We all have a past that we try to remember, and one we try to forget. We all have ideas about the near and distant future. Our relationship to the present - where we do our living - tends to be compromised by the ways we relate to past and future. It is possible to resolve conflicts that still exist in your relation to past and present so that you can live more fully and peacefully in the here-and-now.

• A troubled or abusive past or present

• Traumatic events (loss, all forms of abuse, rape, violence)

• Post Traumatic Stress (associated with PTSD and c-PTSD, DD, DID for example)

• Childhood- and family-related difficulties

• Living with regrets, guilt, shame, tragedy or loss

• Difficulty with being aware of emotions and expressing them

• Anticipatory anxiety, worry and rumination habits

• Stress and panic attacks

• Low mood, mood instability, and depression

• Fears and phobias

• Anger and aggression

• Social anxiety and social phobia

• Retirement, loss and bereavement anxiety

• Generalised anxiety and trauma-related anxiety

• Existential anxiety: death, isolation, freedom, meaninglessness

• Fear of Engulfment: being easily overstimulated or overwhelmed

• Overwhelm and difficulty coping with emotions

• Guilt, shame, embarassment, vulnerability and other difficult feelings

• Addictions, emotional eating

“The healthy man does not torture others - generally it is the tortured who turn into torturers.”
~ Carl Gustav Jung

When we are wounded in life we can either go through the process of learning our lessons, healing our injuries, and moving on with life by living with greater wisdom, better boundaries, and with our scars to remind us of our personal evolution, accompanied by a resolve to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Or, we can dwell in our miseries and turn them into destructiveness towards Self and others.

Some people avoid the process of recovery, healing and growth (what psychotherapy is designed to help you do), and instead reshape their identity, and organise their personality around the wounds they have experienced, around their abuser, and around the narratives they form that support their victimhood and the delusion that they lack something that they must gain from the outside world. Instead of growing, they stay in a regressed, stagnant orbit of helplessness, anger, fear, avoidance, resentment, entitlement, self-pity, envy, arrogance, depression, anxiety, injustice or pain. There is no healing, no learning of lessons, no evolution, no growth and maturity into greater wisdom. There is only the double-edged sword of resentment and entitlement. This is often concealed behind self-pity and a 'poor me' facade that seeks sympathy and special treatment in an effort to feel whole again. And when expectations aren't met, the victimised identity may seek revenge as she acts out her original wounds by making those who disappoint her suffer as she once suffered.

Toxic Victimhood poisons the Self and other people, and has become an increasingly prevalent way of being in our society.

The Toxic Victim is, in fact, the fledgling abuser who has regressed into a narcissistic state of vengeance, entitlement and demand that the world compensate her for her suffering. She lives in her emotions as if in an infantilised or adolescent state, expecting others to baby, parent, adjust to her, and save her. If she makes a mistake, it is always someone else's fault, and she must be compensated for it. She spreads her pain around by reliving her trauma-based emotions via her encounters with other people, who become her imagined abusers. She makes the innocent pay for the sins of the guilty; blaming everyone else for her misery; and doing unto others what has been done unto her. She has little or no insight into the fact that - by avoiding taking responsibility for her pain, healing and growth - she has allowed herself to become the injustice that originally harmed her, separating herself from her Authentic nature. She is no longer victim, but the new narcissistic abuser, around whom the broken bones of her targets endlessly swirl.

Being in a relationship with a person of this disposition can be painful and traumatising. It can take a long time to recover from the disorientation. But it is not impossible. If you yourself fit the description of the Toxic Victim, it is also possible - with genuine motivation - to evolve beyond the habits of this stuck, seemingly intractable state of unhappiness, into a new state of empowerment, peace, and maturity. The first step to this lies in accepting that you are no longer a victim, but a survivor, who is entirely responsible for your own behaviour, your own feelings and for your own recovery. This adjustment allows you the right attitude to then benefit from psychotherapy.