A Victim of Victimization

Everyone is a victim. The secret is not to be one.

For years I had a dream where I was fighting a strange man. He would stand right in front of me… I felt he was about to hit me, so I had to hit him first. I would throw a punch to his face, landing on his cheek like a light love tap. The man stared back at me as I punched over and over again, and then suddenly I’d be staring at my wall, awake with fear and frustration.

Another common dream involved dogs attacking me. Sometimes I wasn’t in dream world yet. I’d be lying in bed, eyes closed but wide awake, and then ruuuaaaOOOWWW!—that’s my attempt at onomatopoeia for the snarling dog’s face that would scare me shitless. Sleep came slowly on those nights.

In these dreams I felt scared, weak and powerless. In my real life I sometimes felt those feelings too, especially when it came to expressing my opinion or true feelings to others. These feelings were strongest around strong-willed men… the ones with smiling with swagger and assuredness. I felt intimidated around them yet at the same time resentful (classic victim attitude). I had always wished I could be more confident like them.

When I started drinking San Pedro, I wanted to know where all this fear and self-loathing came from. And I found out. I revisited experiences as a child that I had repressed for decades in a way I didn’t know was possible. These experiences have been coming up for well over a year now, recently reaching a new level.

In ceremony last month, as I started purging and shaking, this huge charge of energy started threading right through me. It was as if someone yanked a yo-yo string wrapped around my insides, leaving me in tears and cries as the energy left my body. I was little “Jimmy”—what everyone called me as a child—finally feeling trauma responses to things that happened so long ago, things that happened to me that I was powerless to stop, powerless to feel and powerless to acknowledge. My body held these experiences until the rest of me could feel and release them. The trauma came alive right through me.

Whatever happened to me as a kid, it was too much for my mind-body connection, so it disconnected altogether to protect itself. Over time and into adulthood, those detached parts of me slowly reattached themselves, but not in their original constitution. The process resembles repairing a wrecked car… once those factory seals are broken, the “repaired” car is never the same. The victimization became ingrained in my ego, my personality. Fortunately, San Pedro has helped me get back to that original make and model before the trauma occurred.

Why is this common with plant medicine? Why do the plants want you to revisit something so painful and awful? What’s the healing nature of going through that pain again?

When these traumas happen to us, especially at a young age, our brains and sympathetic nervous systems freeze as a protective response. This freezing of the nervous system is referred to as “emotional numbing.” Emotions are the human expression of energy—when numbed, your body stores them all the way down to the cellular level. They do not seep out over time. Your body wants to have a human reaction to the trauma, but the mind does not – cannot – integrate it, and years roll by with those emotions stuck inside trying to emerge.

At the time of the trauma, that numbing response served my survival and stayed put. It hung around on high alert, jumping into action when it wasn’t required. What my mind perceived as danger became a construct—one that didn’t serve me anymore.  

I don’t remember being shy when I was in elementary school… then something changed around age 10 or so; I became terrified to speak up or draw attention to myself. It wasn’t my nature to be so withdrawn. Then I discovered alcohol which helped “cure” the shyness. You can read more about my relationship with alcohol in my blog post here.

How do I even know I’m playing the victim card? It’s subtle and subversive… the blaming of circumstances around me, or others, for any given situation I’m in. San Pedro helped me move those stuck energies and empowered me to step outside of myself. It allowed me to see that my resentment of men I perceived as confident and the shame I felt in my lack thereof was 1) not grounded in the reality of who I am, and 2) a textbook example of victimization mentality.

That yo-yo experience in ceremony was hard, but WHOA did I feel better afterwards. Like 20 pounds lighter and 20 times stronger. Now I’m at a place where I have awareness, and that awareness gives me choice… will I be a victim to my victimization, or not?

Rolling in Jiu Jitsu class the past two years serves as a perfect example of awareness of my victim mentality and choosing not to play into it. Going into a class, my mind does not want my body in a situation of potential danger, or to be judged for sucking at Jiu Jitsu. It wants to give up before I even begin. Yet now I’m aware of this reaction, I tell my mind it’s ok, and I always feel so much better after training.

I believe that victimization begets victimization. That one can only have the capacity to victimize someone else if they themselves have been a victim, and for that I believe everyone deserves compassion. At the same time, my parents, genetics, childhood environment and experiences all played a role in shaping who I am as an adult. And as a true, real adult, I recognize I have choice despite any tendencies within me that could harm others… if I acted out on every impulse of anger, I’d probably be in jail or dead. So thank you, San Pedro, for bringing awareness and self-love into my life, so I can start actively engaging with life, instead of life always just happening to me.