Flow vs. Victim Mindset

Steven Kotler points out, if you have a victim mindset, you have an external locus of control—the world happens to me. If you have an external locus of control, your brain will not give you the energy to drop into flow; why bother, why expend the energy? 

It locks flow.

The victim mindset is a deal breaker. If you lead with trauma, you are blocking peak performance in yourself.

Defining Victim Mindset

Having a victim mindset means you tend to blame all your problems on external circumstances. 

You believe you don’t need to take responsibility for your actions or reactions because of past trauma. You can’t stop ruminating about your past victimization; you may even fixate on how to enact revenge, and you rarely think about solutions or ways of moving forward with your life with hope and purpose. 

Neurobiology of Victim Mindset

From a neurobiological perspective it must be tied to the following personality traits: neuroticism, antagonism, and entitlement—it’s kind of the intersection of those three. 

Neuroticism is characterized by a tendency to experience negative emotions.

Persons with elevated levels of neuroticism often interpret ordinary situations as threatening, and can experience minor frustrations as hopelessly overwhelming.

Antagonism, in the context of personality traits, refers to a tendency to be distrustful and manipulative.

Antagonistic individuals often view relationships as adversarial and may prioritize their own needs and desires above the well-being of others. 

Antagonism represents the low pole of the personality trait agreeableness.

Individuals with high antagonism scores tend to exhibit a tendency towards conflict. This contrasts with individuals high in agreeableness, who are typically adept at conflict resolution. 

Antagonism is a robust correlate of externalizing behaviors such as antisocial behavior, aggression, and substance use; in fact, in many cases, it is the strongest trait correlate. It represents the core of many important and impactful psychopathological constructs; it is also central to models of general and disordered personality, psychopathology, and interpersonal behavior. 

As neuroticism is core to understanding the intense distress and suffering that comes with internalizing disorders, antagonism is core to understanding the impairment and suffering (to the individual and society at large) that comes with externalizing disorders.

So the victim mindset is where you are already constantly ruminating and anxious, but you also have this extra element of entitlement where you feel like—well I deserve special privileges because I am suffering more than anyone else.

It’s like you are competing in these victimhood olympics—certainly amygdala activation, high cortisol, being on constant alert and seeing the level of intentions everywhere you look, even in neutral stimuli. 

That is a big fundamental part of the bios in the brains of those who score high in the victim mindset.

Continuum

It’s actually a very dynamic mindset—so we all go in and out of it at various times of our lifetime. Scott Barry Kaufman says, “I want us to be mindful and catch us when we are in this frame of mind, in this state of consciousness.” 

It is our default state. We have to actively learn to have hope. We have to actively learn to transcend and rise above.

Not just feeling helpless but signaling helpless does bring rewards; brings attention to the problem and gets you really important resources—to be able to be the greatest victim, to be your own reality show. You get a lot of resources being seen as a victim.

However, you can have trauma without being traumatised, without feeling a victim of horrible life circumstances, without a victim mindset. 

But you can also be not a victim and have a victim mindset—that’s possible, too (dark personality triads). 

This stuff is complex and there are different configurations; of course, we should have empathy, sympathy, and listen to people’s experiences. Having honest love about this—acknowledging that you’ve been through this, and yes, you’ve got this, you can move forward, you have the resiliency. It’s the “Yes, And” game instead of staying stuck.

Trust Your Own History

Your own history often says, you are not a victim. In fact, for most of us, our worst tragedies function as teleportation chambers. 

It’s like you go into them as one person and you come out the person you actually wanted to be—the shortest distance between two points, but you had to go through that horrible experience to get there. It will give you everything you want, it’s just merciless about how you get there.

Whenever there’s a big triumph, there’s always a “rise above" story; even when there’s a great triumph, it usually starts in some place pretty dark.

The Paramount Set

Some items on the paramount scale: yes, something happened and it has affected me, and it doesn’t define me.

I have deep reservoirs of resilience within me and can handle difficult situations.

I don't want to be reduced to the worst thing that has happened to me. Instead, I’d like to be seen as a whole person—that includes my strengths as well as what happened to me.

My reactions are within my control, and I can develop strengths because of my adversity. 

This is a very “Yes, And” way of thinking about life. It doesn't ignore real suffering. Yet it also acknowledges the empowerment we still have within us. 

Ways One May Become a Victim Within Themselves

While there are so many books about how to not be a victim of our external circumstances, the first five chapters of Scott Barry Kaufman’s book Rise Above are about all the ways we become a victim unnecessarily, within ourselves. 

We become a victim of our emotions when we take our emotions at face value—without questioning or looking for a deeper meaning. 

We become a victim to our people-pleasing tendencies when we feel like we have to say yes to everything and please everyone, and forget about our own self, our own needs.

We can become a victim to our past. The following quote emphasizes the importance of accepting the past and moving forward.

"Sooner or later you have to give up all hope for a better past"

—Irvin Yalom

A Higher Potential Within Reach

George Bonnano, Ph.D., of Columbia University is the leading expert on resilience and adaptive flexibility; his work says, 85 percent of the time, you are going to bounce back in a year and a half—that’s the normal human reaction.

A huge portion of that 85 percent will bounce back through the ladder of post-traumatic growth—that’s the most hopeful ladder of all and it leads most directly to more flow.

“Listen. I wish I could tell you it gets better. But, it doesn't get better. You get better.”

― Joan Rivers

Free Agency

Steven Kotler shares on the subject; he says, “One is free to make this decision, yet through a victim mindset one shuts themselves off from all hope; walls themselves off from all life. I can’t get to the compassion part because I’m blown away by this deep choice you are making, and it’s super crippling.”

Scott Barry Kaufman believes there are lots of ways to shine the light within yourself and find the parts that aren’t broken.

Way to Respond

When we recognize the victim mindset in ourselves, or the people we love, the answer is always love. The answer is always validating the experience. Expressing love; then for the honesty part, questioning the assumptions is a good way to go. A powerful coaching question is, yes, it happened and so, what are you going to do about it? What can you do to change? 

Lecturing doesn’t work. Conversations work. And unconditional regard for listening works.

Empowerment Mindset

A lot of the items on the empowerment mindset scale have to do with really actively focusing your attention on the light within yourself, and the parts of you that are most growth-oriented. We have counter strengths, we have talents, we have things that light us up―goals that we want to move forward to―and constantly orienting ourselves towards that. 

The importance of having both a gratefulness practice and a gratitude practice.

Self-Actualization

When writing Rise Above, Scott Barry Kaufman’s previous thinking on self-actualization was challenged by realizing that this pervasive mindset in life is by far the most important thing that separates the people who succeed from those who don’t succeed.

Yet, one needs to be careful when trying to talk about this topic because not everyone is there yet in their journey to rip off the defense mechanisms, to rise above. There’s certainly a minute we need to give ourselves or others to just stew in it, processing thoroughly, and to be there for them, or us, through that. 

This is certainly not to say that the ones who have overcome their traumas and don’t have a victim mindset are somehow better humans, or they somehow get the gold star, whereas those who haven’t overcome yet get into merits.

That is why this is such a sensitive topic. There are so many great examples of people who have gone under the worst circumstance, and acknowledging those great examples gives those of us who aren’t there yet the hope and the inspiration that we could get there someday.

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi, the "father of flow", came out of a concentration camp during the war. Flow in his work dates back to the people he saw thriving under the horrific circumstances versus the people who completely fell apart.

Back to why it’s not a gold star for people who’ve overcome versus those who are still in it: self-actualization―it’s a ladder, a staircase, or a process; sounds like at each level there’s another version of this victim mindset―those demons come back.

On the path of self-actualizing, it is a continuous effort to actively learn to transcend, and to actively practice rising above.