There is a good message here. I see a ton of people fall in the trap of victimhood by not realizing that there is a second step to the healing process. Recognizing it and doing nothing else isn't productive and leads to a lot of misplaced resentment.
There is a self-worth issue which you touch on here too and it is an interesting one. People do seem to get it in their heads that they don't "deserve" good things or that they do "deserve" punishment. I can't blame it all on one thing though. Some is external. Just about anything pleasurable is deemed immoral by one authority or another (I am actually working on this concept for an upcoming post) but that does not sufficiently explain the issue. I wonder if it was a survival advantage for those who underestimated themselves in the distant past and if that has been bread into us. The cave man who thought he could fight the lion died and the one that said "I am not good enough" survived.
The trick is moving past the cause, whatever it may be though. We can will ourselves away from instincts like that and we can cast off cultural and social baggage. One just needs to try and fail and try again until they do.
You've made a good point @artisticscreech. For sure the mind is a survival mechanism, and it will tell you to make the safe decision. Mind is part of the animal, and the animal wants to live at all costs.
Unfortnately mind is only privy to data from the past, which is how it makes projections. Therefore the mind is liable to circulate the same information and never get anywhere, and it's also highly likely that what mind gives you is not at all true - it's just a psychological emotional imprint. Hence our tendency to get 'stuck'.
For me this is why I am such a big proponent of transformation and embodying the 'breakthrough' archetype. A way of being that goes against the mind and goes where it wants to even when mind is screaming survival. The greatest spiritual seekers have had a kind of attitude in that they were willing to face their own death (and realise that it's not a real death, it's just a mental projection).
That’s is exactly where’s so many people are at. They see themselves as victims of abuse which is a necessary first step, but then they get deeper entroached in the victim mentality and let it become part of their identity which is sooo detrimental to growth. I’ve written about this before but could write more on it. You could too.
I agree and thank you.
It runs into a lot of aspects of people's lives. I think this plays into some of the identity politics we see now. I tend to stay away from those issues but what I think causes some people to be offended by non-offensive things is that they feel like or are some sort of victim for whatever reason and they transfer that sense of being victimized onto a song or shirt or whatever. I won't tell someone that they are wrong to feel a certain way but sometimes we don't fully understand why we feel the way that we do.