There is a difference between being a victim of something and allowing what happened to become the only story you know how to tell about yourself.
That distinction matters.
Because if you have experienced abuse, betrayal, manipulation, neglect, violence, or another form of trauma, calling yourself a victim is not a lie.
Something happened to you.
You were affected by someone else’s choices.
You may have experienced fear, loss, confusion, grief, anger, shame, or a profound disruption in the way you understood yourself and the world around you.
None of that needs to be minimized.
But healing can eventually invite another question:
What happens next?
Not What should have happened?
Not Why didn’t they change?
Not How can I make them understand what they did?
But:
What is mine to choose now?
That question does not erase responsibility for the person who caused the harm.
It begins to restore something different:
your agency.
I Can Acknowledge What Happened Without Living There
One of the hardest parts of healing after abuse can be holding two truths at the same time:
What happened was not my fault.
And:
My healing is something I can participate in.
Those statements are not contradictory.
In fact, research on trauma recovery has increasingly examined factors that influence how people respond following traumatic experiences, including coping self-efficacy—the belief that we can cope with difficult circumstances and take effective action.
A meta-analysis of 154 studies found that positive expectancies such as hope and self-efficacy were associated with lower posttraumatic stress symptoms. The relationship was particularly strong for coping-specific self-efficacy (Gallagher et al., 2020).
This does not mean that someone can simply think their way out of trauma.
It does not mean that trauma survivors are responsible for developing PTSD.
And it certainly does not mean that people who struggle are not trying hard enough.
It means something more hopeful:
Our sense of what we are capable of doing can matter in recovery.
And sometimes the first step toward agency is very small.
It might be:
“I can choose who I talk to today.”
“I can say no.”
“I can ask for help.”
“I can leave this conversation.”
“I can learn something new about myself.”
“I can decide what I will tolerate going forward.”
“I can take the next step even though I am still afraid.”
Those choices may look small from the outside.
But when someone has spent years feeling powerless, choice can be profoundly meaningful.
Blame and Responsibility Are Not the Same Thing
This is where I think we need to be especially careful.
There is a difference between assigning responsibility for harm and living in a constant state of blame.
If someone abused you, the responsibility for that abuse belongs to the person who chose to abuse you.
Your healing does not require you to take responsibility for what someone else did.
But healing can involve deciding what responsibility you want to take for your life now.
That might sound like:
“I didn’t cause what happened to me. But I can choose how I respond to it today.”
That is not victim-blaming.
It is agency.
Research on interpersonal victimhood offers an interesting perspective here. Gabay and colleagues (2020) developed and studied the construct they called the Tendency for Interpersonal Victimhood (TIV)—an enduring tendency to experience oneself as a victim across different interpersonal relationships.
Their research identified four dimensions of this tendency:
- a need for recognition,
- moral elitism,
- lack of empathy, and
- rumination.
Across eight studies, higher interpersonal victimhood was associated with differences in how people interpreted interpersonal events, remembered negative information, attributed blame, and responded to perceived offenses (Gabay et al., 2020).
But this finding needs an important qualification.
Interpersonal victimhood is not the same thing as being an actual victim of abuse.
A person can genuinely be victimized and still develop patterns of thinking that keep the injury psychologically present long after the immediate danger has passed.
That is the part worth examining.
Not:
“Are you really a victim?”
But:
“Has what happened to you become the lens through which everything else is now interpreted?”
When Remembering Becomes Rumination
Remembering is not the problem.
Processing is not the problem.
Talking about what happened is not the problem.
Seeking justice is not the problem.
And telling your story can be an important part of healing.
But there is a difference between processing an experience and repeatedly becoming trapped in the same mental loop.
Research has consistently found an association between rumination and posttraumatic stress symptoms. A systematic review and meta-analysis involving 64 samples from 59 articles found a moderate positive relationship between rumination and posttraumatic stress symptoms (Szabo et al., 2017).
Another systematic review found rumination to be an important cognitive process associated with PTSD, while also emphasizing that much of the existing research is correlational and therefore cannot establish simple cause-and-effect conclusions (Moulds et al., 2020).
That distinction matters.
Because sometimes healing requires us to notice:
Am I processing this—or am I replaying it?
Am I learning from this—or continually reliving it?
Am I seeking support—or seeking repeated confirmation that I was wronged?
Am I trying to understand my experience—or trying to finally get the past to give me a different ending?
There may come a time when the most healing question isn’t:
“Why did they do this?”
but:
“What do I need now?”
Grace Changes the Way I Talk to Myself
This is where grace becomes so important to me.
Not grace as an excuse.
Not grace that says abuse wasn’t serious.
Not grace that requires reconciliation.
And not grace that asks survivors to rush past anger or grief.
I mean grace toward myself.
Trauma can affect how people see themselves, their emotions, their relationships, and their ability to cope. Research has found that self-compassion is consistently associated with fewer posttraumatic stress symptoms, although the mechanisms behind that relationship are still being investigated (Winders et al., 2020).
A systematic review and meta-analysis of self-compassion-focused interventions also found a medium-sized reduction in posttraumatic stress symptoms across the included studies, although the researchers emphasized the complexity of the evidence and the need for further research (Luo et al., 2021).
So perhaps grace sounds less like:
“I should be over this by now.”
And more like:
“I am learning.”
“I didn’t know then what I know now.”
“My reactions made sense in the context of what I experienced.”
“I can have compassion for the person I was while still choosing differently today.”
“I don’t have to hate myself for the ways I survived.”
That is not weakness.
That is a different way of relating to yourself.
Boundaries Are Not Walls
Another part of my healing has been understanding the difference between boundaries and punishment.
A boundary isn’t:
“You will do what I want.”
A boundary is closer to:
“This is what I will do to take care of myself when a certain behavior occurs.”
That distinction changes everything.
A boundary might mean:
“I won’t stay in a conversation where I am being verbally attacked.”
“I won’t continue a relationship that repeatedly violates my stated limits.”
“I won’t explain myself indefinitely to someone committed to misunderstanding me.”
“I can love someone without giving them unlimited access to me.”
Healthy boundaries also don’t have to mean cutting everyone out.
They can mean learning to communicate needs, limits, expectations, and consequences more clearly.
Research on assertive communication describes assertiveness as communicating one’s views, concerns, rights, and needs while respecting those of other people. Researchers also note that the evidence base is still developing and that definitions and measures of assertiveness vary considerably (Gutgeld-Dror et al., 2024).
So I don’t want to claim that boundaries are a magical cure for trauma.
They aren’t.
But learning to communicate limits and protect ourselves from ongoing harmful interactions can be an important part of rebuilding a sense of safety and agency.
Healing Does Not Require Me to Forgive Before I’m Ready
There is another misconception I have had to challenge:
Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation.
And forgiveness is not a requirement for healing.
Research on forgiveness interventions suggests that forgiveness-focused approaches can reduce psychological distress and improve some aspects of well-being, but that does not mean every survivor needs to forgive an offender, restore a relationship, or stop holding someone accountable (Akhtar & Barlow, 2018).
Forgiveness can be deeply personal.
For some people, it may eventually mean releasing the desire for revenge.
For someone else, it may mean no longer allowing another person’s behavior to occupy their emotional energy.
For someone else, it may be part of their faith.
And for someone else, they may not be ready to use that word at all.
Healing should not become another place where we judge ourselves.
I Don’t Have to Find a Silver Lining
This is especially important.
I don’t believe healing means pretending that trauma was a gift.
It wasn’t.
Abuse wasn’t necessary for me to become stronger.
Pain doesn’t need to be romanticized.
And I don’t have to be grateful for what hurt me.
Research on posttraumatic growth gives us a more nuanced picture.
Posttraumatic growth refers to positive psychological changes that can occur following a struggle with highly challenging life circumstances. Research with survivors of interpersonal violence has identified possible growth in areas such as appreciation of life, personal strength, relationships, new possibilities, and changes in outlook (Elderton et al., 2017).
But growth is not guaranteed.
And growth does not mean the person is no longer suffering.
In fact, research shows that posttraumatic stress and posttraumatic growth can coexist (Taku et al., 2022).
That means I don’t have to choose between saying:
“This hurt me.”
and
“I am growing.”
Both can be true.
I can still grieve.
I can still have difficult days.
I can still experience triggers.
I can still need support.
And I can also discover new possibilities.
My Story Can Be True Without Becoming My Identity
Maybe this is the shift I am talking about.
Not:
Victim → Perfectly Healed Person
Healing doesn’t work that way.
Instead:
What happened → Awareness → Choice → Boundaries → Support → Growth
And sometimes we move backward and forward through those things.
There are days when I feel strong.
There are days when I feel exhausted.
There are days when I can see how far I have come.
And there are days when an old wound reminds me that I am still becoming.
That doesn’t mean I have failed.
It means healing is not a straight line.
I Am Allowed to Choose What Comes Next
I cannot change what happened.
I cannot make another person become accountable.
I cannot rewrite my childhood.
I cannot erase memories.
I cannot make every person understand my experience.
But I can begin asking different questions.
What do I believe about myself now?
What do I need to feel safe?
What boundaries do I need?
Who has earned access to my life?
What patterns do I want to stop repeating?
What kind of relationships do I want to build?
What support do I need?
What parts of myself have I neglected?
What possibilities are still available to me?
And perhaps the biggest question:
Who am I becoming?
Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life defined by the worst thing someone else did to me.
I want to honor the woman who survived.
I want to have compassion for the woman who didn’t always know what to do.
I want to protect the woman I am becoming.
And I want to remember that taking responsibility for my healing does not mean taking responsibility for someone else’s harm.
There is freedom in knowing the difference.
I can tell the truth about what happened.
I can hold the person who caused harm accountable.
I can establish boundaries.
I can give myself grace.
I can ask for help.
I can grieve what I lost.
I can acknowledge what still hurts.
And eventually, I can begin asking:
What do I want to build with the life I have now?
That, to me, is not forgetting the past.
It is not excusing the past.
It is not pretending the past didn’t matter.
It is choosing not to let the past have the final word.
I was a victim of what happened.
But I am not only what happened to me.
I am still here.
I am still learning.
I am still healing.
And I am still becoming.
There are possibilities beyond what happened to me.
Learning What Is Mine—and What Is Not
One of the things I am learning as I continue this journey is the difference between what is my responsibility and what is not. I am still practicing these tools. I don’t always get it right, and I don’t expect myself to. But I am becoming better at pausing and asking myself, “Did I actually do something wrong, or does someone simply believe I did something wrong?” Those are not always the same thing. I can listen to someone’s perspective without automatically accepting it as the truth about me. I can consider what they are saying, take responsibility when I genuinely have something to own, and also recognize when their feelings, expectations, or interpretation belong to them. I can set healthy boundaries without needing everyone to agree with them. I can apologize when I have caused harm, made a mistake, or acted in a way that does not align with who I want to be—not simply because someone has told me that I was wrong. To me, this is part of becoming: learning to take honest responsibility for my own choices while releasing responsibility for other people’s choices, opinions, reactions, and perceptions. I am learning that accountability does not require self-abandonment. Compassion does not require me to accept blame that does not belong to me. And having boundaries does not make me unkind. It means I am learning to trust myself, listen to myself, and make choices that honor both who I am and who I am becoming.
APA 7 References
Akhtar, S., & Barlow, J. (2018). Forgiveness therapy for the promotion of mental well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 19(1), 107–122. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838016637079
Elderton, A., Berry, A., & Chan, C. (2017). A systematic review of posttraumatic growth in survivors of interpersonal violence in adulthood. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 18(2), 223–236. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838015611672
Gabay, R., Hameiri, B., Rubel-Lifschitz, T., & Nadler, A. (2020). The tendency for interpersonal victimhood: The personality construct and its consequences. Personality and Individual Differences, 165, 110134. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110134
Gallagher, M. W., Long, L. J., & Phillips, C. A. (2020). Hope, optimism, self-efficacy, and posttraumatic stress disorder: A meta-analytic review of the protective effects of positive expectancies. Journal of Clinical Psychology, 76(2), 329–355. https://doi.org/10.1002/jclp.22882
Gutgeld-Dror, M., Laor, N., & Karnieli-Miller, O. (2024). Assertiveness in physicians’ interpersonal professional encounters: A scoping review. Medical Education, 58(4), 392–404. https://doi.org/10.1111/medu.15222
Luo, X., Che, X., Lei, Y., & Li, H. (2021). Investigating the influence of self-compassion-focused interventions on posttraumatic stress: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Mindfulness, 12, 2865–2876. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-021-01732-3
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