Great article. I wonder if different people respond to this kind of a message differently though..

I firmly believe in taking personal responsibility for my behaviors and my actions - however I think that is because I'm inherently wired to avoid responsibility and try to find the easy way out. Because of this, the only conscious way for me to effect positive change in my life is to strive for taking responsibility and ditching thoughts of victimhood.

On the other hand, I've known people who seem to be hardwired for responsibility so much that it is overwhelming for them and causes all kinds of anxiety (control issues).

For these people, would it be beneficial to use that conscious effort on relinquishing control and adopting more of a "victim" mindset?

For those people, it might be beneficial to recognize that they are not God, and there's only so much that it's reasonable for them to expect themselves to control. - that, and that sometimes you can do everything right and still lose.

"Ditching thoughts of victimhood" can be taken to the sort of extreme that your last question hints toward. People who have been abused learn a variety of coping strategies, one of which is the specialization of apophenia that leads us to imagine that our actions and those of our abusers are meaningfully linked: "if I do X, Y happens; if I don't do Z, A happens". That easily lends itself to believing that, because I did X, I had Y coming - a belief that abusers, for obvious reasons, encourage. Discarding that is part of recovery, and for that reason, I'd hesitate to give advice like yours to someone early in that process, who may well still be in the habit of blaming themself for someone else's behavior.

For self responsibility to work, you obviously can only accept responsibility for things under your control. If you are taking responsibility for things outside of your control, I think the more appropriate solution is to learn some humility, rather than to adopt a "victim" mindset.

If you look at Karpman’s Drama Triangle, you’ll wonder just how many people fall into the ‘rescuer’ corner, and further than that, how you might get the saviour complex from it.

Just as you say, the response there isn’t to switch to the victim or even the persecutor. The response is to break out of it.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karpman_drama_triangle

Can't control issues be seen as a kind of victimhood? You can be victim of your own abuses.

One can also learn that he is not responsible for everything.

Take for example the politeness mentioned in the article. Isn't the hyper-polite person trained to feel "responsible" for how the abuser feels, hence she feel compelled to always be polite and act as a victim?

I think a lot of the rhetoric in this article could also be applied to people who struggled in school early on due to an unknown mental health diagnosis, essentially internalizing that they’re either too stupid or lazy to succeed.

As someone who had great parents, but parents who denied mental health as an issue or excessively large tonsils as a trigger for sleep apnea and behavioral issues a lot in this article resonates. Especially given my experience finally seeking professional help after college and realizing that a lot of why I’d been struggling was because of ADHD likely caused by sleep apnea caused by my tonsils.

Seeing this drastic change in mood and my mental ability was life changing, but to this day sometimes I still catch myself re-itorating the words of my HS guidance counselor telling me I didn’t have the grades to study at an elite college or to be an engineer.

Lifelong ADDer here. Yes, the damage of lifelong undiagnosed mental / attentional issues is absolutely a real and crippling thing.

You HAVE to break those patterns and the negative self-talk.

Cognitive behavioral therapy is helpful for this. Probably the biggest thing I've found helpful was David Goggins book "Can't hurt me: Master your mind and defy the odds". [1]:

>>"For David Goggins, childhood was a nightmare — poverty, prejudice, and physical abuse colored his days and haunted his nights. But through self-discipline, mental toughness, and hard work, Goggins transformed himself from a depressed, overweight young man with no future into a U.S. Armed Forces icon and one of the world's top endurance athletes..."

The audible version is PHENOMENAL IMO. He talks explicitly about learning disabilities and attentional issues - but be-forewarned his language is very raw, but it is 100% authentic.

1 - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41721428-can-t-hurt-me

I got my tonsils removed in high school and it was life-changing. I didn't have oversized tonsils, but I would get tonsilitis 2-3 times a year.

This is kind of dangerous. The article is basically saying you should not demand more of society. I had problems in school and everyone brushed me off -- am I not right to be angry? Am I not right to demand I get the same consideration that others got? What do I need to do to do it, get back into school, and get the same free money?

That's orthogonal to what the article is talking about, which is a lot more like not advertising yourself as a victim without even realizing it to the world, and not advertising to yourself that you are a permanent victim and you can't change anything about that, again often without really realizing how you're doing it.

If you do want to seek justice, you'll be better off doing it from a position of not mentally assuming the role of a victim; indeed, in some sense, I'm not sure how you would progress to truly seeking justice without taking that step, as otherwise, you'll likely to assume there's no hope of any justice. (True, final, or total justice may not be on the table in this world, but partial justice often is.)

Or, to put it another way, the article is about internal factors, and you're talking about external factors. The collected store of human wisdom over the millenia has a lot to say about the efficaciousness of setting your inner factors right first, and how that will almost magically lead to better external results. It isn't magic, really, if you could analyze the interactions from a dispassionate third party view and compare, the reasons why the person with correctly-set internal factors does better will be fairly obvious, but it'll feel like magic from the inside.

Well, let's put it this way. Being a Polish-Jew in a rural, and very southern high school in Florida, one where I was considered a minority because there were no other minorities, wasn't all roses. Then when it came to being a white male applying for scholarships. More than half of those scholarship books pretty much told me that I need not apply. My post high school education is quite lacking because of it.

It took me a while in my 20s to realize how much of a benefit all of that was. And to quit being angry. Compared to all my peers from high school, I have a pretty damn good amount of resiliency. There's already a few known suicides in my graduating class, post-graduating. Plenty of drug addiction. Only a few folks really escaped like I did. But even them, when I touched based with them, it's all doom and gloom. In my early 20s, I faced an eviction, plenty of debt, debt collectors and lots of other problems that, well, never crushed me. Honestly, a lot of problems I shrugged off and found solutions. I think the worst thing that's ever affected me was my cats dying a few months ago. That, honestly, was the worst thing that happened to me, even though I was homeless for a while, couldn't find work, scrapped to pay for food. I could do all that again if I have to. Losing a pet... that hurts.

But that brings me to the next, and I think biggest benefit from all those problems from school. I have a "sixth sense" on people's intentions. Just a gut reaction that's been correct every time. You have no idea how beneficial this has been since I went into business for myself.

It also means, I have zero tolerance for assholes and incompetence. The time I save from wasting time on assholes, I spend on my real friends. I value my real friends and have tight relationships with them. Something my generation really doesn't have. Now, I am abrasive to people the moment I realize someone is underhanded, a user, asshole, etc. Even if they're mostly strangers and it's only been 5 minutes since I met them. But my friends are fully aware that I'm loyal, without end, to them. And thus far, every time I ignored that gut feeling on someone being bad, it always bit me in the ass. If I listened, I would find out from someone else a few months later on what bullet I just dodged.

At the end, the world truly owes you nothing. Having a rough life is actually a blessing. It builds resilience and teaches you to greater appreciate the good and not focus on the toxic. Without experiencing hate, you can't truly love.

Plus, you can't blame the entire world population over what a group of teenagers did. The older you get, the more you realize all teens, all over the world, are an equal amount of stupid.

A lot of your early paragraphs point to an Abundance mindset, rather than one of Scarcity. It really changes your world-view (and the actions one takes) to realize there's plenty of resources, and one doesn't need to hoard and blame others for personal perceived lack.

If I don't have what I want and can't get it then how could I possibly have an abundance mindset? That abundance mindset stuff is like telling depressed people to stop being depressed.

That's ridiculous. Your life would be better without those hardships. You don't know that forgoing those hardships would leave you with other, more difficult hardships; and in any case, if you went without the hardships that limited your access to school you'd be making more money and could deal with your new problems with money.

You've been brainwashed and deluded into accepting mediocrity.

We've banned this account because, although new, it has already managed to violate the site guidelines repeatedly. If you don't want to be banned, you're welcome to read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and email [email protected] with reason to believe that you'll follow the rules in the future.

I co-own a security firm with a friend and this past year we've been getting infrastructure projects. I hire people with college degrees and most of them have crippling student debt. Debt I dont have.

You got a lot of resentment in you and you need to stop thinking there are guarantees in life for someone. There isn't. The idea that theres a path made of velvet and lined with roses that offers you everything in the world is the brainwashed concept.

A person's character is built and forged through how they approach and deal with hardships. You can define yourself by being knocked down and staying down or defined by getting back up. I say this in hopes that someone reading this who's in a shit situation, like me about a decade ago, doesn't give up hope on themselves. A silly expensive piece of paper doesn't grant access for shit anymore. Except for crippling debt. It gives you access to crippling debt.

Whether being angry is right or wrong is largely irrelevant. It's great to advocate for educational reforms, but society won't agree to your demands soon enough to make any practical difference for you personally. Focus on what you can practically achieve within the current system, while continuing to work for changes that will benefit future generations.

It's a real shame how difficult politeness and sorta-kinda-deference can be to decouple. I'm super confrontation avoidant. It's a problem I work on, but I want to be kind and respectful and liked, so I'll go along with a lot. Being kind and respectful and liked and saying a solid no is really hard. Even sacrificing those to say a solid no is hard. Weird how difficult it is personally to reprogram. Props to the OP for growing.

If people don't like you when you politely refuse them, they don't actually like you, they like for what they get from you.

A great test of friendship is to refuse someone for a simple thing, politely. A good friend will dismiss the matter and move on with no hurt feelings or issue.

Agreed, and yet that knowledge doesn't make it that much easier.

For example, if it's a project at work where we're trying to agree on direction, consensus must be built. Saying "no I disagree with that decision" (or that interpretation of an analysis or whatever) is quite difficult. When performance review time comes around, I get the feedback that I should speak up more since people value my opinion. And when I do speak up, it's well received, and we always have polite constructive discussions and everyone's happier for it, even when it ends up with "agree to disagree."

It's kinda the ideal scenario and yet it still takes such a huge emotional toll.

I've noticed amongst some of my friends with similar issues that they see disagreeing as being a kind of harm. That to make someone uncomfortable or upset is as bad as kicking them in the shin or yelling at them.

You can't feed a child nothing but candy. Candy is delicious and great, I love candy, but it's just sugar. To merely agree with someone all the same is to both undervalue their agency (what makes them human, their ability to engage critically and freely with new information) and over-value the norm. In other words, to agree with someone all the time is to give them nothing but sugar candy.

That's not license to yell or be a jerk. Please don't go around trodding on people and calling them sheeple. But do disagree with people because it both helps you and betters them. To engage with opinions we don't have, to consume information we don't like is the intellectual equivalent of eating your vegetables.

Saying no or directly contradicting is often not necessary. Often the reason you might be interested in saying no is a value or dynamic you feel is being under addressed or undervalued. You can compliment what's positive in another's statement and ask about that positions relationship with the value or dynamic you identify as needing to be addressed or valued.

Oh man, it's made me a god damned jedi master of doing that. I'll jump through all the hoops and contortions to avoid a really direct contradiction. I think I'm actually pretty good at getting to consensus as a byproduct of stubborn "must be right" and avoidant "must be liked."

Your post resonates with me. I would go further to say that avoiding conflict is a cultural norm in my case and it makes modern life difficult. Children are raised to listen to adults and we all supposed to listen to people older than us. The standard procedure to handle conflict is to call a big family meeting where the elders speak on your behalf. This is Africa and this is one of the reasons we have struggled to kick out corrupt governments. Avoidance of conflict is also taking it's toll within families when someone goes rogue.

I struggled for a long time and still struggle to be assertive. My first instinct is to say yes and I always feel bad when I say no. I would rather keep quiet than say no which is ambiguous. I am better now as I grow older. One of the reasons is because after some time unwillingly saying yes I would eventually explode and throw baby out with the water. I don't like that side of me so it is better to be firm and say no now than explode later. It is still a struggle but I get better every day.

I think what she is saying is true, unfortunately the article is a bit shallow. I went into this article looking for examples of behaviours that mark people for victimization and strategies for changing those behaviours. I didn't find any, and despite searching I have yet to find a good guide to this anywhere.

There seems to be a vauge grey line between being properly assertive and being selfish or being a jerk. Finding the proper assertive behavior is especially a challenge for people who grew up in abusive circumstances and don't know proper boundaries.

The links in the article (near the top, 3rd paragraph?) address the concern you raise about identifying frequently targeted behaviors and learning how to change them. It's a good question to ask! The answers I saw in those links accord with my experience, for whatever that's worth.

Speaking from that same experience, you're right that the border between assertiveness and assholishness is not clearly marked, not least because all people and situations are to at least some extent unique. I can recommend only cautious experiment as a means of developing an understanding of how to be assertive without being a dick.

There are multiple links in the article referencing what you seek.

> There seems to be a vauge grey line between being properly assertive and being selfish or being a jerk.

Do you know someone who is assertive yet polite? If so, mimic them for a while. Like many behaviors, it can simply be a matter of practicing.

What follows is my personal opinion. (Disclaimer, I'm a guy and I've not been abused, but I have had to deal with troublesome people and as a confrontation-avoidant person I've worked out some strategies for dealing with that. These strategies are more oriented towards avoiding panhandlers than avoiding abusers, but perhaps they can be useful.)

First, the interesting thing about "being selfish" and "being assertive" is that they actually overlap. If someone tells you that you're being selfish like it's a bad thing, that person is probably trying to manipulate you. They want you to stop being selfish so they can be selfish. This is literally how they try to get their way.

Another way to think about it is that "assertiveness" comes into play when there is a conflict of interest. You want X, the other party wants Y. In this situation there's no way to satisfy both X and Y. At this point you can fight for what you think is right, or you can fold. The other people want you to fold, and if they're abusive, they're going to try and insult you or make you feel stupid until you do.

Which brings me to some concrete recommendations for being "assertive:"

1. When walking, look like you have somewhere important to go. You're not meandering casually, you're walking with purpose. You're in charge. People are much less likely to approach you if it looks like you're going to turn them down immediately.

2. In conversation, use the "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me" approach. Operate in good faith until you feel that good faith is being abused, then retract it. Don't be angry, but don't let it happen again. "Forgive, but don't forget."

3. Don't apologize for things you didn't do. If you are afraid and feel like you have to apologize, then do it verbally but don't believe it. Tell yourself that you're lying to this person about being sorry. You're not sorry. You're tricking them because they refuse to accept the truth.

4. Think about the reasons people say what they do. Words coming out of a mouth are like symptoms of the mental state of the person. Don't just take them at face value but ask yourself: "Why are they saying this?"

5. If possible, find people you trust who can be a sounding board. Especially if you think your own "assertiveness compass" is whack. Err on the rude side. Then literally describe your encounters to the trusted party afterwards and ask whether you were rude, so you can refine your social barometer.

6. Protect yourself! You're a living organism and you should be your number one priority. Nobody else has the right to make your decisions for you.

Hopefully that's helpful to someone. But like I said, I'm coming at it from a bit of a different angle, so I welcome any feedback / questions.

I agree a lot with you. But something about the definition of assertiveness you gave...

I think it's better to approach it as a means of making sure you are taking care of yourself, so you have the ability to take care of others.

Like, let's put it in terms of being forced to work late. Why should you do it? For the same reason you work that job anyways. To provide for yourself and/or for your family. Either you are spending time on your family(or yourself) or you're making sure they(or just you) have a roof/food/etc. Thus, if you have to work late, you don't do it for free. You already miss out on family/me time. Thus, you get financially compensated. When you go with that mindset, the conversation naturally functions differently. This is how I negotiate contracts too. I don't discount. I never do. I always get something of equal value in return. If you just willy nilly throw out 10% of your quote, obviously you lack personal value. Whether it's money now, money later or bartering, I hold to my value. I dont think anyone should throw out personal value for the needs of others without truly good reason.

The definition of "being assertive" that I go by is to express your own needs/wants clearly. I agree that there is overlap with selfishness. That's because expressing all of your needs and wants can upset others, and you know that it's not realistic for you to have everything you might want, whenever you want it, and that to try to make that happen would mean taking from others.

However, I would say that there definitely are times when you can express what you want, and not take away anything from anyone else. I would also say that in some situations, it's a matter of protecting yourself, avoiding committing to projects you don't believe you'll be able to deliver on, for example. There are people who are not assertive, and say "yes" to everything to try and avoid upsetting others. However, they end up taking on too much and not delivering, which is harmful to others in the long term. In that case, being assertive and saying "no", might seem selfish in the long term, but is actually beneficial for everyone in the long term.

This is a great writeup and mirrors a lot of what I worked on in therapy for addressing issues I had with asserting myself.

Many times I would feel uncomfortable discussing a course of action and would say "that seems really selfish to me" and my therapist would tell me "It is selfish, and the goal of our work is to help you understand that being selfish is not always a negative thing."

It’s obvious that this article is immensely helpful for anyone as an individual, but it also address the larger problem. My understanding, from my own life and what I’ve read, is that almost all abusers were themselves abused. Preventing someone from being serially abused, even if it doesn’t deal with abusers immediately, leads to a reduction of abusive people in the future.

I'm the author of the piece.

That's exactly why I blog about the things I do. People who have really had something terrible happen need a way out and it's typically very problematic for others to reach out to try to help them.

It's problematic because helping someone can set up a situation where they expect you to keep helping and others may agree that you "owe" them. Giving once can become a trap where they keep making demands and you don't know how to extract yourself, so best to just not help.

And if you help people based on their sob story, then they don't learn to be productive members of society. Instead, they learn to be con artists who extract money based on pity because, hey, that works and they need to eat.

It's maddening for me because I've tried to figure out how to earn my way and there seems to be no way to get taken seriously for that. There seems to be no way to convince people I merit an adequate earned income. I'm viewed as a "charity case," which isn't a nice thing to say about someone.

But, yes, we need to find ways to help people actually escape such, if only because the alternative is the Prison-Industrial Complex and other very broken models that do not constitute a healthy society.

I don't know if I'd agree that it's best to just not help. I've been in situations like the one you describe, especially with regard to monetary help, and found that it isn't really all that hard to disengage if that becomes necessary. I start that process with what some might call a "come to Jesus" talk, where I explain that I can't just keep giving money away to what looks like no good end, and lay out what I need to see - concrete steps toward leaving an abuser, getting treatment for substance issues, whatever - before I'll be willing to consider doing so again. Where I can, I offer resources that might help, even if that's just best guesses - which is all too often the case, our society mostly sucks at helping anyone who really needs it - but I offer whatever I can. After that, I just say no or don't respond, unless I see what I said I needed to.

I mean, yeah, it sucks to have to do, but you're not wrong that some people will just bleed you dry if you let them. Some won't, though, and in my opinion they're worth taking the risk, because sometimes all someone needs really is just a hand up to where they can start climbing out of a hole on their own.

Let me respectfully suggest that you are an exception.

I've had a lot of serious problems in life. I've always sought to resolve them with an eye towards being able to stand on my own two feet.

The vast majority of people who have helped me, especially in a big way over some period of time, didn't really want me to ever succeed in standing on my own two feet. Most of them wanted to be needed and aimed for remaining my crutch. They were actively angry if I tried to actually stand on my own.

I've ended a lot of relationships based on their inability to see me as anything but a charity case and their open hostility at my desire to actually become a functional human being. Such people want to help, but only so much. If you want to grow beyond their vision of what you are capable of, there may be hell to pay. They may actively be vengeful and seek to keep you in your place.

Sure. I've been on the wrong end of people like that, and it's not a good place to be. But that's a separate question, I think - that of whether or not to accept help, vs. whether or not to offer it.

I'm having a dreadful day and I think we are probably talking past each other. I will just note that I never suggested that it's best to never help. I used a lot of provisional language, like can and may.

Suffice it to say this is a thorny problem with many potential pitfalls from both sides and I blog in hopes of providing a path forward that involves fewer pitfalls because reading my blog doesn't create a one-on-one personal relationship, which is where either giving help or receiving it can turn into trouble you didn't anticipate.

I only wish I was better at monetizing my writing. That's a hard row to hoe these days and it means I'm still writing for a pittance, which still leaves me wondering at times if I'm still a fool and a chump, benefiting other people and getting far too little in return.

This reminds me of this good article as well. Confusing kindness with being polite/nice.

https://www.outsideonline.com/2241096/how-teach-girls-they-d...

i hate seeing these things on HN...its another side effect of our manic PC culture

In the list of articles, each entry is really concise. It's really easy to just ignore the ones you aren't interested in.

I think this article is arguing for the opposite, taking personal responsibility for your future. In PC culture, victimhood is somewhat idealized and the goal is to make demands of others as compensation.

> In PC culture, victimhood is somewhat idealized

I don't even think this is true. It sounds like a strawman used to deny and vilify actual victims.

It's important to make a distinction between actual victims and those who participate in victimhood culture. A good example of victimhood culture which has made national headlines is actor Jussie Smollett's staged assault. [1] In order to make a political point, he went out of his way to make himself out to be a victim, because he knew portraying himself as such would get him positive attention from the media (and it did at first before the fraud was revealed).

The criticism is not toward actual victims, but those who fabricate or exaggerate their experiences in order to participate in victimhood. The latter group is partly responsible for the former group being unfairly denied and vilified.

Edit: This sociology article [2] differentiates the two in the context of microaggressions, as summarized in Wikipedia [3]:

> Campbell and Manning argue that accusations of microaggression focus on unintentional slights, unlike the Civil rights movement, which focused on concrete injustices. They argue that the purpose of calling attention to microaggressions is less to elevate the status of offended victim. "When the victims publicize microaggressions,” wrote Campbell and Manning “they call attention to what they see as the deviant behavior of the offenders. In doing so,” they “also call attention to their own victimization.” They do this because it lowers “the offender’s moral status” and “raises the moral status of the victims.”

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jussie_Smollett_alleged_assaul...

[2] https://brill.com/configurable/contentpage/journals$002fcoso...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Rise_of_Victimhood_Culture