Licensed psychological well being counselor Elizabeth Mateer, LMHCA, defines a sufferer complicated as feeling like you’re a fixed sufferer in your relationships and life experiences.
“When you’ve got a sufferer complicated, you are feeling an absence of management in your life, could blame others when issues go flawed, and general are inclined to really feel like issues are taking place ‘to’ you,” she explains. “Whereas all of us really feel this manner occasionally, when you’ve got a sufferer complicated, you are feeling victimized extra severely, extra typically, and for an extended time than the typical particular person.”
Having a sufferer complicated is completely different from experiencing precise trauma or victimization, provides licensed psychologist Traci Williams, Ph.D. “Survivors of traumatic occasions don’t essentially have the victimhood trait. In reality, most survivors of trauma don’t really feel just like the occasion outlined them, and see themselves as separate from their painful experiences.”
It’s additionally a lot completely different than somebody talking up about professional societal injustices. Mateer factors out that somebody with a sufferer complicated tends to generalize the world being in opposition to them as a person, particularly, whereas folks in an oppressed, marginalized group normally observe injustice being perpetrated in opposition to their total group, not simply them. Extra importantly, systematically oppressed folks discuss their private experiences to maneuver the needle and have an effect on change–in contrast to these with a sufferer complicated, who’re truly typically resistant to vary.
“These with a sufferer complicated are sometimes unable to take accountability for their very own contribution in challenges or battle. Somebody with a sufferer complicated is totally centered on themselves and their very own issues,” Mateer says.
On the root, a sufferer complicated is characterised by a sense that life is occurring to you, fairly than a way that your life is inside your management.
