Lots of people actually have justification for seeing themselves as victims. Many people have been subjected to various kinds of real abuse. They’ve been subjected to violence. They’ve had life hand them really bad stuff like the loss of a loved one or a life-threatening illness. Or their marriages have broken up, or they’ve crashed financially.

But there’s a real difference how people deal with life’s challenges.

Some folks believe in the mantra “that which doesn’t kill me makes me stronger”. They rise above their trauma and survive. They even manage to become happy people and can love others and support others. If you are one of these people, you probably should stop reading now, because this is not going to be of any use to you.

However, there are others who wear their victimhood on their sleeves, and do everything possible to maximize their status as a victim.

If you are wanting to really wallow on your victimness, then read on.

The first step in maximizing your pain and suffering from whatever was your initial hit, you must relive the event emotionally over and over and over again.

Call this self-induced post traumatic stress.

If you can summon up an event, and have that memory trigger the same sense of rage, hurt, fear, anxiety or whatever the original emotion was, then you are well on your way to maximizing your victimization.

The concept of forgiveness involves not forgetting the wrong done to you. It involves disconnecting that wrong from a now time emotional reaction on your part. You are not letting the other person or event off the hook. You are simply saying to yourself, “I’m over this.”

Thus, the second step in maintaining your victim status is never forgive.

The third step is the key to really expanding your victimization. This involves looking at everything going on right now as just another example of what happened to you in the past that created your victim status in the first place.

They key to this is imputing evil intent to everyone around you so that whatever they are saying or doing is just another hit.

This is not exactly the same thing as paranoia, though it is close.

Let’s take the following example—you were in a relationship and the other party lied to you and cheated on you. For that specific situation, you have every right to feel angry and hurt.

But you can vastly increase your pain and suffering by viewing every new situation as a repeat offense.

Everyone is lying and cheating on you, even if they are not. If you work hard enough, you will be able to see that they are. The tiniest events can serve as justification that you are again being victimized. He or she smiles at someone else. Obviously they’ve slept together.

Never ever give anyone else the benefit of the doubt that they are innocent of wronging you.

In order to really expand on your victimhood, you must view everyone around you as doing the same thing that hurt you. And you must never let them explain why you’re reading of their minds and intentions is wrong, because the mere effort to do that confirms you are right.

It is very helpful to construct your life story by stringing together all the instances of you’re being victimized into one story, flowing from one event to another without any recognition of intervening time between these events. Edit out all the good memories of good times.

You were abandoned emotionally as a child. You were the victim of s schoolyard bully.  Your business failed. Your kid complained about being forced to eat breakfast before going to school. Your cat pissed on your bed. Put all together, your life has been an endless sequence of being rejected and abused.

Anything new going on must always be in support of expanding your negative life story.

What is especially successful, especially when you react to something as another instance of being the target, is that others will not respond helpfully or lovingly to this. They will deny evil intent. They will argue with you. They may even get angry over being misread. These are all great fuel to prove you are justified in your view.

Absolutely avoid stuff like therapy, because your therapist is not likely to say you are totally justified in your victim identity.

If you do seek therapy, remember that a lot of therapy is about you talking stuff out and hearing yourself and then asking yourself if what you just said is really true. You must not listen to yourself, ever.

Your view of things is the only true interpretation. You can never doubt that you are justified in feeling hurt. You must only interact with people who will confirm your justification for being hurt.

There are lots of people willing to share their victimization with you and re-enforce your victimization.

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