Playing the victim card…. Need to change

We all play the victim card sometime or the other and don’t we excel in this game? Take any relation, parent and child, student and teacher, boss and junior there are normally three characters around whom the story revolves, an oppressor, a victim, and an observer (Victim’s friend generally) and if one is fortunate a saviour comes in some cases. Movies after movies based on this standard theme have raked in huge profits for the producers year after year. Aren’t we still so fond of such stories?

A child thinks he/ she is being victimised by the parents/elders/ teachers, not been given the liberties/ facilities he/ she deserves, too many checks being maintained, teachers are just after them because they do not accept the status quo, question too much. Then there are the ever-present advisors, the friends who are always there to boost the ego and reinforce the notion of being victimised. Similarly, in some homes one or both parents play the role of the victim, the grown-up children or one of the spouses are termed as oppressors and there are those friends from neighbourhood who are always there to feed new stories about the kids/ spouse to help reinforce the victim mindset.  

The scene is no different in the professional spaces with juniors and even some bosses playing the victim card and other colleagues/ juniors working tirelessly to add spices to make the story sustainable and interesting.

The common factor in all the stories is that none of the narrator ever classifies himself/ herself as the oppressor, the villain. Oppressor is always the other person; why so? The problem lies within, we all are so used to playing the blame game that whenever anything goes wrong in personal or professional life, before finding a solution we get busy locating the person or the situation to whom/ which the wrong can be apportioned. Once own safety has been ensured with a fool proof alibi than only generally the process of righting the wrong starts.

The seeds of the problem are usually sown at home in the initial years of the child’s life. For most parents, their child can do no wrong, for most teachers any child who questions the status quo is a potential trouble creator and must be shown his/ her rightful place at the earliest.

The parents and the teachers have to understand that over protection and over/ repetitive criticism both impede the growth of the child; both actions aid in developing the victim mindset in a child which he/ she carries for long in life. If a child or a junior in office does something wrong check him for that and be done with it, do not use the mistake as a stick for life-long thrashing. Do not stick a permanent label on the person. Same is true for the juniors or the children; try and understand the view of the parent/ teacher or the boss, the picture looks different from every other angle. Look inwards you will get most of the solutions.

Life is not a movie where a Hero walks in, resolves all the problems and everyone lives happily thereafter. In real life each one of us got to take over the role of the hero and take the lead in resolving the personal or professional problems and not just sit back and play the victim/ blame game.