Wellspring Wednesdays|Week 22: Victimhood v. Survivorhood

Author Note: If you prefer to listen or watch instead of or along with -
 Check out the YouTube video and/or the Podcast audio.

Disclaimer: This is an educational and opinion piece. This in no way reflects on a person who prefers to be considered a trauma/abuse Victim or a Survivor. This episode is food for thought to help you see both sides to each word, to think on your own preference, and to gain some insight into the lives of people living with trauma if you aren’t in the traumatized person category at all. As always, I am open for comments, questions, or concerns. As a trauma recovery coach — I want to offer you options to sort through so you can find what makes most sense for your journey.

In very recent history, the society has moved away from calling someone an assault victim, a domestic violence victim, a victim of abuse, or trauma victim to this more acceptable term of “survivor”. What does victimhood mean? What does survivorhood mean? Why do both terms have such different connotations?

Before I speak on my personal opinion — here’s some etymology.

The definition of Victimhood is “the state of a being a victim”. The term Victim comes from the Latin word ‘victima’ meaning to slaughter or kill. The dictionary says now that a victim is one who is killed, harmed, or injured, as a result of a crime, accident, or other event or action. To be a victim means that one is hurt, killed, damaged, or destroyed by (fill in the blank). In simple terms: something or someone did damaging actions, or you were killed or hurt by a destructive event.

Survivorhood as a noun does not exist in the dictionary yet. It comes from the usage of the term “victimhood” but with the survivor/survived/survival concept tailored to the first part of the compound word. The word survivor itself means “a person that survives/lives” and a “person who continues to function and prosper in spite of opposition, hardship, or setbacks”. So to define a Trauma Survivor — this would be a person who lived through and is prospering post traumatic hardship.

Either way you slice my forthcoming opinions — if you want to be called survivor, it means you were at some point, for some length of time, a victim. Victimhood comes first. You must be someone who is hurt, damaged, or destroyed by something or someone which executed a criminal act, accident, or traumatic event or actions on you. By pure definition, if a victim survives the pain and lives through it — they can be still considered a victim by choice or may prefer to switch to the term Survivor.

I believe the societal shift from victim to survivor has a beautiful purpose. I believe it is used in order to bring power back to the victim by acknowledging their survival. I can also understand that for some victims — they don’t feel like survivors. I hear you. Some victims feel irrevocably damaged, and they don’t feel they are at the place of prospering or even able to move forward. Some victims barely feel they are even alive. Victims sometimes also like this term for their personal story because it reminds people that they were victimized. By terminology, you cannot be victimized if you did not have an offender. This term victim may help you hold accountable the evildoer who damaged you in this traumatic or abusive way. There are some that believe the word “survivor” is for cancer patients, childhood illnesses, car accidents, violent acts of nature, and other traumas that didn’t have a villain to blame. I honor a victim’s feelings and will use that term with someone who prefers it. It’s their story, so I can listen and be moved to use their suitable title.

I can also explain the survivor’s side of the story and why they believe that is the more accurate title for them. A survivor, we saw by definition, is one who survived through any hardship — in this case, trauma. They didn’t just survive but are able to continue on and find prosperity. There is first a stage of victimhood where they must admit they were the victim of a crime or injustice or physical harm by someone who did terrible things to them. This is part of the process. Walking through what happened to you is a huge part of this. From there, one can move through the stages toward “survivorhood” by processing their past trauma, moving into the truth of what happened and how they respond to the trauma, and doing the deep work. Then, on the other side, they can now find glimpses of regaining trust with themselves and others, reconnecting to their authentic self, and reframing their experience to use it for surviving and thriving.

As you can tell from the title of this podcast (“Trauma Survivorhood”) that I personally prefer and associate more with the term Trauma Survivor. Some have argued that victimhood is a phase of survivorhood is a place where victims get stuck and don’t want to or can’t yet move forward or prosper. I wouldn’t be quick to judge someone in that space because the same has been said for someone who is “merely surviving” instead of going all out thriving. They could argue ‘why don’t you call yourself a Trauma Thriver?’. That’s why I can say with confidence — these are just words, terms, monikers, designations. The term itself doesn’t define where you are in this very difficult trauma recovery journey. There is no room, in my opinion, for us to be judging other trauma victims/survivors/thrivers.

Let’s all just continue to plug along winding our way through the trauma recovery labyrinth and encourage each other as we go. If you are in the place in your journey where you’d like to learn more about the trauma recovery process, please reach out to connect with me. I’d love to hear from you to resource you and encourage you.

Wellspring Wednesday|Week 21: Unnecessary

Author Note: If you prefer to listen or watch instead of or along with -
 Check out the YouTube video and/or the Podcast audio.

I speak a lot about coping skills on these episodes. It’s really important to acknowledge and honor your coping skills. Whatever regulation methods your body has been using, mechanisms of safety and comfort, and everything that brought you even a bit of peace while you endured what you endured — those are coping skills. The cool thing about the brain is that when something works, it can stop looking for ways to accomplish the end result. For instance, it wouldn’t need to spend energy keeping you calm in stressful situations if it found that food or medication temporarily did that for you throughout your teen years enduring an abusive foster home.

The saying that “neurons that fire together, wire together” is true. Now when the brain picks up the cue of overwhelm like it did during your teenage span, it can just temporarily pacify your nervous system with binge eating because that was working then. The brain thinks “problem solved” and can file that tool in the “use again next time that ‘overwhelm’ starts to spike”. This doesn’t matter to the brain if the overwhelm came from a perceived fear, stress of prepping for a college exam, a sighting of a look-alike to your abuser at the grocery store, or your boss asking you to work overtime. The feeling is the same, so the firing sets off to go wire that emotion to binge eating to dull the sense of the overwhelm. This is true for every coping skill. It started out as a high-functioning, adaptive mechanism for your traumatic situation. It was helpful, useable, and had a well-intended purpose.

Now, you are in the place in your healing where you are recognizing not only the aftereffects of the original trauma(s) but also the aftereffects of the coping skills. This is where the journey gets a little intense, and I’m speaking from experience. Taking a further step back looking at your trauma, you can now recognize that the coping skills you’ve adapted are no longer helpful. In fact, they have become unnecessary in reality, even if your brain still stamps them as “works just fine”. Some of these coping tools, you’ll begin to see, have become unhealthy along with being unnecessary. This is where you start examining the aftereffects of the coping tools themselves. Binge eating may have started to cause GI or other biological issues. A substance misuse tool to numb might have now led to dangerous drugs with dangerous consequences. Self-harm may have kept you grounded during your trauma, but now may just be an obsession anytime you feel triggered that is causing scarring or infection. Overworking kept you away from the house from your narcissistic spouse, but now is keeping you from finding a new relationship or enjoying time that you have with your children. Keeping you away from potential abuse using strong trust issues may now cause social isolation problems and lack of healthy intimacy. On and on and on the list can go.

See, your brain wasn’t caring about future effects of your coping skills back when it was just trying to keep you alive. Its concern wasn’t specific to the quality of your life, just making sure you could survive beyond the trauma. That was the goal then. Now, outside of the trauma, these are exactly the types of discoveries that are available for you to work on and through. Sussing out unnecessary coping skills, the mechanisms of survival that no longer serve you, is a great way to explore where they stem from, the origin of the tool, and why your brain still feels it needs to use this under duress.

It’s imperative that we don’t confuse the brain by using the word “unnecessary” in a hurtful way, though. I find it very important to the intrapersonal bridge and your self-trust building for your brain to know that you aren’t saying the skill itself was always unnecessary. Part of the internal healing is to find gratitude for your adaptive coping during the trauma and to really be thankful that you had that comfort, safety, protector, or numbing tool available. If you spend some time really thanking that once-useful tool and your brain for creating it, you will find that this part of you can relax when it’s time to tell it that you no longer need it. This is where you want to gently find ways of exploring the now-unnecessary mechanisms — really rooting around to let it help you with your deep healing, asking it what it wants you to know and why it’s there, and making peace with its once-important job in your life. From there, it’s much easier to call it unnecessary and to de-throne its role in your life now. Once you’ve built a relationship with this coping skill (“Protector” — if you are following IFS language), you can now let it know some of the consequences it is creating in your life, some of the negative after effects, and how and why it is no longer serving you — why it’s no longer needed.

Sometimes this looks like it truly not being needed because the part of you that it was trying to protect you from (severe pain, suffering, potential harm, shame, fear, being hurt by family, etc) is no longer a threat. Yet sometimes it means that that threat is still sometimes there but that you’d rather not use this particular tool anymore because it’s unhealthy to your overall wellbeing. This is where we supplant maladaptive tools for new, healthy ones — like exercise, emotional release, a coaching relationship, singing, breathwork, travel, boundaries, work/life balance, writing, etc.

Each person will be different as to how to handle these old coping skills. Many clients need to continue using their coping mechanisms during the first part of coaching while they are unpacking all the bitter turmoil of the past. If you still need it, then listen to your body and use it if you feel you must. However, there will come a time in your journey where it will be time to put down a burdening pack of stuff and leave it on the trail as you march forward. That’s where support from a coach or a therapist is really helpful — to know when, know how, and to follow through.

If you have questions about this episode, any of the IFS language used here, or want to learn more about unburdening and deep inner healing — feel free to reach out with a message. I’ll resource you and help advocate for you as you find your footing on the trauma recovery road.