and say “I’m better than this.” And don’t get me wrong; I’m arrogant. I’m full of enough of myself to think that the words I write, the thoughts I have - these are good enough to justify other people reading them, or hearing me say them out loud on a stage. I practice arrogance regularly.
But to actually stand by your standards is difficult. It’s like exercising a muscle that has atrophied from disuse. Or, that grew up a little bit stunted.
That’s the lesson I’m learning right now. I’ll let you know how it goes.
[1] One need only Google the story of how “Affluenza” became the reasonably well-known term it is to understand the issues with people cloaking themselves in victimhood.
[2] My Mum would often tell me that I was bullied because the other kids were jealous of me - that I was smarter than them, nicer than them… typical parental response. And while I was for SURE smarter than my antagonistic peers, I don’t think that was the whole basis of their contempt. Some kids just want to see another kid cry.
[3] I also didn’t get to be a tall or physically imposing kid until one horribly painful time where I grew a solid foot in about half a year. That was a weird summer.
[4] Also - let’s not get ourselves into a trauma-measuring contest. I am still after all, a straight, white, cisgendered male. I’m just talking about how I have personally grown up broken. Broadly speaking, trauma-measuring IS useless and unproductive if you’re just shouting at people that they didn’t have it as bad as you/someone else.
[5] In like a “tragedy” kind of way, not just in an “oh they made Ross sad” kind of way. (I guess that second way too, though.)
[6] And we should. We should deal with it WAY better than we historically or currently have/do.
[7] This is incidentally where I think my default stance of mistrusting and not respecting authority figures comes from. When you spend the first decade of your life surrounded by ineffective people who are “in charge” (teachers, parents, principals) you sort of learn that actually; nobody is in charge of anything. Or if they are, they must not be very good at it, because bad things are still happening under their watch.
[8] There seems to be this pervasive idea that Employees should be grateful for their jobs.
No fucking way. For one simple reason - people don’t want to work. As a species, we would all much rather be free to explore the world, engage with creative pursuits, experience life - your day job gives you exactly zero of these things.
Employers are lucky to have us, and you should NEVER forget that we outnumber them. No amount of money changes basic math.