You were never a victim
There are things that happen to all of us that are outside of our control.
These things leave us feeling betrayed, broken, scared, maimed, or impacted in ways that completely change how we once perceived the world.
The world is brutal, and most of the time it feels indifferent to our well being, hopes, and dreams.
I don't want to downplay any of these things. The damage that is done can be very real and permanent.
I want to address a layer that forms silently over time and causes further unnecessary suffering.
The things that define us.
We take what we do over and over again and make it our identity, which further strengthens our actions.
If you start jogging to lose weight and it generates enough feel good feedback loops, you will continue to jog, and that will become your identity. Once it has become your identity, you will buy more equipment, start looking for races, and find friends and online groups that align with your identity.
That is because you are now a runner.
This is part of what makes us human.
We do the same thing with things we don't like but repeat often, like smoking.
And trauma.
If you experience pain or loss, your brain keeps reliving what happened.
The brain replays what happened in order to protect you from the same misfortune in the future. That is because it is, first and foremost, a survival tool.
The act of replaying the same situation in your brain over and over again reinforces the event as part of your identity.
It reinforces the idea that you are a victim.
The victim story is not you.
What happened, happened, and it was most likely horrible.
The story you made up afterward, the one you have been living is a complete fabrication.
Events happen. Good. Bad. They happen.
The universe is not arranging events around you. Some are beautiful. Some are horrific. But these are not proof that you are cursed.
You added the story about being cursed, doomed, or broken.
That part was never real.
You are not a victim.
You can't control what happens to you, but you can 100% control what you do with the information afterward.
No single event can shape the complexity of your being unless you decide to collapse that complexity and beauty into simple stories.
You are the author of your own story, not the helpless character in it.
Boulder,
There is truth here that many people need, especially the recognition that trauma is not meant to become the totality of a person’s identity. What happened to someone is real, painful, and often deeply shaping, but human beings are more complex than the worst thing that happened to them. I appreciate the challenge against collapsing an entire life into a single wound, because healing often does require reclaiming agency, meaning, choice, and personhood beyond the trauma itself.
At the same time, I think we must be careful not to move so quickly away from the language of victimhood that we unintentionally bypass the reality of violation, grief, and nervous system injury. Some people truly were victimized. Scripture never minimizes oppression, abuse, betrayal, or suffering. The Psalms are filled with people naming harm honestly before God. Joseph was betrayed. Tamar was violated. Job suffered a loss he did not cause. Christ Himself was wounded unjustly. The issue is not whether victimization occurred; the issue is whether the wound becomes the final and permanent definition of the self.
That distinction matters deeply because there is a difference between acknowledging “I was harmed” and believing “harm is all I am.” Trauma can shape perception, behavior, and identity in profound ways, often outside conscious awareness, which is why healing is rarely as simple as deciding to think differently. Yet I do agree with your deeper point: people are not doomed to remain imprisoned inside the story of what happened to them. Biblically, redemption is not the denial of suffering; it is the reality that suffering does not have the final word. Healing begins when truth, grief, responsibility, and identity are allowed to coexist honestly, without reducing a human being to their pain alone.
Blessings,
Ze Selassie