The Victim Trance That Keeps You Stuck in Chronic Pain — And How to Break Free
Throughout my years of trying to understand why I lived with chronic pain, I came to see that awareness was the key to evolving in this life, and without it, lives will become stuck in old patterns of thinking, believing, and reacting that will be detrimental.
I could see that most of us live in some kind of trance, which is really the trance of our past conditioning. It’s a trance of how we view ourselves, how we view others, and our overall perception of life. It’s also about what we think others think of us, which is really just a projection of what we think of ourselves.
It’s difficult to see that we are in a trance. We need awareness in order to get out of it. In order to find freedom.
Like most chronic pain sufferers, my trance was that I had to make everyone around me happy, and that my own joy would depend on my loved ones’ happiness. I lived in a trance of self-doubt, low self-confidence, devaluing myself, and I had a victim mentality. This led to self-defeating behaviors such as people pleasing, overworking, and constantly trying to prove myself.
I had no idea that some people had victim mentalities and others had an empowered mindset. And I had no clue that this was a choice, and that making the decision to learn all about what it takes to have an empowered mindset would be the key to getting out of chronic pain.
The Victim Trance
If you are similar to me and have been stuck in the “victim trance” most of your life, it’s not your fault. We are responsible for our trance, but are not to blame for it. This being said, we are the only ones who can get ourselves out of it.
The morning I started this post, I found myself waking once again out of the victim trance. I found myself uncomfortable with some things happening in my life, forgetting that I’m in the driver's seat. I found myself wanting to go back to the way it used to be, because when I’m back in the trance, that is more comfortable. It’s like working so hard for something you want, only to let fear creep in and pull you back to comfort instead of progress.
Self-doubt took me over, and the more empowered mindset that I have been working so hard for was nowhere to be found.
Traits of being in the victim trance
Your power is outside of yourself
You are focused on unfairness
You feel helpless
You blame others
You take everything personally
“Why does this always happen to me?”
“I can’t do anything about it.”
The empowered mindset
The empowered mindset is what we all want. This is where life gets really good. This is where you take responsibility for your own life and feel like you have the power to make it what you want, even if things don’t always go as you would like.
Traits of an empowered mindset
Your power lies within you
You take action instead of focusing on inequity
You feel agency or control over your life
You take ownership of your life
You stop blaming others for your life
“What can I learn from this?”
“What can I do next?”
Most people who struggle with chronic pain are often stuck in the muck of a victim trance. But many people who don’t live with chronic pain are stuck in this way of thinking as well; they simply experience it through other struggles in their lives.
To move out of pain, we have to begin believing that we have agency over our lives and over our experience of pain. We have to start taking steps to free ourselves from the old ways of thinking, relating, believing, and behaving that drain our power rather than strengthen it.
It isn’t the pain itself that needs to be our primary focus. What matters most is how we feel in our lives.
When we begin to change our relationship with ourselves, the way we think, respond, and show up, everything can begin to shift.
And the most important thing to remember is that we can choose to start making that change today.
Because we are worth it.
Read my post https://www.brainretrainforpain.com/blog/10-steps-to-retraining-your-brain-out-of-pain to find out more about retraining your brain out of pain.