If people are always martyrs, does it become their fault at a certain point?

A lovely lady I once worked for said, “Some people get their power from being the victim.”

I think that may be true for some.

A martyr loves having a sword to fall upon.

My sister in law has a martyr complex and made it obvious even before they married. She has been married to my brother for 30 years now but early in the relationship I made it clear that I did not give “Martyr Points” to anyone, not just her, so if she was so inclined either keep it to herself or don’t expect any pity.

She could do neither so it took a while for us to work out our relationship. But I did set the boundaries early.

My kids learned at an early age that if they were looking for sympathy they could find it in the dictionary between “Sh*t and Syphilis”. I have heard both of them use the same expression as adults.

I am self-aware enough to know that I have fallen into a “victim complex” at times in my life. I can’t find the exact quote right now, but a blogger I like summed it up very nicely when he said that it is seductive to see oneself as a victim because it gives you something besides your own faults to blame for your failures. It’s a mental crutch that many, including myself, use sometimes in order to loathe ourselves a little less.

That said, in 99% of cases I hate to dismiss people as “playing the victim.” Without being in their shoes, it’s hard to know exactly what options are available to them to alleviate their troubles. When we speculate we often get it wrong.

In some cases people feel victimized by situations that are entirely out of their control. In those cases there aren’t many options available to you besides going through a long coping process to get through the feeling, which can take years. I’m 12 years into my coping process and it’s still ongoing. Given my experience with this, I can forgive some wallowing. I also think in these cases that righteous anger is a tool that in many cases does not need and should not be suppressed by the coping process.

Of course in your example you’re talking about a very different situation that probably could be resolved if the person tried setting boundaries, like you say, but without knowing more details it’s hard to speculate.

I’ve known this person online for a number of years and she is constantly overwhelmed. I’m not saying she is playing the victim but the responsibilities she takes on herself seem overwhelming. I don’t think she knows how to say no. Obviously, I don’t know all of her situation but it is a sad way to live.

If one isn’t ever taught how or allowed to set boundaries in childhood, it is very difficult to learn how later. In a lot of dysfunctional families, there is often one child (smallest, weakest, quietest, most compassionate by nature) who is designated as the one who does the least attractive jobs and the most caregiving.

This person will often carry the perception of their responsibility into adulthood, and their sense of self-worth is often tied directly into their perception of how much they take on and they really don’t seem to understand that they can refuse to take on a task. Years of good therapy can help, if one recognizes that they need it.

It is pretty annoying to constantly be around such a person, but it is likely much harder to be such a person.

@canidmajor That makes so much sense. I suspect that is the background of this person and she is even in the mental health provision field.

People are always responsible for their own condition.

This is not to say that people cause every thing that happens to them (good or bad) – but it usually does. In any case, they are always and only the ones responsible for their reaction and for their feelings. That is without fail.

And this is also not to say that some occurrences are unimaginably sad or tragic, painful, unlucky or even evil. Still, it’s a person’s own responsibility to deal with it. And if one keeps falling into the same traps (psychic, mental or actual holes in the ground) and doing nothing to change course, process, beliefs – whatever it takes to “deal” more effectively – then it becomes more and more an issue of “fault”. Even though I try to avoid judgments of fault or blame as a rule, sometimes those are unavoidable conclusions.

It can become passive aggressive behaviour. Look at how nice a person I am and how these nasty and unthinking people make me suffer for it.

It’s just plain difficult (though clearly necessary) to hold people accountable for their fate. The gods have sprinkled us all with such lopsided doses when it comes to abilities (or disabilities) that I concluded decades ago that entirely too much of our destiny is determined by sheer random chance.

When it’s a constant state of being I do think they have a certain amount of culpability.

Sometimes life dishes out a lot of garbage at once. Going through some high pressured months, or even years, I think is not unusual for most people. But, some people seem to have an entire life of it, and create their own sadness and chaos. It’s their normal, it’s what they know. They may not like it, but it’s their comfort zone.

I see people set up their lives all the time in a certain way, and then they complain about the situations they set up. Sometimes it’s like a self fulfilling prophecy. The very thing they dread the most, they bring into their lives. It’s weird to watch it.

This thread is a pretty tough room. Beyond being somewhat annoying to others, pulling out words like “martyr complex” and “passive aggressive” and “culpability” seems pretty harsh.

Of course we should all do what we should do, but @janbb‘s description of this person sounds very benign, with no intention to manipulate others. She just sounds extraordinarily tired, too tired to put up a fight, or to defend herself against the accusations of “selfish” and “unfeeling” that tend to come from family members that demand so much.

It is exhausting to stand up to the people who trained you to this behavior. These are the first people that you often care about the most (family) and whom you try the hardest to please. The ones that all social convention and popular culture tell you to be the most devoted to.

Maybe just try to make sure that you are not contributing to the burden (whether you feel it is self-imposed or not) of the people you know who seem to be like this.

It is learned behavior from childhood family roles. She needs to see a Counselor to address the need to rescue others above herself.Her self worth is in jeopardy.

Most times “martyrs” are guilty of enabling and then looking for sympathy. A true martyr would be holding true to their beliefs regardless of what the consequences were and those that don’t like them will persecute them. Most people, such as the one described are looking for someone to validate their sacrifices. Martyrs don’t make themselves look like victims…they just are.

Some people seem to think that “playing the victim” is much easier than actually doing something to take useful action to change (or make better) their situation.

I don’t doubt that some people feel “victimized” or feel like they are “martyrs” but it never makes sense to me why they don’t take steps, that often seem obvious to their friends, co-workers, relatives, or even strangers, to change their circumstances.