Ep119_victim
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Adam Gragg: [00:00:00] So there's some frustrating things that comments I hear from clients sometimes. And one of them is, the client will say this, they'll say, I don't want to play the victim. And that's why I don't want to talk about this situation. That's why I don't want to give it much attention. So something traumatic that has happened in their life or something, maybe they've gone through [00:01:00] some sort of traumatic event that I know about that they've told me about, like assault or abuse or an abandonment or a rejection, I mean, a betrayal.

Something in their life and I don't want to play the victim. And to me, that is like, it's really frustrating because I look around and if you look around, you're going to see people who have been hurt in different ways in their life.

And because they think they should get over it. And because by talking about it and dealing with it, they are believing that they're playing the victim. They're not actually dealing with it. And then they're being victimized by it, by that mentality. And we become. held back when we don't deal with our past.

It hurts us. It hurts people we care about. It keeps us from having a great vision for our future. It keeps us from setting the right goals. It keeps us from moving forward because we haven't actually faced it. So today, this is 119, episode 119 of the Decide Your Legacy podcast. And we're going to talk about stop.

Stop being a victim, okay? You stop being a victim. So four necessary ingredients to moving past your [00:02:00] past. If you have these ingredients involved, I'm going to pretty much guarantee you that you're going to eventually move past the things that you're stuck on.

You may act as if they don't actually impact you. I will see people at times and I've heard of people and I've experienced this myself that people will say, well, I don't know. I have this addiction because of my past, and I can't get over it because of what I've been through. The abuse, the trauma, the hurt that I have.

And that to me is playing the victim. You are acting as if you can't change because this bad thing happened to you. And that's an excuse. And you're not going to get better because of that. That annoys me, that irritates me, but mostly it makes me sad because I see the other people that are impacted and I see how you are held back because you're telling yourself that you can't change.

And you're using it as an excuse because you're afraid. Not because you are, I think, wanting to live that way because who wants to live outside of fulfilling their potential? Who wants to live saying, I'm just going to be held back because of this thing that happened. I'm your host, Adam Gragg. [00:03:00] I've been a coach, content creator, speaker, and mental health professional for 25 years.

And I help and love helping people find that transformational clarity, that kind of clarity. They're having these moments where it just propels them forward to face their biggest fears. And on the other side of facing those fears, they're going to build self confidence. It comes after you face your biggest fears.

your fears. After you do courageous things, you build confidence and then they can leave their and live their legacy. So I love helping people live their legacy. I talk about stuff I struggle with myself or have or are working on. I don't have it all figured out. I am a fellow traveler. And so this is the podcast that you do not just listen to. Okay. This means that you get to take action and even do stuff that makes you uncomfortable.

That's courageous to apply what you're learning today and to apply things in your life after you leave here today. So I want you to start with an action right now. One courageous action. Just speak it into your [00:04:00] phone or write it down. How have you been hurt in your past? Some way that you have not fully faced.

It could be something that you would look at and say, that was pretty minor, but you're going to know because it still impacts you today. And you have some level of, let's just push that, push that aside and minimize and justify it. And what is it? It could be a relationship. It could be some sort of, work type of situation.

Something in your life, you know, I mean, maybe it's some recent situation where you were injured or in an accident, or maybe you didn't deal with some kind of getting a speeding ticket and that was traumatic, you decide what it was. So the past is it's hard to determine and judge your situation compared to others, meaning like something that impacts you may not impact somebody else.

So we can look and say, well, that doesn't really impact me because. I've moved past that and somebody else hasn't actually moved past that. We have people that are involved or being in some kind of a tragedy or losing a loved one and for [00:05:00] one person it impacts them to a great extent because maybe they've never been through something like that before.

Lost somebody that they're really close to like a parent or a sibling when another person they've gone through something similar and it's where they already have this sort of coping mechanism built in to deal with it and you look at them and say, well, they're really coping well and I'm not. But, you're not really comparing apples to apples. You're comparing apples to oranges. It's a very different situation. I've seen people hold onto resentment for 50 years with siblings. I've seen people in my own family hold onto resentment with people that they're close to, even siblings, for years and not work it out until over the last three or four years.

I mean, I've seen it happen. You've probably seen it happen too. And if you haven't, I don't know if you're being really honest with yourself that people hold onto resentments and they hold onto places where they've been hurt. They hold onto stuff they haven't dealt with and it impacts them today. The past impacts you in good ways and in bad ways.

And that's a great, important, very important thing. So you can't just discount the fact that we have good memories that we want to reflect on. Why do we look at our pictures and how do [00:06:00] we try to share pictures with friends from the past, or even have this, slide deck that comes up on our phones that moves us to tears at times.

For me personally, when I see pictures of family and friends and situations, it can be very emotional. Have you not had great memories in the past, successes, wins in your life, even today, where you can celebrate and focus on and say, That was a great thing that happened in my life.

Have you ever laughed so hard at times that you cried and you want to look and think about that memory and it maybe even pops up at times and you're like, That was so funny. Because you have these relationships where you have these memories that are triggered because it was so enjoyable and you had so many good times together.

There's great things in our past that we can focus on. I don't want you to run from it. I just don't want you to keep it from you getting to the next level in your life. And so here's the four ingredients you need to deal with stuff in your past. Ingredient number one is to admit. that something has actually impacted you.

And that means to not lie to yourself, to not live in denial. And the big lie that people will tell themselves is, you know, [00:07:00] that was a long time ago, or that wasn't a big deal, or I've already dealt with it. I've already faced it. You know, somebody in my family who had a fear that they had discussed with me was causing great turmoil in their life.

They told me that they were going to go talk to a professional about this fear because they had discussed with me that and admitted that it was something that was hindering them. And then they call me and tell me that they had addressed it. But they hadn't actually really talked to anybody. And that was just their way of denying it.

They said that they talked to a friend about it, who they thought had some qualifications to help them work through. Maybe they did. But I'm saying denial is sneaky. It's easy to admit, it's easy to think we've admitted that something impacts us, and to really not have admitted that it impacts us. So, I want you to be able to admit that, you know, growing up, without a mother impacted you if that's your situation or that that situation was abusive or there was great neglect there or I really was hurt by that rejection even [00:08:00] though everybody gets rejected when they're dating at first or whatever but it really impacted me because there was a lot of deception and there were lies involved and this that really hurt me or that somebody was betrayed by a friend impacted them more than they were willing to admit until now until listening to this podcast so what are you desperately trying to hold on to and you're holding on to it yet It continues to be impactful in your life.

You were hurt by somebody and that leads to distrust in your other relationships and you haven't been willing to admit that that impacts your relationships now. Yet you are able to say that, yeah, there are some gaps in my connection with people and I do live a guarded life.

And I don't want this to continue because I'm getting ready to turn 60 years old and I don't want this to continue in my life. So you're starting the process of admitting it, but to go to that full level of saying, This actually impacts me. I don't necessarily know how, but I'm going to just agree and commit to the fact that this actually does impact me.

So people will, they will desperately play the [00:09:00] victim to things in their past and act like they can't change. Just holding onto that at such a high level that they can't change. I'm always going to be this way. I cannot be somebody who does not, who lives a free life. I can't live that way. Like, and it may be something as you would look at as basic as me saying.

That first of all, I had a fear of flying. I had a great phobia of flying. And I told people that I didn't have a fear of flying. I would have told people up until probably a decade ago that I didn't have a fear of flying. And. Well, no, I would have, that's not true. 10 years ago, I would have said, yeah, I'd worked through some things there, but I would have said and denied and held onto that.

But I had this fear and that was me playing the victim to this because I wasn't willing to admit that I had this issue holding me back to other people and be honest about it. And that was at first, but then I did work on it, but we can play that. It's such a deceptive thing where we hide from the stuff and we don't admit it.

So the first step of the 12 steps is admitted we were powerless, you know, with alcoholics on us, admitted we were powerless over alcohol or any addiction, over [00:10:00] food, admitted we were powerless over relationships, over which it can be codependency, admitted we were powerless over workaholism, and that our lives have become unmanageable because of that whatever that thing is that we were holding on to.

So what is it? That's the quick action for you to take here with ingredient number one, admitting is you start to make a list of the impactful events in your life, starting with your first memories, ending with the last ones that were impactful in your life and do both positive and negative. So you get to put down your wedding and the birth of your kids and when you got that big promotion and what that's going to do is it's going to help you, it's going to help trigger other events that fit in between there that weren't as positive.

And you can put on there like events that we all experience corporately as a whole community, a society like 9 11 and that's going to help trigger other events that were similar, that were around the same time as those big marker events.

So the second ingredient for you to not be stuck to actually to stop being a victim of your past [00:11:00] is to recognize the impact that it had on your life. One of the other big lies that we tell ourselves, I see people telling each other and telling themselves frequently is that time will heal all wounds, like it'll go away over time, right?

So I can think of a client that had a very, very successful family and very successful siblings. And this guy was rocking it. I mean, he had multiple businesses, a lot of different real estate, a lot of assets, but he felt like a failure consistently.

It just reeked of him. I mean, the guy probably had, I'm not joking, but I mean, you wouldn't doubt me if the guy had a net worth of over 20 million, but consistently felt like he was a failure compared to the rest of his family. And I couldn't, I couldn't, somehow get it through to the guy, which is not my job.

I mean, they have to answer the questions. He was so desperate to get his value out of his performance that he was not willing to recognize how all this stuff in his past, which was traumatic, was impacting him today and his behavior today. So he wasn't owning his story.

And so [00:12:00] I was having trouble helping him. I was having trouble getting through. He was having trouble being honest with himself. Time will not heal all wounds. You will be at the same place, yet as Carl Hulme would describe it, it's just going to be magnified. As you keep stuffing it, it's just going to get bigger and bigger until you won't get on a plane, until you won't even go out in public, until that fear is so monstrous it is leading you to this level of workaholism and performance addiction and codependency that's starting to destroy your physical health and starting to alienate people to the extent that you don't have relationships that are healthy even around you whatsoever.

I mean, that's the kind of extreme fear can get that. It can become that delusional. It can become that extreme. I've seen it with my own eyes. I've experienced it in my own life in some ways because I've had levels of denial in my own life to where it just kept growing and growing and growing until I wasn't sleeping.

You know, the level of fear that I had and the level of distrust in people and situations kept growing. And so I want you to figure out how recognize the [00:13:00] impact it actually had. So somebody told me that he had gone through some very traumatic stuff as a kid and it had led to, and this was somebody being honest, starting to be really honest, some distrust, defensiveness, anxiety, passivity in his interactions.

This is a different situation, different client, okay? So I disguise the identities of my clients, but I want you to hear real life stories from my life and from the lives of people I get to work with because I get so much hope personally because I get to share the success stories. And you don't see the whole picture either.

So that one story that I shared that was fairly discouraging, well, you know, that's not the end of the story. I hope there's a lot of good stuff that happens in his life moving forward. But I can see how somebody in this other situation, they were recognizing I push people away because I've been hurt in the past.

I immediately in an interaction with somebody new think how are they going to hurt me and how am I going to keep them from hurting me. So this individual is consistently anxious in their interactions with people and they end [00:14:00] up talking about their situation, not letting the other person ask questions, interacting in a way where they're showing that they have value in their eyes.

They're trying to impress a lot of times or they're over engaging to where they're not listening because they're thinking about what they're going to say next. So the action you can take to recognize the impact is once you have that list of impactful life events, you want to ask yourself, how is holding on to this situation?

Holding on by not admitting it impacts me is one way or holding on by saying it's not. the big deal or holding on by saying it's always going to impact me. Those are all extremes and those are all forms of denial that in that is the way it's impacting you today. So how is it impacting you specifically?

Does it cause you some anxiety? Does it cause you some level of doubt in yourself? Does it impact your self confidence? Does it impact the way you interact with other people, your relationships? As I mentioned before, you know, Carl Hulme said just whatever we shy away from, forget ostensibly is dangerously close to us and will eventually return [00:15:00] with redoubled force.

You want to deal with the stuff that has impacted you. So if you found this podcast helpful so far, I don't want you to miss Shatterproof yourself light. These are seven small steps to a giant leap in your mental health. I give you information that I have put together from 25 years working with clients, real situations.

It's a 20 minute video, a brief video, and it goes over seven steps that you can take starting today. It's also going to have a worksheet, you can print off and fill in the blank and it's going to give you some level of focus. It's going to challenge you to gather information about yourself, it's going to give you information and it's going to help you to start taking action.

You don't want to miss this, this is the process I take people through to make positive life transformational changes. Shatter Proof Yourself Lite, check it out. So, ingredient number three is to talk to somebody. There's another big lie I see people believing and sharing with me consistently is that they can do it on their own.

They can heal on their own. They can go through this on their own. They don't need anybody else. They're going to [00:16:00] fix it on their own, but they didn't go through it on their own. They went through it as a victim of somebody else or some situation I don't want you to be a victim.

I also don't want you to say that you weren't a victim. That sounds very. contradictory, but it's not because people are victims. If somebody put a gun to my head and said, give me your car keys and took off with my car, I would be a victim of Grand Theft Auto.

If 20 years from now, I don't trust people enough to go and park my car somewhere that reminds me of that specific type of situation, then I am being victimized by what happened to me 20 years ago. That's what I do not want for that's what I do not want for myself. That lie that you can heal on your own is a lie, you know, cause you will have to take a risk to trust somebody and to trust a trustworthy person to the best of your extent, somebody who you believe can be trustworthy.

And there are some people, that they have some situations in their life that happened and were so traumatic or were as a [00:17:00] child that they cannot go back there. Their brain will not let them go back there. There's too much going on there. And this is where I feel that some of the modern treatments for post traumatic stress disorder are very, very promising.

And they do involve things like ketamine, which is one legal way. Then there are other drugs being developed that are, you know, they are going to be hallucinogenic drugs that with the safety of a therapist walking you through that what they do is small doses in settings we're finding through research and everything that it can help people to feel safe and to go to places where they couldn't go mentally without the help of that substance and under the care of a physician.

Yes. All right. And I'm not your clinician. I'm not your doctor. I'm just sharing some information with you. based on what is going on in the medical community right now. And I've been a licensed therapist a long time, so I get exposed to this information.

And so with the help of a trained clinician, they're getting asked questions about those situations in their past, and it's helping them to [00:18:00] process. These difficult things that they have been through in their past. And some people have that level of denial. And so in that case, I'm not saying people are lying to themselves.

I'm not saying that, that lying to yourself is when, you know, in your gut, that it did impact you. And you're saying it doesn't, or that, that what level of behavior, which was connected to that, situation in your past, the distrust in your past isn't impacting other people.

That's denial. That's what I don't want you to have to live with. I don't want your family to live with that. I don't want you to live with it. I don't want people to have to go and endure that. In these situations, it's so down deep that they can't go there. Their brain will not let them.

And that is where these other new treatments are. promising and will continue to be promising to the point where I believe people are going to be able to deal with stuff at a much higher level. And hopefully at one point, if they want to get help, they'll be able to get help.

It doesn't mean people will, because people will still live saying, I don't want to deal with that. I'm not going to admit that it impacted me. There's a lot of different ways people can get help now

I mean, there's many alcoholics out there that know that they drink [00:19:00] to numb. the pain that they experience from a very specific hurtful thing that they identify as being hurtful and traumatic in their life. They're still not getting help. They're still not trying to get healing from it. They would rather stay numb.

They would rather self medicate. And there will be more opportunities for the people that do not have as many options now to heal some of these deeply traumatic things in their life. They will have more opportunities to go there. To talk to somebody about it and to deal with it.

What I want you to do now, quick action you can take on this ingredient number three, talk with somebody about it. Is who is one safe person in your life? Just identify one safe person in your life. A friend, a teacher. a coworker, someone in your family, someone from your past you haven't talked to in a year or two, somebody that was safe.

It could be a professional, a pastor, somebody that you talked to as a professional in the past, a former coworker, a neighbor. Who might it be? Identify who it is and I want you to figure out Some at some level commit to [00:20:00] exposing a little more your life with the intention of talking more about whatever this traumatic thing is in your life.

I'm not your therapist. I'm just giving you the ingredients. that I see when someone actually does get this processing to move them to the next level when it comes to their past, they follow these ingredients in the recipe to get healing. If you don't do it, there are costs for sure.

And just knowing that there are costs can be motivating to people as well. So the ingredient number four is, is to find the value in whatever situation, whatever hurt you had. So the other big lie time will heal all wounds. I mean, there's another part of that. Owning your story will also heal all wounds.

Time will heal all wounds, but owning your story can significantly heal all wounds. I mean, I love the quote from Brene Brown, owning your story and loving ourselves through the process is the bravest thing we'll ever do. I've probably shared that with you before. We figure out what the value is by, by figuring out the meaning of the situation that we went through.

And then it transforms it. I like the word transmutation. I believe that's a word that [00:21:00] describes a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. It's one In one form and it becomes what appears to be a completely different form. People like that metaphor of change. You see people standing with that image where they're in between the butterfly wings as they spread out.

We have positive growth and change because it's so fascinating. It is even when I think about it, if I see a caterpillar, which I think is a pretty cool creature, and then I see a butterfly, they're so incredibly different, yet they are the same thing. And that was a process that they went through.

It's that God designed. I mean, a really cool thing. And so what is the value in what you went through. When we see the value in something, it is greatly transformed. I know I was talking to a guy who reached out for coaching and he really wanted to make some major changes in his life and had the success in his [00:22:00] career, had some challenges relationally that he wanted to improve. And so I asked him what the value of making those changes was for him because he was having trouble understanding the value, why coaching was expensive in his mind. I didn't feel like it was expensive. I felt like I was discounted based on what he was going to get out of the process.

If he engaged the tools and the resources that I was going to give him in the process. And a lot of times, coaching is a, people have to take some time to think about it. You know, I have clients that will talk to me from a year ago, they'll reach out after a year and that's okay because they've thought about it.

I'm still on their list. I'm flattered. It was obviously a good enough experience that they're going to still want to reach out to me. And so once he could articulate the value better, which he still struggled with it, but it was, ~he, ~he used the term priceless.

You know, if I had a better relationship with my kids. That was one of the things he wanted to have. He would say that was priceless, but I couldn't guarantee it, which is true. I mean, he would have to do the work. I would help ask him the questions, but it did get him at least [00:23:00] closer to seeing that he would want to invest in this.

So it really changed in his mind and he can see it as a different type of service. When I ask companies, if you know, what's the value of you making this change in your, in your organization, it could be something very basic. Like what's the value of having a new employee orientation that your employees rant and rave about and are really excited about.

And every time you get a new employee on, they're really excited to meet this new person and the whole culture. And if they're honest about it, they'll tell me the value is not necessarily priceless, but immense.

And one of the things they articulated is they said this to me, like we leave money on the table. And so I said, well, what's the value of the money you leave on the table? And it was millions is what what she said,

I mean, I don't make this stuff up. I'm not making this up, you know, really. And then it came down to like, it was like, she said a 5 percent increase in revenue over the next year. And then it was like a 40 percent increase in revenue over the next five years. And we put a dollar sign [00:24:00] on that. And it was like, wow, that's, that's, I definitely felt like I'm not going to do that.

making changes in anything I can do, it made me feel really valuable because I really like to help people to grow, but it helped me to see the value and change in people's lives and what it can do for their families and what it can do for their mental health and their physical health and helping other families because that's what business owners will tell me a lot.

I mean, entrepreneurs get a bad rap so much because I will have them in my office and they'll, they may not even be able to identify why they want to grow this business. Which, you know, an entrepreneur takes resources and transforms them and utilizes them to have something bigger and greater,

when they're sitting in my office or I'm talking to them or hearing them speak on my favorite podcasts or books they talk about ways where they're making other people's lives better and growing people's strengths and seeing their assets and their resources and how they can utilize those to a greater level. So that's a change in the value. So this ingredient number four, you're finding a value, you're transmuting it, this difficult situation, you're seeing that [00:25:00] I can utilize this, this set of circumstances that were unfortunate, that were bad in my past to me, they hurt, hurt me, but I can use those as energy and transmute them into something totally different, but good and beautiful, which can be this motivation to help other people, which can be this heart for those people that are hurting, which can be because somebody grew up.

Without parents, they can be incredibly passionate about working in an environment where they can help other kids. So another client shared a story where she had this situation where an employee was doing a really good job, very highly capable, and had an employee review, During that interaction, the employee started to share how they weren't utilizing their skills as much as they would like to in their job.

And instead of saying, you know, you're a great employee, great asset, which this person is, a tremendous asset, asked more questions about it. And through that interaction, realize that this really highly valued manager wasn't happy because they weren't utilizing their [00:26:00] gifts in this role and never would actually be utilizing their giftings in this role, even in this company, to the greatest extent possible.

And it was extremely gratifying for this leader to see that by helping this employee realize that they had all these strengths that they could utilize in another setting. And this person wanted to work, in ministry. In a different, total different field. Was going to go in an area where they would be working as a pastor.

I mean, totally different. And, but seeing that was so inspiring to the leader. And it was terrifying to the employee, the manager, because it was a leaving of those, that security. But what they were doing is they were finding their own value on what they had gone through, because this person had gone through difficult things and had this change in their life that came through being involved as a child in a ministry and helping people, people helping him that were.

Didn't have to, but the guy grew up in foster care and could see that they were going to be able to help other people because of what they had been through. That's a transmutation. It took courage on the leader, it took courage on their part to start this change process, which I'm assuming they have.

I don't know all the details, but [00:27:00] that was really encouraging as well. So, thank you very much. Cool stuff. I mean, this is so cool when I get to see people starting to see the meaning and the value of what they've been through and it starts to propel them and it becomes their biggest asset, which is so incredibly cool.

So let me review these steps again, these four ingredients so you can stop playing the victim. All right. So whether it's in relationships and you say, it'll never change, whether it's in your job and you'll say, it'll never get better, whether it's with your health and you'll say, I'll never get healthy, whether it's in your relationship with your grown kids or your kids that are in your house now or your teenagers.

They're just teenagers and they'll never change and they're just a way they're not going to take my feedback. Stop making excuses. Stop being victimized. Number one ingredient. Recognize you got to own it. Okay. So you got to admit it. Admit that you Have been impacted. Then you have to own it.

Second ingredient. Owning it is more than admitting it. It's actually saying, yes, this is how specifically it is impacting me. Owning it's [00:28:00] the first part of that. Number three ingredient is to talk with somebody, you know, find somebody you can talk to and start small and then move up from there. And if it doesn't work out when you start small, and that's how you build trust with somebody, you take a risk, but it's not spilling all the beans and sharing everything if it's a new relationship.

It's starting small and then building trust and then seeing that they are being faithful. Trust takes evidence over time, and then you realize you can trust them with more, and you can trust them with more. And number four is find the value. Transmute those difficult situations. If you grew up without a dad, or if your mom died in a car accident when you were a kid.

And I don't care what the situation is. I've been through bad stuff. I know that, and I believe, and I'm not telling you to believe what I believe, but I'm just saying from my experience personally, there is nothing that cannot be transformed.

There is nothing that cannot be transformed. So insight is 20 percent of transformational clarity and action is 80%. Okay, so now you're getting [00:29:00] insight, you're finding the meaning, you're admitting, you're looking at what has happened, you're realizing that maybe you have been victimized and you are being victimized now.

Yes, you maybe have in legit, legitimately, and then you are continuing to be victimized and you're able to say, I'm going to step back from that and own it. What I mean by change is that we can find the meaning in the situation, no matter what it is, and we can look at it and say, I'm going to use this for good, and it's going to give you a different level of energy, completely different level of energy.

It's going to have transmutation. It's going to be transmuted into something that's an asset. So insight is 20 percent and then action is 80%. An okay plan that you act on is 100 times better than a great plan that you do nothing with. Take action. Trust your gut. Do something different. So what resonated with you today that you want to apply?

By the end of the day today, act. Take an emotional risk based on this one insight. Teach it to somebody else. Don't just let it stick inside of you. Talk to your wife, talk to your teenage kid, talk to your buddy, talk to your small group, [00:30:00] talk to somebody about what you have learned today.

I'm going to sign off the way I always do. Make it your mission to live the life now that you want to be remembered for 10 years after you're gone. You decide your legacy, no one else. I appreciate you greatly and I'll see you next time.