Playing the Victim: Avoiding Responsibility While Getting Sympathy
Most of the time, when the manipulator casts themselves as a victim, they don’t really see themselves as victimized, they just really want the other party to see them as wounded, injured, or suffering in some way in order to elicit sympathy, cloud the picture about just who is the victimizer and who is the victim, and otherwise impression-manage the real victim.
This is the eighth article in a series on behaviors which disturbed characters frequently engage in that not only keep them from becoming responsible but also serve as effective ways to manipulate others.
One of the things the disturbed character knows very well about relatively well-adjusted or “neurotic” individuals is that they hate to see someone else suffer. Not only that, they hate it more to think of themselves as the cause of someone else’s suffering. That’s why playing the victim role is such an effective tactic. Especially when they’re confronted about their own malicious behavior, disordered characters will try and turn the tables by trying to get you to see them as the injured party. The eminent researcher Stanton Samenow calls this “taking the victim stance.”
A most egregious example of this tactic is deeply embedded in my memory. I was once interviewing a man who had actively participated with two others in the vicious bludgeoning of his victim. When questioned about the motivation for his act, he complained that he had no idea how the vivid memories of the event had haunted him and that he would probably have to live with them for the rest of his life. All of a sudden, I found myself tempted to feel somewhat sorry for him. Here he was, a vicious killer with a long history of cruelty to others, and he was beginning to appear as a victim of post-traumatic stress. In earlier years, it might never have crossed my mind that this re-casting of his self-image was a deliberate attempt at impression-management — a slick game of responsibility-avoidance and manipulation. This man’s history, however, was a living testament to the fact that he lacked the normal sensitivities and emotional response capabilities that keep most of us civilized.
We would all be much safer if some individuals could actually be as emotionally affected by their actions as this man was claiming to be. But this man was the kind of individual I described in earlier posts (see “Understanding the Predatory Aggressive Personality” and “Understanding the Predatory Aggressive, Part 2”) and as such was a heartless victimizer pure and simple, not a victim in any sense (not even of a traumatized past). Yet, he was so effective in playing the victim role he actually was able to secure a commutation of his sentence, and a much earlier than anticipated release from prison. Within weeks, he had committed another heinous, brutal act but fortunately was caught, re-convicted and re-incarcerated.
I give the egregious example above mostly to point out just how effective the tactic of playing the victim can be, especially if done with artfulness, and especially when the audience being played to is the typical “I just can’t stand to think of anyone suffering” type of neurotic. These kinds of situations play out every day in abusive and/or dysfunctional relationships of all kinds. Most of the time, when the manipulator casts themselves as a victim, they don’t really see themselves as victimized, they just really want the other party to see them as wounded, injured, or suffering in some way in order to elicit sympathy, cloud the picture about just who is the victimizer and who is the victim, and otherwise impression-manage the real victim. They often use this tactic in combination with the tactic of “vilifying the victim,” which is the subject of an upcoming post.
One-time victims of abusive relationships who have become determined not to be victimized again have learned to empower themselves by seeing through the various manipulation tactics, especially the playing for sympathy card. Before they can stop being victims, they also need to know with greater certainty how to distinguish a victim from a victimizer. Once they learn how to distinguish an offense (in all its various covert forms) from a defense, become acutely aware of the extraordinary differences between persons with character disorders and relatively neurotic individuals, and abandon old, worn-out and inaccurate explanations about why people do the things they do, their lives are changed forever.
31 Responses (7 Discussion Threads) to “Playing the Victim”
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11
Oh dear, to an “extreme” extent, this reminded me of Charles Mason, and how “charming” his people considered him, and how he managed (unsuccessfully) to play the “poor victim” being sued for crimes “he did not commit”… an extreme case, of course.
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Amy
12Hi Diane,
He took a drug test last week for a job he’s applying for. He’s clean. The Oxycontin also reduces/eliminates sex drive, so I honestly believe that her only interest in him will be as a facilitator or to join her club. No, we will not change our mind. We have changed the locks on the doors and he’s upset about that because it indicates we don’t trust the one he loves. Ya think? I went through the pity party stage, and this weekend, the furious stage. He won’t call. We don’t know where he is. So, pretty much the lines have been drawn. If he ever asks, we will iterate that the rules at our house are absolute: no drug addicts allowed, and the girl will not be welcomed unless she’s gone to treatment and is in some very, very serious counseling.
Difficult? I’ve asked myself several times: Which is worse? Burying a child or watching a child destroy himself? Right now, I really can’t say. I’m going into survival mode, which means back to Compassionate Friends. Praying is difficult right now. I’m in complaint mode, so I pray to be able to pray. I need to reread Frankel’s book to remind myself that relatively speaking, my load is light and I must above all keep in touch with my own humanity. Experience tells me I’ll get over the pity party and I’ll get over the anger. I do hope I somehow learn something important along the way. Right now that’s hard to envison. Sigh.
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Diane
12.1Hi Amy,
You are doing a lot of good things. Stay strong!
Glad to hear he passed the drug test.
God Bless You,
Diane
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Ken Sinclair
13This and the ‘vilifying the victim’ articles really made me understand my last relationship a lot better. I wish I had taken the advice of reading your book before entering the dating world so I wouldn’t have gotten manipulated and held her accountable for her actions more. I had no idea people like this could operate so covertly. I’m glad I finally understand though!!
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TomR
14Hello Dr. Simon,
I wanted to add that, in addition to the standard Playing the Victim behavior, I’ve experienced being approached by a person who was actually victimized in his youth and tried to use the sympathy created by that topic to get money from me. It was a rather ham-handed attempt since the two things were totally unrelated. So, it’s possible for an actual victim of another person’s behavior to attempt to use their genuine victimhood to manipulate others. I feel sadness and pity for that person, but not for the reason he thinks. I suppose there’s a victim-becoming-the-(emotional)-abuser cycle going on with this. They learn all the wrong lessons from their abusers.
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Peggy Dwyer
15I have just gotten out of an eleven year marriage to a sex addict, who continually lied to me, and used all of the avoidance and manipulation techniques you have mentioned. Primarily, when caught cheating, or using internet porn, he would use the fact that he had been sexually molested for several years as a child, (using his victimization to appear weak and helpless/ ie a victim) to get sympathy from me, and get me to stay in the relationship. I would say from your articles that I was a serious neurotic, but I’ve been in recovery myself for codependency, and in therapy for self-awareness/self discovery growth. I also had a bipolar son, who died of a drug overdose in March of 2008. My other son, who is also bipolar, and is also a drug addict, was with his brother at the time.
I can say that I chose to let go of most, if not all, of my neurotic thinking tendencies/behaviours after my son died. It was like the seven years of recovery culminated in deep awareness and clarity of how others were treating me. After my son died, I caught my husband, again, with infidelity, and heard and felt a voice throughout my being that said “enough”. Period. I left, have paid for and obtained a divorce (he tried repeatedly to manipulate me using the tactics you describe), but I now knew what he was really doing. I had for years felt sorry for him, for the abuse, and he kept “trying” to attempt serious recovery (of course, lying and manipulating me the whole time). I believe that my primary problem was that I was NAIVE, and did not want to believe that another human being could abuse someone they supposedly loved so badly.
He is clearly a narcissist, (which I told him the day I left), and suffers from a character disorder. You haven’t mentioned addiction in your articles, but I believe, after many years of reading about and recovery from (codependency) addiction, but addiction itself is a character disorder, whether it is inborn (which I believe is a genetic tendency/inherent or inborn personality) or is gradually assumed, and the inborn personality is submerged/lost to the addiction. Either way, THANK YOU for the great clarity your writings have brought to my life.
My final goal, for myself, while grieving my son, watching my other son destroy himself (and staying detached and taking care of myself) and letting go of my husband and not hating him (which is another way, I believe, of just hanging on to him), is to STOP being so “super responsible” for those victims in my life, who are now adults. To stop feeling an exaggerated sense of shame and guilt for the supposed mistakes I’ve made, which I now realize is just a reverse sense of “grandiosity”. Can you comment on how addiction reflects all the signs and behaviours of many character disorders? Thanks again. -
Angelique
16I just want to say THANK YOU Dr. Simon, for this and all your related articles about manipulation.
About 2 months ago I had to force my sister to leave my home. I had come to realize that all these years she has been manipulating me and many others relentlessly, and I told her she had to get counseling or leave my that. I still had doubts and questioned if I was right to remove her from my life or not. I see now that it was indeed the only choice I had to stop the abuse!
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Angelique17
Accidentally hit enter too soon on the last one ><
I just want to say THANK YOU Dr. Simon, for this and all your related articles about manipulation.About 2 months ago I had to force my sister to leave my home (for the second time, soon after she had moved in again). I had come to realize that all these years she has been manipulating me and many others relentlessly, and I told her she had to get counseling or leave my home. I still had doubts and questioned if I was right to remove her from my life or not. I see now that it was indeed the only choice I had to stop the abuse!
I am afraid for her state of mind when and if she does see herself sitting at the center of this blast crater! She has no one left really, she is living at a transitional housing place in the city here thousands of miles from where she grew up (though she does not have anyone left back there either, she burned every bridge). I should say she wants to believe she has no one left as I will be here if she gets help, as will the rest of the family. I think the problem right now is I have confronted her with knowing the truth, and she does not want to face me or that truth yet.
And now when I have emailed her asking her to call me(she has no easy number to call), she replies saying she "really doesn't care" and is going to "die soon". I have alerted her case managers to this and they just ask her if she wants help, she says no, and that's that. Is she a ticking time bomb? Should I push harder to make sure someone keeps a close suicide watch on her? Or is that most likely already being done? (I sent them about 3 messages she wrote recently saying similar things about wanting to die)
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Angelique17.1
Ok, I have a bit more time to add to this now just to clarify a bit. I will copy the recent messages here so that it is clear what I mean, I have to censor parts of it because they are extremely vulgar:
“I’m still homeless and I just don’t really care about what happens to me at this point, because I want to die. I just don’t want to live anymore. My life isn’t going to get better. My father, his girlfriend and my ex who should all be in jail are out free and safe while I’m homeless. My sister threw me out because I wanted to do something good for myself. I really am not meant to have a good life because I really don’t deserve it. So I really, really don’t care about myself anymore and I’m abusing myself so I can repent for what I’ve done. I let people I don’t even want to have sex with me. I gave my bank card away to my co-worker at **** and told him to just take my money which is about $10,000. I love you so much **** but I’m not a good person and you should probably just stay away from me. Maybe I’ll be a better person in my next life. Please be happy and keep love in your heart and stay a good person.”
My response to this was to call the bank and have the ATM card cancelled, and I moved the money to a different account , and asked her to call me. Her case manager soon contacted me instead and told me my sister wanted to know how to get to her money. I explained I had moved it into another account, so I asked her case manager to have her call me, and sent her a money order for some money in the meantime. I heard nothing, I sent my sister another email asking her if she did give her ATM card away and to call me, I got a message back saying that she doesn’t care about her money because she’s going to die soon. Which is a typical thing she does when cornered, but nonetheless I took it seriously and alerted her case manager again – I can never be sure if she is just doing it as another manipulation or if she really is feeling that way. Her case manager has said to me that “if even 1/3 of the things” my sister tells her are true. I tried to explain to her that it is more like 1/3 of each thing.
A brief example being that about 6 months ago soon after breaking up with her b/f she talked to me, and others, about how she didn’t really want to have sex with him, but did it anyway just because he wanted to. Then it was she was “too afraid to say no”. Now she has worked up to saying that she was raped, and depending on who you talk to, she has told them it was her ex, and in another case she named another guy she had actually had a one night stand with as her ex boyfriend and also claimed to have lived with this guy and been abused and raped by him.
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17.2
Thanks for your comments, Angelique. I’m glad you found the book so helpful.
From what you say, it sounds like in addition to being quite manipulative, your sister is much more disturbed. We always need to take seriously a person’s threats of self-harm, but that doesn’t mean that a person doesn’t also need to know what the legitimate limits and boundaries are.
Keep setting those limits and boundaries.
The low spots in a person’s life can be remarkably instructive if we have the character to process the lessons life is trying to teach us. Sometimes, despondency is nature’s way of telling us that we simply can’t go on doing as we have been and need to change course. Hopefully, your sister’s case manager will not only work with her to resolve the despondent feelings but to reckon with some of the choices she may have made that might have “invited” misery into her life.
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