Suffering is universal but victimhood is optional.

From Hidden Genius: The secret ways of thinking that power the world’s most successful people by Polina Marinova Pompliano.  

EDITH EVA EGER, Psychologist and Holocaust survivor

    

 “Suffering is universal,” Holocaust survivor Edith Eva Eger writes in her memoir The Choice. “But victimhood is optional.”

We’re all likely to be victimized in some way throughout the course of our lives. At some point, we will suffer some kind of affliction or abuse, “caused by circumstances or people over which we have little or no control. “This is victimization,” she writes. “It comes from the outside. It’s the neighborhood bully, the boss who rages, the spouse who hits, the lover who cheats, the discriminatory law, the accident that lands you in the hospital."

On the flipside, victimhood comes from the inside. No one can make you a victim but you. “We become victims not because of what happens to us but when we choose to hold on to our victimization. We develop a victim’s mind—a way of thinking and being that is rigid, blaming, pessimistic, stuck in the past, unforgiving, punitive, and without healthy limits or boundaries. We become our own jailers when we choose the confines of the victim’s mind.”

   

If you don’t give in to victimhood, you can develop a kind of mental resilience that will carry you through the most difficult situations.