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Comment by charliesharding | Hacker News Reader

Great article. I wonder if different people respond to this kind of a message differently though..

I firmly believe in taking personal responsibility for my behaviors and my actions - however I think that is because I'm inherently wired to avoid responsibility and try to find the easy way out. Because of this, the only conscious way for me to effect positive change in my life is to strive for taking responsibility and ditching thoughts of victimhood.

On the other hand, I've known people who seem to be hardwired for responsibility so much that it is overwhelming for them and causes all kinds of anxiety (control issues).

For these people, would it be beneficial to use that conscious effort on relinquishing control and adopting more of a "victim" mindset?

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For those people, it might be beneficial to recognize that they are not God, and there's only so much that it's reasonable for them to expect themselves to control. - that, and that sometimes you can do everything right and still lose.

"Ditching thoughts of victimhood" can be taken to the sort of extreme that your last question hints toward. People who have been abused learn a variety of coping strategies, one of which is the specialization of apophenia that leads us to imagine that our actions and those of our abusers are meaningfully linked: "if I do X, Y happens; if I don't do Z, A happens". That easily lends itself to believing that, because I did X, I had Y coming - a belief that abusers, for obvious reasons, encourage. Discarding that is part of recovery, and for that reason, I'd hesitate to give advice like yours to someone early in that process, who may well still be in the habit of blaming themself for someone else's behavior.

For self responsibility to work, you obviously can only accept responsibility for things under your control. If you are taking responsibility for things outside of your control, I think the more appropriate solution is to learn some humility, rather than to adopt a "victim" mindset.

If you look at Karpman’s Drama Triangle, you’ll wonder just how many people fall into the ‘rescuer’ corner, and further than that, how you might get the saviour complex from it.

Just as you say, the response there isn’t to switch to the victim or even the persecutor. The response is to break out of it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle

Can't control issues be seen as a kind of victimhood? You can be victim of your own abuses.

One can also learn that he is not responsible for everything.

Take for example the politeness mentioned in the article. Isn't the hyper-polite person trained to feel "responsible" for how the abuser feels, hence she feel compelled to always be polite and act as a victim?

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