The victim mindset is BFF’s with binge eating disorder and shitty body image. Do you have a victim mindset? Discovering this for yourself is part of losing the emotional weight so that you can crush emotional eating and poor body image and gain confidence. Having a victim’s mindset is going to hold you back from creating the life you deserve.

In this episode, I talk about the top ways to identify if you’re playing the victim role. I also give you actionable tips for what to do next. Let’s get it and make some pink lemonade!

Do you have a victim mindset

What is a Victim’s Mindset?

Ultimately, the victim mindset leaves you feeling powerless over your life and circumstances. This is a learned and acquired behavior…which means it’s possible to change it!

Why is the Victim Mindset Detrimental for Healing Emotional Eating and Body Image?

Until you take responsibility for where you’re at, no amount of healing is going to happen. This is why the diets don’t work. This is why the positive affirmations alone don’t work.

The victim mindset is attached at the hip with emotional eating and poor body image. Denial is another BFF and goes hand-in-hand with all of this. People with the victim mindset make no effort to learn from mistakes, they lack resilience, and they prefer to wallow in their wet blanket of misery.

Do You Have a Victim Mindset?

Here are some of the common actions that I see in regards to how the victim mindset shows up in relation to binge eating and poor body image.

1. You Always Have an Excuse

There’s always an excuse for you. You have an excuse for why you can’t lose the weight, why you hate your body, and why nothing ever works for you. For example, “I’m fat and miserable because I have kids, work full-time, and have no time to make healthy food and workout.” Even when a solution is presented, you find the negative in why it won’t work for you. You’re always looking for the negative and the bad in everything.

2. You Blame Everyone Else. It’s Their Fault

You never take the responsibility for your part…it’s always someone else’s fault. The victim mindset tells you to blame everyone else for your problems. For example, “If my spouse would just get on board with healthy eating, THEN I would finally lose the weight and then love my body.”  Or my personal fav (major eye roll) “I gotta cook two different meals because my kids won’t eat healthy and ain’t nobody got time for that.” Why aren’t you teaching your kids healthy habits? That’s another topic for another day!

If you’re constantly blaming your weight and body image issues on other people, you need to check yourself.

3. You’re the Queen the Pity Party

Do you throw the massive pity party of the year anytime you get bad news? This is the party that never seems to end. Listen. You’re entitled to have a pity party but GIRL, put a time limit on it! You have to get on with your life. Let’s say you get laid off. So, you throw a pity party, you binge watch all the shows on Hulu, and you’re shoving all the junk food in your mouth. FOR MONTHS. So you gain back all of your weight and now you hate your body because nothing fits.

Then you blame the company that laid you off…back to it’s everyone else’s fault. YOU have to take responsibility for your actions and how you dealt with the situation.

4. You Think Everyone Else Must Be So Lucky

Everyone else has it so good around you…expect for you. I hear these two phrases and I can’t stand them:

  • Must Be Nice
  • You’re So Lucky

They are said in the passive aggressive sarcastic tone. That’s the key indicator here. If you think everyone else around you is lucky and has it made, you might be playing the victim.

5. You’re Too Busy

It’s great to take care of other people. However, when you’re constantly busy and using that as an excuse to take care of yourself, it’s not healthy. WE ARE ALL BUSY. Stop using this excuse! We make time for what’s important to us. When you’re living in the victim mindset, busy is used as a shield to make you appear to be “better than” everyone else. You think that those that practice self-care are selfish.

There’s a healthy balance of helping others while putting yourself first. There are also seasons of life where we are busy. If you are always rocking your busy as a badge of honor, you need to take a step back. When you fall into this trap, you have to come forward and learn how to say no and ask others for what YOU need.

6. You Never Take Responsibility For Your Actions

This goes back to it’s everyone else’s fault and there’s always an excuse. For example, “I got laid off and that’s why I gained all the weight.” NO! The situation sucked but it’s not what caused you to gain weight…your actions did and you have to take responsibility for that part. At the end of the day, one of the only things you can actually control is what goes in your mouth and how you take care of you.

7. You Enjoy the Sympathy

You get attention when everything is going to shit in your life. So if you suffer from a victim’s mindset, it makes you feel good to get this attention. You don’t know how to get attention from the positive things going on.

Now What?

If you can recognize some of these things in yourself, here’s what to do next:

  1. Admit It. It’s true, the first step is admitting.
  2. Decide to change and move forward or decide to stay under your wet blanket.
  3. Take ownership for your actions!
  4. Focus on gratitude. Focus on what you have…not what is lacking in your life.
  5. Take control of what you can control and let go of the rest.

Things Mentioned in This Episode:

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Hi! I’m Aimee with 2 E’s. I'm a confidence coach that empowers women to love themselves by breaking down body image issues, so that they can lose the emotional weight and gain the confidence to look and feel irresistible...at any size.