Transcript - Overcoming the Victim Mindset With Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman

Follow along with the transcript below for episode: Overcoming the Victim Mindset With Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman

[INTRODUCTION]

[0:00:03] PF: Thank you for joining us for Episode 516 of Live Happy Now. What if the only thing that was keeping you from reaching your full potential was you? Today, we’re going to find out. I’m your host, Paula Felps, and this week I’m joined by Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, a cognitive psychologist, podcast host, professor of psychology at Columbia University, and the Director of the Center for Human Potential.

Dr. Scott’s latest book, Rise Above, is all about how to overcome a victim mindset and empower yourself to realize your full potential. He’s here to explain what it means to have a victim mindset, why it’s become so prevalent today, and how letting go of that mindset will help us live our lives with greater meaning and fulfillment. Let’s have a listen.

[EPISODE]

[0:00:49] PF: Dr. Scott, thank you so much for coming on Live Happy Now.

[0:00:53] SBK: Oh, thanks, Paula. It’s great to chat with you again.

[0:00:56] PF: Oh, it’s an honor to have you on the show. It’s been a while, but you’re doing some really great research, doing some incredible things. So, when I found out about this new book, wanted to get you on here to talk about it. My first question, of course, you’re no stranger to writing books, but I wanted to find out what made you decide to take on the topic of victimhood?

[0:01:16] SBK: Well, in particular, I’ve taken on the topic of a victim mindset, and that’s a bit different than victimhood. I think that you can have been victimized and not have a victim mindset. You can have trauma and not be traumatized. So, I really wanted to show people that one of the biggest inhibitors of their own self-acquisition is really how they interpret their own experiences and their own potential and their own future and hope that they have – I have spent my career studying human potential and about 10 years ago I started studying a topic called vulnerable narcissism and it was just very obvious to me how much this treat, this way of thinking, you can actually think of it as a dynamic mindset was really holding people back from happiness and I know you like that word from their happiness and well-being, and meaning, and purpose in their lives. People really get in their own way a lot more often than they think.

[0:02:15] PF: So, was it your observation of others? Was it anything in your own background that really drove you to dig into this?

[0:02:23] SBK: Well, it started off as a scientific research program. Then, past five years or so, just everywhere I look in the media and politics, just everyone seems to have a victim mind. Everyone seems to want to blame all their problems and issues in life on other people and people aren’t holding themselves accountable. It just seemed like a very relevant topic to what’s going on in the world right now.

[0:02:47] PF: It is. That does make me curious as to why it’s become so prevalent, because as you said, we’re blaming others. Nothing’s ever our fault. And why has that become our go-to?

[0:03:01] SBK: I wish I knew why exactly it’s so prominent or zeitgeist. I mean, I think, some behaviors has become normalized to just to whatever your political opponent is to just blame all your problems on them. It’s just become, in a sense, certainly, become normalized. And there’s social media rewards, I think for focusing on a victim identity as opposed to focusing on your strengths and what you have going forward. I have seen a change generationally in that, what gets rewarded, social media rewarding for being fragile and expressing some sort of victim identity is a sense of great root to belonging now. A lot of people, obviously, strive very much for a belonging in their lives and that seems to be a really easy pathway.

[0:03:57] PF: So interesting. It’s so interesting that it’s become so widely accepted. Do we even notice anymore when that’s happening or have we become so accustomed to seeing it that we don’t really give it a second thought?

[0:04:10] SBK: Yes, I think we have become so accustomed to it. I mean, even college essays, I remember in my day, college essays were rewarded if you put in how you’ve overcome the obstacles and how you’ve really worked towards bettering yourself. Now, you get into college just by saying you’ve suffered. There’s a difference.

[0:04:33] PF: Yes, there is. So, what is it, when you talk about a victim mindset, can you explain to our listeners what that really means?

[0:04:41] SBK: Yes. Having a victim mindset means you tend to blame all your problems on external circumstances, whether it’s that life has dealt you a bad hand or that a person or even an entire group of people have it in for you and are holding you back. 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.

[0:05:11] PF: At the beginning of your book, you really give this interesting, almost a checklist of some of the behaviors that portray a victim mindset. And I was really surprised because as you’re going down, it’s like, well, first I could see some in myself, I was like, “Wow, I’d never even thought about that.” But then, some of these traits, I think we all know people who are living those and who have embraced that. Then as I took that thought a step further, it’s like, “Well, where would I even start talking to someone about this?” How do you even start saying like, “Look, your life can be better.” How do you even start approaching this topic?

[0:05:49] SBK: This was the really the trick of the book was finding the right tone that made it clear it’s for everyone. The kind of best-selling books and self-help are usually the ones that say
it’s not about you.

[0:06:01] PF: It’s not your fault, Scott.

[0:06:03] SBK: It’s not your fault. Those are the best-selling books, they all say the same thing, you are great. If there’s any problems in your life, blame it on your narcissistic ex-husband. Everyone has the go-to ex-husband they blame all their problems.

[0:06:18] PF: Exactly.

[0:06:20] SBK: Look, it’s not saying that that other people can’t influence your life and can make your life better or worse, but you really have a lot of the capacity with yourself to improve and change your own life, and that’s really what I tried to show. I have so many chapters in there that just go through and show how if you change your thinking styles, you change your cognitive distortions, you change the way you relate to your own emotions, you have a better life.

So, I think the enroot there is to really show people that my motivation here, my inspiration is to help people with their lives. I’m not here trying to point fingers or shame. My book is a very anti-shaming kind of book. I think that we all can fall prey to a victim mindset at various times of our lives, at various points in our day, and that we can really overcome it and catch ourselves, and lean into the amazing growth potential that we all have.

[0:07:21] PF: Yes, it does make you hold a mirror up to yourself. You are that good friend. You’re not saying like, “Oh, look how awful you are.” You’re warm about it and we do need our flaws pointed out in order to be able to overcome them.

[0:07:36] SBK: Yes, absolutely. I really do focus on the empowerment mindset. So, the whole book’s not just like, here’s all things wrong with you. I mean, that’s only 50% of the book.

[0:07:47] PF: It ends happy. There’s a happy ending, right?

[0:07:50] SBK: Absolutely. I mean, 50 % of the book is really finding the light within yourself and having a greater gratefulness, have a greater gratefulness practice, and what does an empowerment mindset look like, how to empower yourself. To me that’s extremely important that we don’t just stop with you might have a victim mindset, but say okay, well catch yourself when you’re doing this and then how can we move forward?

[0:08:14] PF: Right. Yes, you do give a great roadmap for moving forward.

[0:08:18] SBK: Oh, really? Did you read the book Paula?

[0:08:20] PF: I’m not all the way through it. I did my best.

[0:08:23] SBK: You read some of it?

[0:08:24] PF: Yes, I did. I did.

[0:08:25] SBK: Wow. Thanks, Paula. That’s more than anyone has yet. I mean, the book’s not even up yet.

[0:08:29] PF: Well, that’s because it’s not out yet.

[0:08:32] SBK: Exactly.

[0:08:32] PF: I found it so interesting when you talk about these five categories of victimhood, because we think of it as one thing. Oh, victim mindset, that’s just one thing. You really break it down. Can you tell us what those five different categories are? Because I think everyone will see, as you said, we all have it at some point in our day, in our life, in our past, in our present. What are those five categories?

[0:08:57] SBK: I don’t know if I can say what’s interesting about my book is that there are different ways that we can become victims to ourselves. So, when we often think about victim mindset, we may think about blaming the world for our problems. But there are lots of ways which we hold ourselves back by being a victim to our own inner world, not the outer world, not just the outer world. So, you can become a victim to your past when your mind is stuck in that one thing that happened to you when you were five or whatever and it’s still holding you back and you’re 45. You can be a victim to your emotions when you take your emotions at face value and really believe that, “Well, no matter how I’m feeling, I need to immediately act on it,” as opposed to create some distance between yourself and your emotions. You can become a victim to your cognitive distortions when your distorted thinking is driving your behavior.

I think that’s a way of becoming a victim to your cognitive distortions or becoming a victim to your own mind. You can become a victim to your self-esteem when your incessant need for feeling good about yourself at all times, gets in the way of real growth and connection. You can be a victim to your people-pleasing tendencies, if you can’t have the capacity to tell people to fuck off sometimes.

[0:10:12] PF: Exactly. We all have at least one of those that even if we’ve overcome it, it’s probably still a tender spot, it’s our Achilles heel. Have you found that one’s more prevalent than the other? Or is there anyone that is just –

[0:10:27] SBK: Oh, all five of these are so prevalent –

[0:10:30] PF: We have them all.

[0:10:32] SBK: – among humans. They form the basis for therapy.

[0:10:35] PF: So basically, without this, you all be out of jobs.

[0:10:40] SBK: Yes. Although I’m not a practicing psychologist.

[0:10:43] PF: We’ll be right back with more of Live Happy Now.

[BREAK]

[0:10:53] PF: Now, let’s hear more from Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman. How then do we start, once we read your book and you’ll have the answers, but if we haven’t read your book yet, which I’m the only one that has, how then do you start recognizing this in yourself and making that decision that you’re going to overcome it? Because there are some payoffs to stay in that mindset, that we wouldn’t stay there if there wasn’t a payoff.

[0:11:22] SBK: Yes, there’s immediate payoffs and there’s short-term payoffs for people who think that they can’t handle the pain of rejection, people who think they can’t handle the pain of loving someone and then having that love lost. People who feel that they can’t handle trying to grow in this world and failing. We can erect all sorts of defenses around us like a fortress, around our heart. But it really does insulate us, just like a fort insulates us, this is a good metaphor. It insulates us from the world in a way where we don’t even have the opportunity anymore to experience some of the greatest depths of human experience.

But sometimes this is all we know. These defense mechanisms are all we know, especially when we’re young and defenseless. Horrible things, if they happen to us, they can be very adaptive, erecting some of these defense mechanisms. But as adults, we have to slowly, if we’re going to grow, we have to slowly see them for what they are and change our thinking so that we open ourselves up to the world again. Was it poetic?

[0:12:37] PF: Yes, it was. It was beautifully poetic.

[0:12:39] SBK: I try. I try to be poetic.

[0:12:41] PF: You are. But how hard is it to start letting go? Because like I said, you talk about it as a fortress that insulates us. I think of it like this blanket that we keep around us. It just protects us. It’s like this little cocoon, but it becomes this very comforting defense mechanism for them. So, how do you convince us of the payoff of letting go of this mindset?

[0:13:07] SBK: Well, people, you have to take the leap of faith. First of all, I mean, this book is not for everyone. I want this book to be for everyone, but I also recognize not everyone is at the same part of their journey. But if you are at the part of your journey where you’re sick of being ruled by your past, this might be the book for you, this might be the techniques for you because a lot of it is about refocusing your attention to the light that is within yourself, to so much of what the field of positive psychology studies. What does it take to flourish? What does it take to live a good life?

Often the things you have do if you want to live a good life will not always bring great feelings of comfort or safety. It often requires opening up that sail of the sailboat and being vulnerable to the winds and the waves. But I think within all of us there’s this yearning for self-actualization and you can try to hide it, suppress it, because you’re so focused on your fears. But it’ll still be there and it’ll still haunt you if you don’t try to express it. It’ll come out in your dreams, come out in your nightmares. So, I really do believe the best thing we can do as humans is to help other people self-actualize and overcome their fears.

[0:14:35] PF: What kind of payoff do you see in people when they do change that mindset? And what do they also become? What do they go from? They’re going from a victim mindset to what?

[0:14:49] SBK: Aliveness. Nothing less than full aliveness. To not be connected to yourself is a form of death, as far as I’m concerned. When our life is ruled by fear, and anxiety, and defenses, we’re not connected to the most alive unique center of our being, and we all have a very great creative, alive unique center to our being that we shouldn’t be afraid of, that we should really focus our energies and attention on actualizing because the payoff is enormous. The stakes here couldn’t be greater, than full aliveness.

[0:15:31] PF: Yes. We get one shot at it. We might as well go in like fully feeling it.

[0:15:36] SBK: Maybe. There’s some interesting research on reincarnation.

[0:15:40] PF: Let’s just say for this go-around, you want to get the most out of it.

[0:15:45] SBK: Yes, that’s for sure. Yes, that’s true.

[0:15:46] PF: So, how then do you start? What are some of those practices that you have for people to start releasing that mindset?

[0:15:59] SBK: Well, like I was mentioning all the ways you can be victims to your own self, and so checking and reviewing different cognitive distortions. A big one associated with the victim mindset is seeing malevolent intent and an ambiguous stimulus going around and taking everything personally, and assuming the worst about things and that doesn’t help anyone. So, really catching yourself, being mindful of your cognitive distortions is a big one. Emotionally learning how to create a distance between your emotions and your actions. Even having behavioral activation approaches, I really like the act approach where you act in line with your values even if you don’t feel like you’re in the mood for it. You don’t have to be a slave to your emotions.

We have to recognize that we are many things. We all contain so many multitudes and there are so many practices out there. I love Sharon Salzberg’s meditations and I like the beautiful monsters approach, where we do a handshake practice.

[0:17:06] PF: Tell us about that.

[0:17:08] SBK: We do a handshake and we really get deep into our emotional life with non-judgment and get in touch with the sides of ourselves that we don’t really like, which we usually judge, and treat them as beautiful monsters instead, and welcome them in and give them a handshake. Often, they want to just be acknowledged. Often, they just want to be known. And we can create boundaries with them. Let them in when we need them. Let them come and go as they want, sometimes don’t have to pay them attention. And just creating and changing your relationship to your beautiful monsters, I think, is a really big one.

[0:17:53] PF: I love that. I love that idea of the beautiful monsters. And being able to accept and even embrace those parts that aren’t that beautiful and that lovable to the outside world. So, if we do that through journaling? How do people start activating this new mindset?

[0:18:12] SBK: Journaling never hurts.

[0:18:16] PF: That’s always a go-to, right? It’s like, that’s always my go-to.

[0:18:19] SBK: Yes, I mean, a good reflection practice, but don’t always reflect. I mean, a big part of my book is the importance of the behavioral activation approach, where you just move in the direction you want to move into. I mean, if you’re journaling all day, you’re not getting anything done.

[0:18:38] PF: Right.

[0:18:40] SBK: Yes, another part of it is people know, I think they know what they need to do. I mean, this book offers – I don’t tell people how to live their lives, but I give them the information on the most productive and constructive ways of thinking and moving forward with your life. I’m just not a big fan of just giving people protocols for how to live their lives, but because that’s just antithetical to the whole notion of self-actualization.

[0:19:07] PF: All right. So, Dr. Scott is not writing a prescription for your life today. Is that what we’re saying?

[0:19:12] SBK: No, I’m not. I’m really not. You’ve lived with yourself. You felt better than anyone else. You know what does it mean to really lean into your own self-actualization. I think that you can do that. I started this form of coaching called self-actualization coaching. Coaches can really help people self-actualize and become better humans. That often happens not through telling people how to live their lives, but it comes about by asking questions, really powerful coaching questions that cause people to think about their lives differently and think about what possibilities there are for their future. I think that’s where the real transformation happens is through self-insight and self-therapy, not writing a prescription for people.

[0:20:00] PF: And does that help, too, that we have something that we’re moving toward? Does that make it easier to let go of this victim mindset, to let go of these habits that we have, if we have this clear path that we know we’re going to move toward something?

[0:20:15] SBK: Yes. I mean, Nietzsche has the quote, “He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

[0:20:24] PF: So, how then, speaking of the how. How do people start? How do people start recognizing that it is important to move beyond victimhood, to move beyond a victim mindset? What is the most important thing for them to understand about what it’s doing to them?

[0:20:43] SBK: Well, I would just say that you’re not empowering yourself by blaming all your problems on the world and on others. You have a lot more agency and resiliency within you realize and you shouldn’t be scared of your resiliency. You should lean into that deep reservoirs of strengths and resiliency that you have within yourself and go after what you want in this life is a very short life. It’s very important to not get so distracted and being held back by resentments and fears.

[0:21:21] PF: That’s well said. It takes so much of our time, so much of our energy, and robs us of so much joy in our life that we could be having. I love the fact that you have written this book and given such a great path for us to follow because it is unusual. I haven’t it a lot on this topic. So, it’s very interesting. I think it’s just something new and fresh that people will want to discover. But writing books a lot of times is like having children and you send them out to the world. What is it you hope for this child? What do you want as this book goes out into the world? What is it that you hope it accomplishes?

[0:22:01] SBK: Well, a lot. For individuals, I really hope that it helps individuals see a better future for themselves and people who are suffering from anything psychological or physical that they can see greater hope for themselves by changing their own mind. But I also have an ambitious hope for changing collectives. I have a whole chapter on that. There are so many groups that are fighting wars with each other because they’re fighting who’s the biggest victim, and not listening to each other, and not recognizing there can be multiple victims at the same time, and that in a way we’re all victims to life. The price of admission is pain and suffering as well as joy and hope.

[0:22:53] PF: Very well said. Scott, thank you for joining me today. I appreciate all that you’re doing. I’m really eager to share this book with our listeners. We’re going to tell them on the landing page how they can find you, how they can find your book, how they can find your other books, everything about Dr. Scott you ever wanted to know.

[0:23:09] SBK: Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It means a lot.

[END OF EPISODE]

[0:23:17] PF: That was author and psychologist, Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman, talking about his latest book, Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential. If you’d like to learn more about Scott, discover his weekly psychology podcast, explore his other books, or follow him on social media, just visit us at livehappy.com and click on this podcast episode.

That is all we have time for today. We’ll meet you back here again next week for an all-new episode. Until then, this is Paula Felps, reminding you to make every day a happy one.

[END]

In this episode, you’ll learn:

How social media reinforces and rewards the victim mindset.
The payoffs that keep us in a victim mindset.
How overcoming the victim mindset creates full aliveness and cultivates a richer life.

Discover other books by Dr. Scott Barry Kaufman.

Tune in to The Psychology Podcast.

Visit Dr. Scott’s website.

Follow Dr. Scott on Social Media:

Twitter: @sbkaufman
Instagram: @scottbarrykaufman
Facebook: @ScottBarryKaufman

Don’t Miss a Minute of Happiness!

If you’re not subscribed to the weekly Live Happy newsletter, you’re missing out! Sign up to discover new articles and research on happiness, the latest podcast, special offers from sponsors, and even a happy song of the week. Subscribe for free today!

Interested in advertising or partnering with us? Complete this quick form.