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.
Other articles by Dr George Simon, PhD
This article was last reviewed by Dr Greg Mulhauser, Managing Editor on Monday, 16th March 2009. You can leave a reply below.
The URL of this page is:
http://counsellingresource.com/features/2009/03/16/playing-the-victim/
27 Responses (Including 6 Discussion Threads) to “Playing the Victim”
-
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.
-
Amy12
Hi 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.
-
Diane12.1
Hi Amy,
You are doing a lot of good things. Stay strong!
Glad to hear he passed the drug test.
God Bless You,
Diane
-
-
Ken Sinclair13
This 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!!
-
TomR14
Hello 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.
-
Peggy Dwyer15
I 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.
« Older Comments