Victim mentality: it’s always someone else’s fault. I was watching Intervention last night when a concerned family member of an addict said this. It struck me as deeply insightful and terribly moving. Not because I’ve never heard the general thought or idea before. I mean, as a psych major we talk about things like Learned Helplessness and self-empowerment all the time. I have, on more than one occasion, reminded a friend that the whole world isn’t against them, and that if they choose to see the world as a universal whole that is always conspiring to screw them over then that is exactly what they’ll find. But I don’t know…I guess maybe it’s the person and the situation that this was spoken about that really made the difference.

Let me explain. You see, the addict this was said about is (more…)