The Oppression Olympics: Trauma, Power & the Oppressed

In the therapy world, we often treat the identity of a survivor as a destination—a place of healing, validation, and finally being seen. But there is a gritty, uncomfortable truth to trauma that doesn’t always make it into the aesthetic "self-care" infographics on Instagram.

Have you ever heard of someone taking the victim's stance as a defense mechanism; a way to hop into our armadillo shells to keep others from making us see a painful truth? We're about to do a deep dive into what it means to take the "Victim’s Stance." 

This truth is that sometimes, if trauma isn't reconciled, the survivor’s shield becomes a sword. It’s the moment when an oppressed or disenfranchised person or group realizes that the easiest way to stop feeling like a victim is to become a bigger bully than the one who's bullying them. 

We’ve seen it in homes, perhaps our own, when intimate partner and/or family violence results in the victim seriously harming or even murdering their abuser. We've seen it in schools when the kid whose family neglects them and who is also bullied at school, opens fire on an entire campus. We’ve seen it at work when coworkers who feel pressured, intimidated, and/or coerced by the leadership, become brutally-competitive, undermining, backstabbing and/or otherwise aggressive towards us or others. And we’ve also seen it throughout history. 

The "Oppression Olympics" and vying for Pole Position

When our unresolved traumas strip us of our personal sense of agency, some of us, instead of doing the inner work to understand how to fully explore, process and reconcile our pain and rage, might scramble for any power we can find. Often, that power comes from claiming the moral high ground of suffering. In other words, “If I am the most hurt, I am the most beyond reproach.”

But here’s the kicker: when we use our history of victimization as a permanent "Get Out of Jail Free" card, each and every time we're uncomfortable or we're challenged or confronted about real and genuine harm we’re causing, we stop looking at our own hands. We enter a sick  "trauma dance" where we justify our own capacity for harm because "nothing could be as bad as what happened to US." 

A Look at History: The Victim-Oppressor Interchange

History is a messy mirror. We can see this victim's stance dynamic most poignantly and painfully in the history of the Jewish people. After centuries of horrific systemic oppression, pogroms, and the unimaginable trauma of the Holocaust, the collective psyche of a people was understandably forged in "Never Again."

However, in the contemporary context of Palestine and Gaza, we see the tragic manifestation of what can be deemed, among many other things, unreconciled trauma and misdirected and unyielding resentment and rage. 

The survivor identity, when weaponized by a state, can be used to justify the same tactics of displacement and colonial violence that were once used against them.

The Clinical Reality: Trauma that is not integrated is often projected. 

If we don’t reconcile our history, political or personal, we don't just "heal"—we often recreate the power dynamics of our captors, just with the roles reversed. 

Getting ourselves off of the “Pity Pot.”

So, how do we stop doing this to others and to ourselves? It starts with the uncomfortable admission that having been victimized does not make us inherently virtuous, perpetually and in every situation. It doesn't mean that we don't need to pay close attention to ways that our  unreconciled hurt, rage and fear due to what others' have done to us might keep us from being able to see that we might also be hurting someone else. 

In short, we do not get to continue being the victim when we are causing significant harm to others.

Integration over Weaponization: Healing means moving past the need to stay in the "victim stance" as a power play.

Accountability over Alibis: Recognizing that our trauma is part of a story that explains something happened to us behavior, but it doesn't excuse the harm we cause to others.

Solidarity over Competition: Realizing that someone else's liberation doesn't take away from your own.

When we’re able to take full responsibility for ourselves, including the harm we’ve done, it means that we're moving towards a healing and a liberation that doesn’t require someone else to be underneath us. 

Reconciling our own trauma requires self-compassion, as well as self-vigilance and there’s no gold medal at the end—but there is the chance to stop the harmful games.

This blog article was written with the assistance of AI, however the topic, themes, sociopolitical perspectives, tone and style were derived solely from the author.