“If you don’t heal what hurt you, you’ll bleed on people who didn’t cut you.” – Unknown
At every turning point, whether life is inviting you to grow, or simply when you start choosing you, you meet the shadows. Not the monsters outside of you, but the ones within. The quiet narratives, inherited roles, and survival strategies that whisper:
📯 “This always happens to me.”
📯 “It’s all my fault.”
📯 “They should’ve known better.”
📯 “I’ll never be enough.”
These are not just thoughts. They’re patterns. Sometimes they’re roles. Sometimes they’ve grown into identities.
The Victim. The Villain.
Not in the fairytale sense, but in the deep, soulful sense, the ways we abandon ourselves, explain our stuckness, and survive a world that hasn’t always been safe.
They both stem from self-rejection. The Villain, more so. When we believe we are to blame, inherently flawed, or fundamentally unworthy, we exile the parts of ourselves that most need love.
And here’s the kicker: how we show up internally will show up externally.
- In relationships, the victim may withdraw or feel unseen, while the villain becomes overly accommodating or defensive.
- In career, we may sabotage opportunities or shrink our voice.
- In leadership, we might micromanage from fear or defer decisions from self-doubt.
- In money, we can either hoard from scarcity or overspend from unworthiness.
The Victim identity often begins in real pain, where something was done to us. It says: “I didn’t choose this. I have no power here.” It can be tender and true… until it becomes the only truth.
The Villain is trickier. It creeps in when we internalise blame. When we think, “Maybe it’s always me. Maybe I am the reason things go wrong.” That’s not humility, it’s self-abandonment disguised as responsibility.
These roles originate from trauma, social conditioning, unmet needs, and a nervous system doing its best to protect us. They feel like heaviness. Like stuckness. Like looking at life through a lens of constriction. They create beliefs such as:
- I am not safe.
- I have to earn love.
- I will always be misunderstood.
- Power is dangerous.
- There’s no space for my truth.
And when those beliefs crystallise? They start to shape our world, not because they’re facts, but because they filter what we see, expect, and allow. We live inside the echo of the past.
These identities limit our agency. They fog our faith. They intensify our pain and prolong our suffering, not because we are weak, but because we are wired to stay safe.
And sometimes, stuckness is safety. It simulates safety by being familiar, predictable, and numb. If life has felt unpredictable, harsh, or unkind, then even misery can feel like home. Stuckness becomes the emotional equivalent of a dim room, you don’t love it, but at least you know where the furniture is. There’s less risk of bumping into something new. And so we stay. Not because we want to, but because we haven’t yet felt safe enough to move.
But stuckness is a false promise. Safety without growth is stagnation. Protection without presence is paralysis. And familiarity is not the same as peace.
Victimhood and self-villainising are not moral failings. They’re survival strategies. Adaptations. Ways we tried to hold onto some form of control in chaos. They did serve us. But they are not meant to be permanent addresses.
You cannot thrive inside a role built on fear.
You cannot bloom where your power has been bargained away.
We trade our power for safety. For acceptance. For belonging. For peace in the short term. But the cost is our freedom, our agency, and our joy.
What does out of control look like for these identities?
The Victim spirals into hopelessness, waiting for someone else to change the story. The Villain attacks the self, over-apologises, burns out, or self-destructs. Neither has access to agency.
Yes, you can shift from victimhood. But not by bypassing your pain. You shift by witnessing it with love. You shift by reclaiming choice. You shift by meeting yourself with a compassion fierce enough to hold your fear, and gentle enough to let it go.
But what if self-compassion feels unreachable?
Then begin with neutrality. With curiosity. With the tiniest willingness to see yourself not as a failure, but as a human. Say: “Of course I feel this way.” Begin by softening the grip. Breathing instead of judging. Listening instead of silencing.
To alchemise these patterns, we must stop rejecting the part of us that formed them. Instead, we meet that part with reverence. Thank it for its role. Then offer it something new: safety, kindness, clarity, choice. That is how the old shape dissolves, not through shame, but through integration.
You don’t need to fight for your power.
You just need to stop giving it away.
This is the space where self-leadership begins.
This is where the alchemy lives.
Reading List:
- Untamed by Glennon Doyle
- The Dance of Anger by Harriet Lerner
- The Mountain Is You by Brianna Wiest
Playlist:
- “Rise Up” – Andra Day
- “This Is Me” – The Greatest Showman
- “Truth” – Balmorhea
- “Shake It Out” – Florence + The Machine
Infinitesimal Small Shifts That Create Big Magic
These are not grand gestures or dramatic breakthroughs. They’re the barely perceptible movements of the soul that open space for freedom. These shifts are how we rewire our inner world so we can reclaim our power with gentleness and clarity.
- Quit the gratitude practice if it’s bypassing what is real. Give yourself permission to feel what’s hard before you frame it.
- Whisper: “Even if no one else sees, I see me.”
- Interrupt a villainous thought by placing your hand on your heart and saying, “Not today.”
- Practice naming your feelings without explaining or defending them.
- Make one small decision today from belief rather than fear.
- Begin to track what triggers your victim narrative and ask: “Where do I still feel powerless?”
- Create one micro-boundary to honour your energy.
- Keep a “Done List” instead of a to-do list for one day. Witness your effort.
- Choose rest without earning it. Let it be sacred.
- Let something go — not because you’ve failed, but because you’re free to choose again.
Big magic is what happens when we stop trying to become someone else, and finally come home to who we already are.