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Hi everybody. Welcome to the podcast today. Thanks for joining me. One thing that people with anxiety often have issues with is a victim mindset. A victim mindset is where you focus a huge amount on things that other people did or things that life did that hemmed you in to make things the way that they are. So you're seeing things as outside of you, other people or circumstances as determining your fate. People in a victim mindset for this reason, end up feeling a lot of blame for these outside forces that made their life the way that it is. And I was stuck in a victim mindset for a lot of years. And what this did to me, um, since I was so focused on things outside of me that made things the way that they were in my life, made me feel really powerless, made me feel like I didn't have a lot of ability to influence things so that they could be different. when you have this focus of the victim mindset looking at things outside of you determining the way that things are in your life, you end up having reduced motivation. You don't feel like there's any point in trying to make a change in your life because it won't work. Because other things and other circumstances are to blame for your situation. So it, it puts you in this situation of blame, of feeling powerless and just passive.
So the victim mindset, it's really linked to the threat response that we've talked about so many times on the podcast. We've talked about the different responses to stress. There's the challenge response, and there's the threat response and the difference between these two is the way that you see your demands and your resources, right? Because the challenge response is where you see the demands and your resources as matched. Your resources are enough to meet the demands. Whereas in the threat response, you see the demands as way up, way up high and your resources down low and they don't meet your, your resources are not enough to meet the demands of the situation. And this describes the victim mindset, the the resources of the victim weren't enough to meet the demands that came from outside and overwhelmed your resources. So staying in this victim mindset, the problem with it is that it can leave you trapped in a state of psychological immobility. And perpetual feeling of powerlessness, which is where anxiety is gonna go wild. Because when you don't feel powerful, when you don't feel in control, your brain responds to that feeling of powerlessness and immobility and lack of control with anxiety. It's just a natural response. But it's not a good place to hang out 'cause you're stuck, you're passive, you're powerless. Maybe it feels slightly good because you don't feel responsible for the things that are happening in your life. You're able to blame other people and other things for, for giving rise to these events and circumstances. But other than that tiny little satisfaction of not feeling like you're the one to blame, it's a pretty rotten deal to feel perpetually anxious, and like there's no point in trying to make a change because it won't work. So you're stuck in passivity and you're stuck in immobility.

So in a sense, the opposite of the victim mindset is feeling powerful. And the difference between a powerful person and a victim is not actually the circumstances, but the relationship with the circumstances, which is something we've talked about from the beginning of this podcast, that your emotions aren't produced by your situation, but they're produced by your brain's appraisal of the situation. So if you can find a way to switch from seeing yourself as a, a powerless victim to seeing you yourself as a powerful agent, then that's a shortcut out of anxiety. One of the best ways to feel powerful is not just to see that you have power over yourself, but to actually recognize, recognize that you have power and influence to affect other people. To affect things outside of yourself. So you have a victim of external forces and powerful people on the, on the one side and on the other side, you have someone who feels powerful over themselves and over others, who's aware of their, their power to influence and affect other people. I think the first time that I became really aware of the power that I have over other people in a really shocking way was when I was a new mom for the first time and I had this tiny little helpless baby that depended on me 100% for his life and his support. And I realized that whether or not I decided to rise up to the role of being his mother would have a tremendous influence on his life. And I was almost a little bit horrified at the power that I had over this poor little helpless baby. But with time, I started to realize that it wasn't just the helpless babies that I was more powerful than, but there were actually people all around me all the time with needs and vulnerabilities, and the way that I chose to respond to those needs and vulnerabilities could change their lives.

I think this becomes more clear to you when you can start thinking about the people who have had the most positive influence in your life. And then thinking about what they did to exercise that power over you. When I think about the people who've had the most positive influence in my life, of course, I think of my parents. I think of my grandparents. I think of neighbors. I think of friends. Different, different images come to my mind of the way in which these people have been really influe influential for me. I think of my dad working with me in the garden when I was a little girl and showing me which plants were weeds and how to care for a new baby corn plant. I think of my mom reading stories to me every night before bed for years. I think of my paternal grandmother making Christmas cookies with me and my little brother every single year. I think of my maternal grandparents listening to me practice the piano for hours and commenting afterwards and telling me what a great job I was doing. I think of my backdoor neighbor who when I was about 11, taught me how to make donuts and how exciting it was to know how to do this and how I felt like I must be so important because she would spend so much time teaching me something like that. And then as an adult, I think of when my family and I moved across the country to a new area, we didn't know anybody. We met a woman who was half Mexican. And she was just bubbling with joy and she loved to cook and she loved to share her food and she was always calling us up and saying, Hey, I just made some tamales. Hey, I just made some enchiladas. Do you want some? And she would bring them over. I remember another woman who had a farm who in, who just continually invited my family over to come and play at her farm and pick her apples and pick her peaches and pick her blueberries. So what was it that these people did that exercised such power over me? Well, they taught me, they paid attention to me. They shared with me, they were generous with me. And because of this, they shaped the way that I saw myself. They shaped the way that I saw the world. They helped me discover new things to do and explore and, and find pleasure from learning and growing. They helped me feel safe and supported. This, this was the way that they exercised their power that had such lasting impact on me.

And I'm not saying that people stuck in the victim mindset, don't do service and kind things for other people. When I was in that victim mindset for years, of course I served other people. Of course I did other things for other people. but it's not just the doing of something that exercises this power and that has this good effect on the doer and on the receiver. It's also the motivation for doing it. So the key here is really whether you're doing it in order to approach something or to avoid something. If you're trying to avoid something, then that's gonna be the threat response. So for example, if you're giving to charity, just to push away thoughts that you might be selfish, or if you're caring for your friends in order to counteract fears of being rejected. If you're doing things for other people in order to avoid and dodge and run away from unpleasant thoughts and feelings, then it's not gonna have the same effect on you or on the people that you serve. I think we can all tell when somebody's doing something for us, because it's about themselves rather than about us, and it doesn't affect us the same way. It doesn't have the same power over other people. And over the person who's giving these things, it does, it also doesn't affect them the same way. You don't feel powerful. You continue stuck in this victim mindset where you feel like things outside of you are determining your life because you're, you're trying to run away from feelings of rejection or fears about yourself. So to find your power, you have to really find a reason to approach, not to avoid. To do things because you want to make a difference because you love someone, because you recogni recognize that you have formidable power to influence other people in one way or another. And you think about, you know, which way do I want it to go? What effect do I wanna have on other people? How do I wanna use this power? Who do I wanna be? Do I want to build people up, or do I want to destroy them? When you recognize that you have both the power to build and the power to hurt, then you have that choice. Then you can choose which one do I want, what do I want to approach? So I was look as I was looking at this brand new, tiny little baby and I was thinking about the tremendous power that I had over this totally helpless being, it made me want to be the mother that he needed. It made me want to approach something that I wanted, something that I wanted to give, something that I wanted to build, rather than running away from something that I wanted to avoid. So that's the difference between powerful giving and victim giving or threat mindset giving and it has a totally different effect.

I think the kindness narratives that we share on the end of every episode, that listeners have shared, are stories about the power of individuals to impact other people. And you can see this because people remember these things for years, decades after they happen. There's one particular story that it especially was touching that was shared a few months ago. The listener who shared this story was telling about a time when he was stranded in the middle of Los Angeles with a car with a dead battery. It was actually even a borrowed car with a dead battery. It's the middle of the night. And there was a, an African American homeless man who saw this person's situation and approached him and asked if he needed help. This homeless man was living out of his car and he didn't have much, but he had some jumper cables and they were all thread bare and kind of falling apart, and probably nobody else would even know how to use them. But he knew how to use them and he offered to help. He brought his clunker of a car over and gave a jump to this listener, who was able to then drive back to where he was staying about an hour away from there. And this homeless man is someone that we wouldn't normally think of as powerful and yet he saw the vulnerability and the need around him, the person's story who was crossing his story and his power to impact that story, and he wanted to help.

During the time that I had long COVID for three years, this was a time when I felt a lot, really powerless a lot of the time. There were a lot of periods where I felt like a prisoner within my own body. And yet I realized that I still had power even when I wasn't able to do things with other people that I wanted to do-- I was left out of a lot of different activities and trips and outings and hikes and things like that because I just didn't have the health to do them, and I felt bad about that. It made me feel powerless-- but I realized that even when I couldn't do things with other people, I could still do things for other people. There were still needs and vulnerabilities of people around me that I had the power to address and help. Maybe there were a lot of needs that I didn't have the power to address, but there were always some that I could. For example, if my son wanted to come up and tell me what he was thinking about or something that happened, I could sit there and listen to him with a lot of attention, and listen to everything that he was saying, and help him to feel that there was somebody who cared about what he felt.

There are studies that show that the baseline level of happiness that people feel, this is outside of personality, this is outside of their circumstances, that their, their baseline levels of happiness can be raised by certain behaviors, and one of the behaviors that has been shown to raise people's happiness is doing random acts of kindness. This particular study that I'm talking about, participants were asked to do five random acts of kindness per week. And this activity really did make people feel significantly more happy. And one of the reasons that I think that it makes people more happy, happy is because it makes them feel powerful. It makes them feel that they can make a difference for other people, they see that something that they do can influence someone outside of themselves. And again, it needs to be done for a, an approach motivation, because of something that you want to create and that you want to do, and not because of something that you wanna avoid. That's really the, the clincher here. The difference between feeling powerful and feeling like a victim or feeling stuck in defense and threat mode is the motivation. But if you can recognize the tremendous power that you have to change people's stories, and think back on all the people that have impacted your story in the most positive way and what they did to do that, a lot of times those people are people that we wouldn't normally think of as powerful, right? Normal people, old ladies, homeless people, random strangers. But recognizing the needs and vulnerabilities that are always around you and the power that you have to impact those people feeling those needs and vulnerabilities, either for good or for ill. When you recognize your power, and you think about who it is that you want to be with this tremendous power that you have, and then you exercise that power to make a difference for somebody, that's really the secret to exit the victim mode and also the secret toward having a happier life.

Whenever you feel stuck in a victim mode for one reason or another, when you're starting to feel like life is, has put you in a corner, and that you don't have choices, and that things are happening to you rather than, than you being able to make changes and have power over your own life then just remember, you are powerful because you make a difference in other people's stories, whether you know it or not, whether you recognize it or not, you make a difference. So the key is first to see the power that you have and know, see that you are exercising that power one way or another, and then decide how you want to exercise that power. Because the approach motivation is all about what you want, going toward what you want, being who you want to be, creating what you want to create, helping who you want to help. And that when you do it from this motivation, it makes, it can make that tremendous impact on other people. We all know that people who give because they want to give, those are the ones that change us forever.

So that's what I wanted to share with you today. Thanks so much for listening and have a wonderful holiday.