When Feeling Like a Victim Hurts More than Helps
As you no doubt know, bad things happen to good people from time to time. There’s no rhyme or reason for it and it’s not particularly fair, but such things do happen. Sometimes these events are quite awful such as serious traumas or illnesses. And when these things happen out of the blue, people often experience a huge wave of difficult feelings.
Emotions such as great upset, distress, anger, and despair are quite typical and frankly, normal at these times. It’s also pretty typical to find yourself railing about the unfairness of it all and the fact that you don’t deserve what’s happened. When these thoughts and feelings occur, generally the person will take on a new role in life—that of a patient or even a victim. And friends, healthcare providers, therapists, and family generally pick up the appropriate role of helpers.



The way you think about things can affect the way you feel. That’s a basic premise of cognitive therapy. Here’s an example. One morning you get to work and realize that you left your iPad at home. You have these thoughts: “Oh no, I forgot my iPad. I’ll never be able to get any work done today. I don’t even have my calendar. I know I have some appointments but I don’t remember when. This is terrible. If my boss finds out about this, he might fire me.”





