# 8:    SELECT A STYLE THAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU

Victims come in all sorts of different shapes and styles. Only you are the one who is best suited to determine what style of victimhood is more to your own liking there are plenty of options available.

What’s critical is that you decide on a style of victimhood that works best with your personality and temperament. One popular style of victimhood is the poor-me approach. This particular one is great for controlling others and it’s done mostly through passivity. It operates to a large degree on indifference and inaction, and with a huge doses of guilt.

“It figures. Nothing good ever happens to me. I’m not lucky like you.”

“I was born at the wrong time, wrong place, in wrong family…”

By consistently using your negative affirmations, combined with plenty of criticism and gossip, the meekly exhibited poor-you approach can generate a circle of people who will gravitate towards you by feeling sorry for you. These people typically start out with strong desire to help you – and if left to their natural tendencies will eagerly take over more and more, thus letting you sit back more and more. Without realizing it they will unwittingly collude in your helplessness and join in your ill-fated victimhood.

Over time these emerging patterns of pitiful victimhood will be cemented into place, and you will never again be expected to pull your own weight. This persona of the pathetic creature that you are becoming will go a long way in creating you as someone seen as a bona fide victim.

While you sit back in your poor-me passivity you’ll enjoy knowing you have provided fulfillment to so many over responsible types. The name for these folks is over-functioners. Over-functioners are people who are compelled to take care of everyone else, and they will sweep in and, if allowed, over-extend themselves further and further. They will take more and more responsibility, as you subsequently take on less and less.

For the more serious and dedicated victim there is the optional rage-filled victim approach. This style is for the more enterprising person – the one with the stamina that’s needed to inflict outrage and indignation into every possible situation. Initially it is a more difficult approach. However, once mastered, it offers several advantages: It endears you to no one; it provides substantially more lasting power; and it is likely to expedite you with serious health problems that can only further fuel your life of victimhood.

The rage-filled victim is someone who is successful at dealing with even the most dedicated helpers – over-functioners – of this world. There is also greater satisfaction from dampening the heretofore-indomitable spirits of those who generally think of themselves as good and decent people. Lash out with random acts of rage and contempt when someone mistakenly presents you with some helpful suggestions to improve your terrible lot in life. If you do this often enough you will provoke these otherwise kindly people into becoming the most unsympathetic people. They will shift into being highly reactive and defensive. This shift in their normal stance will cause them to feel extremely conflicted. This will both surprise and distress them. Show them no mercy. While they are reeling from their own dismay demonstrate you’re most intense and irritated combination of contempt and anger.

“That’s pretty easy for someone like you who was born with a silver spoon in his naive and pathetic mouth to say! You don’t have a clue about all I’ve had to go through!”

If the helper is initially undaunted, continue your attack. Keep at it until they back away.

“You really make me sick; you and your stupid advice! As if you’re so perfect. Try minding your own business for a change!”

With persistence, the most recalcitrant helper will eventually back off and retreat from your side. And they will avoid you now like the plague. Rest assured you’ll enrolled them as your best ambassadors – forewarning all others that you are NOT to be reckoned with!

Next week: # 9: ALWAYS FOCUS ON THE NEGATIVE AND/OR POTENTIALLY BAD IN LIFE

# 7:    MAKE OTHERS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

This next Step to becoming an effective victim logically follows from all the previous steps. This one is especially designed to have you work smarter as opposed to working harder. In fact it is all about getting others to work harder while you do little to nothing:

Never take responsibility for your relationships with anyone. Instead always make the other person totally responsible.

Say things like:

“She only cares about herself.”

“It’s his fault we broke up. He was such a jerk!”

“He/she never calls me!”

“People are so phony!”

“I am waiting for a full and complete apology before I speak to him.”

If you can say these kinds of things while using a weak and whinny voice, it’s even better. Don’t ever take any kind of initiative, and under no circumstances should you ever call the person in question. Instead wait by your phone, feeling sorry for yourself. While you sit there make a list of all the reasons he/she doesn’t call ill-fated you. This is where your daily negative affirmations will begin to pay off.

“He/she hates me.”

“He/she thinks I’m stupid.”

“I bore her.”

“People do not care about me one bit.”

“I made a fool of myself.”

“People never like me once they get to know me.”

If you, let’s say, do eventually get called just think of it as for some poorly

reasoned out attempt on this other’s part, but not any kind of sincere effort. Rationalize that they are only doing so because of some misguided kindness or insincere generosity on their part, or it’s because they feel pity for me. Create some ill-conceived reason that allows you to further discount any gestures of reconciliation.

“She’s/He’s just doing it out of obligation, not out of any real caring!”

With some persistence you will discourage any continued follow-up, or any further contact by such people. Best of all, you’ll then be able to continue building that air-tight case that you are right about you being a total victim.

Next week: # 8: SELECT A STYLE THAT WORKS BEST FOR YOU

# 6:     CULTIVATE YOUR SENSE OF PARANOIA

If you have been following along these past few weeks and are utilizing the various steps offered so far, then you are surely well on your way to a life of successful victimhood. You’re now ready for what may be considered some advanced steps – steps that will take you to even great heights of victimhood. We begin with Paranoia. Paranoia is one of the greater resources you can exploit to make your efforts of becoming an effective victim really leap forward.

Start every day by repeating this complaint. Do it repeatedly and as often as possible throughout your day:

“People don’t care about me and will screw me over at every opportunity they can find.”

Just by saying it often, you will make it into a solid core belief by which to live. Take everything others say to you or about you as a personal attack. See it always as an affront aimed at ridiculing you, and more evidence to support your claim of getting screwed over. Then use your God-given imagination to react quickly with incensed indignation and justifiable defensiveness. Throw back at such people any inconsistencies you can discover or are able to manufacture about other people – all as part of a full proof enraged rebuttal.

With practice you’ll be able to create your very own personal conspiracy theory, or even better, your series of conspiracies:

 “My parents were out to destroy me before I was born.”

“Every teacher I had hated me.”

“Nobody ever wants to be with me.”

“People always try to take advantage of me.”

“My sister was always jealous. She couldn’t stand it whenever I did well or I got something.”

Takes these kind of ideas and look for any instances in your life to draw upon as rock solid evidence to support these notions. By using words like “Always” or “Never” whenever you come across one or two instances of such incidents – or even possible incidents – you will build a brilliant and irrefutable case about how unjustly you are ALWAYS being treated.

From there it is just a matter of building upon these incidents with a paranoid way of speaking and thinking. With practice you’ll eventually develop an air-tight case regarding your version of “Truthiness.” Remember our thoughts become things. Therefore, if you think these paranoid thoughts long enough they will become your reality. It is imperative that you believe every negative thought you think. Sometimes this will require you to block out any alternative thoughts and ideas – neutral ones and/or positive ones – things other people may have offered. Do not let these thoughts penetrate your own thinking. Instead stay steadfast with your victimizations and poor-me notions.

I cannot underscore enough that if you say or think anything consistently and often enough, it will be taken as reality. For a concrete example of how terrific this principle is just remember the slogan: “Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).” This was repeated so often and by so many in the presidential administration at the time when Iraq’s leader, Saddam Hussein, was in power that even when this was proved to be false, there were, and still are people walking around today that believe Saddam Hussein had “weapons of mass destruction.”

This characteristic of human behavior is what you can exploit with ease anytime with any one, and with anything, you wish to manufacture.  Paranoia – like gossip – is very contagious. You can learn to exploit it to your benefit. It’s a matter of utilizing peoples’ open mindedness where they bring a bit of doubt regarding their own ideas. Also there is a part of human behavior where people like to focus on negativity and things that are awry. Therefore you can trip people up with your absoluteness regarding how “the world is falling apart” or how “you always get the short end of the stick” even without proof or evidence to support these statements.

Next week: # 7: MAKE OTHERS RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIPS

# 5:     GET A MENTOR

If you truly want to excel in your capacity for becoming an effective victim look for other skilled victims to teach you how to best complain, to grovel, and to hone your capacity to be a victim, and especially in how to complain with outrage. Learn by imitating these pros. Every single office or job site seems to have its “Poor-Me” types, its garden-variety negativists, and its Mr. or Mrs. Whiner.

Learn from these “gifted controlling artists” by studying what they do so well, and see what it will take for you to grow into their league. Make friends with any apparent drama queens or kings. Practice whatever you observe from these masters of manipulation. Do not be afraid to put these newly discovered skills you’ve been observing around you into practice wherever you can: at coffee breaks, lunchtimes, after hours, or even better – during actual work time.

This is why schools have teacher’s lounges, and what work cafeterias were made for. Soon you’ll realize how you can take bitching and moaning to new levels. Also, you have the benefit of putting your own body into a state of depression and fatigue, as well as having a similar effect on those around you. This will further cultivate a sense of toxicity permeating from you, and this will reinforce your valiant efforts at victimhood to ever greater heights.

You can, by observation, marvel at the proficiency of these newly discovered pros. They do their complaining with seemingly such ease and commitment regarding whatever they are speaking out about. Also they NEVER offer the slightest hint of a remedy or a solution to whatever complaint or problem they are espousing.

Note how they never assume any personal responsibility in whatever problem they are complaining about. Instead they use “they” and “them” and group people into categories as well. This is so important. Note, too, how they make sweeping generalizations, such as, “nobody” or “everyone.”  This is all part of why they are such masters. It’s why you ought to follow them and pay close attention to their skillful capacity to committed victimhood. There is so much you can learn by befriending such people and drawing upon their alternative ways of thinking and being so out of step – a mismatch – in the world.

News programs, as well as, other media can also offer you ample opportunities to learn from the great ones. These days, especially, there are lots of folks committed to making outrageous critical and negative statements without a shred of evidence to support their comments. And as you know if you say something enough times and it gets repeated often enough it is soon taken as true without the slightest bit of fact checking. You can learn a lot from such bold and troublesome commentaries.

Next week: # 6: CULTIVATE YOUR SENSE OF PARANOIA

# 4:     SURROUND YOURSELF WITH REALLY “NICE” PEOPLE

If you are serious about striving to become a highly successful victim you must be willing to exploit other people. Yes, this means that you must be willing to take advantage of others. There are many kinds of people you can take advantage of and they are everywhere. People pleasers are one such group that are readily available and, as it happens, these people are particularly easy to exploit. People pleasers are abundant so you will not need to search far to find them. Another name for these people is nice people. They also tend to avoid confrontation and are often too polite to tell you that you are incorrect or being unreasonable.

Their tolerance makes them also extremely useful: too nice to ever challenge or rebut you whenever you are making outlandish comments. These are exactly the sort of people you want to have around you as often as possible. They are, by definition, less likely to press you about your commitment for not taking personal responsibility for your own life.

Their good manners and politeness will provide plenty of room for your budding victimhood skills to develop and advance. Another way of saying this is that there’s a great opportunity to be had by surrounding yourself with nice, tolerant, and conflict-avoidant people. It would, therefore, be foolish to not exploit each and every nice person you possibly can.

By doing so you will create a rich source for practicing and developing your litany of complaints and problems. Get into repeating over and over all the things that are wrong, are going wrong, or will likely go wrong whenever you are in the company of nice people.

I know a professional victim who went quite far in his victimhood development by living a committed life of convincing each and every person he met of his mantra:

“The whole world is out to screw me over.”

He got extremely good at this. Over time it even became a self-fulfilling prophesy. He was able to find plenty of evidence to support this belief. He could and did use anything and everything – like being stuck in traffic, or spilling his coffee, or running out of tooth paste – all as further proof and evidence that he was indeed correct: “The whole world is out to screw me over.”

One small caveat here – and this is extremely important – you must be very careful. Do not go so far overboard as to drive even the kindest, nicest and most tolerant people away. Therefore, you have to find a certain balance here. If you find your friends are spending less time with you, you might need to drop it down a notch or two. You may have to cool your poor-me mantra so that you don’t end up with no one to listen to your rants of negativity.

While there are lots of nice people you don’t want to have to go out and constantly search for more of them when you can use the ones already in your life: at your job, certain family members, and friends and neighbors.  In fact you might begin to notice that these loyal and nice people seem drawn into an almost hypnotic spell where they appear to have taken on helping you as though it is their mission. They are, of course, doomed in this regard, but by having them around makes you all set for your own purposes.

If you are on a search for more nice people to exploit look into churches, mosques, and synagogues as they are ripe for finding such people. Take advantage of their Coffee Ands, committees and other smaller gatherings for you to spin your rigorous helplessness and victimization thinking.

As you advance in becoming an effective victim you’ll discover what seems to work best, and you’ll be able to build up your repertoire of poor-me phrases and statements. Be willing to discard any that don’t elicit enough sympathy from those kindly types. All of this is to further develop your learning curve for improving your capacity to become an effective victim.

Next week: #5: GET A MENTOR