Winner:
1. What I have
2. Makes thing happen
3. How can I become
4. Looks at the positive
5. Finds ways
6. Acknowledges responsibility
7. Takes guidance
8. Always sees wins ahead
9. Listens more
10. Creates goals for him/herself
11. Learns from mistakes
12. Forgives
13. Long distance runner, patient
14. Favors

Victim:
1. What I haven't got
2. Waits for things to happen
3. Why can't I?
4. Focuses on the faults
5. Finds excuses
6. Blames others
7. Knows it all
8. Always sees losses ahead
9. Talks more
10. Creates obstacles for him/herself
11. Looses from mistakes
12. Holds a grudge
13. Short distance runner, burns out
14. Blames

I would never have believed that the key to live a life in harmony, peace and happiness was such a simple thing: Not allowing myself to indulge in self-pity. I just had to acknowledge that I was responsible of my own emotions and feelings, to look at the positive sides of everything, to have the winner attitude always in mind in all situations, to acknowledge that it is in fact up to you how you handle things in life. If you have the winner mentality then it doesn’t really matters what life throws at you, you make problems into tasks that you work on and solve. It is just so much easier to look at things in a positive way, even things that frighten you, that seem so unsolvable. It is a fact that if you don’t see the monster in a horror film then the film gets so much scarier. As soon as you get to see the monster close up it stops being so scary. The same with problems, if you simply look at them straight in the eyes, examine them closely, get familiar to them, then they stop being so scary.

Empathy has never cured any personal or mental problems in anyone ever. My opinion is that I think empathy triggers what I would like to call: behavior mirrors (there is probably some fancy word for it, but this will do). That is if you get empathy from others you start to act the victim role. When you get into that role you will begin to feel worse because you want to reflect this idea that person has of you as being A victim. So with every person that feels sorry for you, your victim role is strengthened and with it you throw away any responsibility for your own emotions and behavior. Everything you try to achieve in this victim "mode" is doomed to failure because you have to proof for yourself constantly that you are such a victim that everything is destined to fail and then you have one more thing to feel sorry for yourself about and that strengthens even more the victim mentality in your life.

The thing that is also amazing about this is that you are totally oblivious about what is really going on. The self deception is so powerful that in the end everything evolves around being the ideal victim. You don’t even see that you are creating the problems yourself. When you are a victim you never take responsibility for your own feelings, behavior and mental state, you simply blame the "others" for it if things aren’t great, the "others" are bad because they don’t feel sorry enough for you and treat you badly. You feel the whole world is against you, when in fact the problem starts and ends with this self deception. The lie that you have gotten so clever to tell yourself. You make yourself think that you are a helpless victim to your own bad emotions, that the depression you feel is simply something that comes out of thin air and that you can’t do anything about it.

Again I was so wrong? In the end of this "victim era" as I call it, I had become a part of the mental health system. I was diagnosed having a borderline personality disorder, and oh how I treasured that! It was the final proof that made me into an ideal victim. A mental patient. It doesn’t get better then that, right!? To have a written proof that I was suffering inside, poor me. Now I could throw away all responsibility of my own feelings because "I couldn’t help it". Instantly after the diagnosis there came a time when I went on "the quest for the holy pill" as I like to call it. Trying all kinds of medicines that were supposed to "cure" me. Again I got disappointed, because I was waiting for a pill that I could pop and BOOM feel good instantly, no strings attached. Of course there are no such pills like that, but as expected, I took the failure of getting cured as another proof that I was a victim. I went on many kinds of medicines anyway and became a zombie for a while. For about 3-4 years when I was on big doses of some knock out tranquilizers I had no opinion at all. I didn’t laugh, I didn’t cry, I didn’t talk, I didn’t feel anything. I didn’t feel bad, but I didn’t feel good either, frankly I didn’t feel at all! The only thing I could do was to sit in front of the television (I guess because it is more acceptable to stare at the TV then to stare at an empty wall) and eat and eat and eat with my brain wrapped up in pink clouds made by pills.

Then something happened. When I look back at the things that changed my whole life, I can see that it was in fact many things that affected each other in a way that got me on the right track. Some are even not of this world. It all begun when my mother laid her hands on me. What I mean by it is that she put her hands on me to heal me spiritually. It is not quite healing in a christian way, just healing using the spirits that help her. In one such session some major thing happened, she had her hands on my head and suddenly I felt a very sharp pain in my neck that felt exactly like a string pulled through my neck. When we talked afterwards, my mother and me, she told me that she had had the feeling that she was pulling some strings with dark filthy things tangled in it from my neck, exactly what I had felt! Then at every session I went to I always got this sharp pain in my neck at some time. Then I started to go to a therapist. She was an old woman educated as a psychiatric nurse, but took people into therapy, and someone had said to me that she really made miracles. So I went to her and I told her my entire "victim" story in details, hoping that she would be the one that would show my once and for all how sorry she felt for me, and that would make me happy at last. In the end of the session she leaned back and then she told me the truth; That I was making myself sick, that I was a much stronger personality then to waste my life in self-pity, and in fact I had the full responsibility over all my emotions. I can’t remember what exactly she said but the bottom line was that I should stop feeling sorry for myself, stop being constantly a victim and it was all up to me to start to feel better. WOW it was a big shocker! At first I was so angry that she didn’t feel sorry for me, and I thought she was a very bad person to hurt my feelings that way, and I was also certain that I would never ever go to her again.

The self deception was so great that at first I couldn’t understand why she said those things to me, and I thought it was such a mean thing to do because "I couldn’t help myself" feeling this way, and that she "didn’t know me". But I went back to her because frankly I was so utterly tired of myself and my mess of a life. I decided to be totally open to everything she said, because she was my last hope of getting out of this emotional pit. In all her sessions I felt the string being pulled from my neck, and in the end I felt the string being pulled nearly everyday for weeks, and that was not in sessions or with my mother, just in my normal day, having all the pain and darkness pulled out of me. The pain in my neck was so real, it was exactly like a string with some hard, sharp, hurtful things attached to it being pulled from my neck. I had felt when I met the therapist for the first time that I didn’t have much time with her. That she wouldn’t be in this line of work much longer, because frankly she was very old. In all I think I went to 4 X 2 hour sessions and that was all I needed. This woman totally changed my life and it bothers me I couldn’t thank her properly for it, because I was right, she wasn’t to be in this line of work for much longer. She died last April of cancer but I am convinced she is still helping people, and hopefully I will meet her when my day comes and then I can thank her properly.

It took weeks and months to let the things she said filter through my brain and to see that it was in fact the truth, and believe me those were some hard weeks and months. Imagine having to acknowledge that your whole life was a lie! That the emotional pain I was constantly suffering from was in fact self made, and in fact something I could easily control. It sure felt I had wasted my life on something worthless. But I just felt bad about that for a few minutes because if I felt bad about it then I would be nurturing the victim inside me, so I decided to be grateful for this self deception because it was a life experience and made me eventually into a better person that had gained a better understanding of myself.

It sounds like all the changes came overnight but believe me they took many months and years, gradually understanding myself, understanding what the "victim mode" did to me, and slowly changing my way of thinking and perceptions of things. To take control over myself and my emotions took also a long time to practice, and it is a thing I have to think about everyday to get through the days without falling into the "victim mode" again. The keyword is never ever never feel sorry for yourself!! If I allow myself to feel sorry for myself in any situation then I automatically feel bad and depressed after a short time. Self pity always creates negativity, that’s a simple fact, and your mind will be filled up with depressing, sad, negative thoughts if you allow yourself to indulge in self pity.

It is a fact that I haven’t felt bad or depressed for a long time (I think for years) simply because I don’t allow myself to feel sorry for myself. There are so many situations that can make you feel sorry for yourself. F. ex. I found out why I felt sad after arguments or confrontations. The reason was that I thought the persons I argued with had said or done bad things to me so I felt sorry for myself. As soon as I was aware of it, I stopped letting myself feel sorry for myself in that situation and now I don’t feel sad after arguments.

I think this list says it all. It gives you a clear idea what is the essence in the difference of a winner and victim. I made the huge mistake in my life to become a victim. I thought that because I had a bad past it was necessary to feel sorry for myself, and because of my bad past other people should feel sorry for me 24/7. I really thought that if people just had enough pity for me my emotional pain would go away. If only I could get a person in my life that would listen to my story about my bad past and just feel sorry enough for me, then everything would get better. When things just got worse I blamed the people in my life for not fulfilling their task of feeling sorry for me, and I remember how disappointed I was that people simply wouldn’t feel sorry enough for me. I really hoped and craved for this idealized person that would feel enough sorry for me and solve all my problems. I couldn’t have been more wrong. The fact is that no one is capable of feeling enough sorry for a person, simply because there is no person in the world that can make things better when you are not doing anything about it yourself.

Heidrun Bergdottir
http://www.123.is/weightloss