I need to tell you something that might sting.

When you’re sitting in the wreckage of a toxic relationship, replaying every conversation and cataloging every violation, there’s a pattern you’re probably missing.

You’re looking at what they did to you.

You’re not looking at what you were doing while it happened.

I work with people coming out of narcissistic relationships, and the hardest conversation we have isn’t about their abuser’s behavior. It’s about their own. Because here’s what nobody wants to hear: you were a match to that toxicity. You didn’t cause it. You didn’t deserve it. But you participated in ways that kept the system running.

That’s what victim mode obscures.

What Victim Mode Actually Is

Victim mode isn’t about being a victim.

Let me be clear: if you survived a toxic relationship, you experienced real harm. Real manipulation. Real damage. That’s not what I’m talking about.

Victim mode is the operational stance you take after the fact. It’s the lens through which you interpret everything that happened, and it has a specific signature.

You focus exclusively on what was done to you.

You catalog their behavior while erasing your own participation. You build an identity around the harm. You treat awareness of your own patterns as betrayal of your pain.

Here’s how I spot it in sessions:

• Every story starts with “they” and ends with “me”

• Questions about your choices get reframed as victim-blaming

• Accountability feels like an attack

• You need the other person to be 100% wrong so you can be 100% right

• Growth feels like admitting you deserved what happened

Victim mode isn’t weakness. It’s a defense mechanism that outlived its usefulness.

It protected you when you couldn’t see clearly. Now it’s preventing you from building something different.

Where Victim Mode Comes From

You didn’t wake up one day and decide to operate from victim mode.

It developed as a survival response to an environment where your reality was constantly denied.

In a toxic relationship, especially with a narcissist, you learn that your perception doesn’t matter. Your feelings get rewritten. Your boundaries get redefined. Your truth gets replaced with someone else’s version of events.

So you start collecting evidence.

You document every slight, every lie, every manipulation. You build a case. You need proof that what you experienced was real, because the relationship trained you to doubt your own mind.

Victim mode is what happens when evidence-collection becomes identity.

You needed that evidence to escape. You needed that clarity to leave. But once you’re out, that same mechanism keeps you locked in a story where you have no agency.

The relationship taught you that nothing you did mattered. Victim mode keeps teaching you the same lesson.

How Victim Mode Shows Up

I can tell when someone’s operating from victim mode within the first ten minutes of a conversation.

It’s not about what they say. It’s about what they can’t say.

They can’t name a single decision they made that contributed to the dysfunction. They can’t identify a boundary they failed to enforce. They can’t see a moment where they chose comfort over clarity.

Everything traces back to the other person’s pathology.

Here’s what it looks like in practice:

You tell the same story on repeat. Same details. Same emotional intensity. Same conclusion. The story never evolves because you’re not extracting new information from it. You’re reinforcing a narrative.

You resist any question that implies choice. When I ask “What made you stay?” the answer is always about what they did, never about what you needed. When I ask “What were you getting from that dynamic?” you hear blame instead of inquiry.

You need other people to validate your victimhood. You’re not looking for insight. You’re looking for agreement. You need someone to confirm that you were powerless, that you had no options, that you did everything right.

You can’t separate harm from identity. What happened to you became who you are. You introduce yourself through your trauma. You filter every new experience through the lens of past violation.

You’re waiting for an apology that will never come. You can’t move forward until they acknowledge what they did. You’ve made your healing contingent on their accountability.

That last one is the most damaging.

Because it means you’ve given someone who already hurt you the power to determine your future.

Why This Matters More Than You Think

Victim mode doesn’t just keep you stuck in the past.

It prevents you from recognizing the patterns that made you vulnerable in the first place.

I’ve watched people leave one toxic relationship and walk straight into another. Different person. Same dynamic. They can’t figure out why it keeps happening.

It keeps happening because you’re still operating from the same internal logic.

You’re still ignoring red flags because you don’t want to seem judgmental. You’re still sacrificing your boundaries because you don’t want to seem difficult. You’re still prioritizing someone else’s comfort over your own clarity.

Victim mode protects you from seeing that.

It lets you believe the problem is external. It lets you think that if you just find the right person, everything will be different.

But here’s the truth I tell every client:

You don’t attract different people until you become a different person.

And you can’t become different while you’re still defending the version of yourself that participated in dysfunction.

The Codependency Connection

Most people in victim mode are also dealing with codependency.

They just don’t recognize it because codependency doesn’t look like what they think it looks like.

You think codependency means being weak or needy. It doesn’t.

Codependency means deriving your sense of self from someone else’s experience. It means you can’t know what you want until you know what they need. It means you can’t feel good about yourself unless they approve.

In a toxic relationship, codependency looks like this:

• You manage their emotions so you don’t have to feel your own

• You fix their problems so you can feel valuable

• You tolerate their dysfunction so you can feel needed

• You ignore your own boundaries so you can feel connected

That’s not love. That’s a transaction.

And when the relationship ends, victim mode lets you avoid looking at what you were trading.

How to Recognize Your Role Without Losing Your Mind

Here’s where people get stuck.

They think acknowledging their role means accepting blame for the abuse. It doesn’t.

You can be harmed by someone and still have participated in the dynamic that allowed the harm to continue.

Both things are true.

The person who manipulated you is responsible for their behavior. You’re responsible for yours. Your responsibility isn’t about what they did. It’s about what you tolerated, ignored, or enabled.

So how do you start seeing that without spiraling into self-blame?

You ask different questions.

Instead of “Why did they do this to me?” ask “What was I doing while this was happening?”

Instead of “How could they treat me this way?” ask “What made me think this treatment was acceptable?”

Instead of “Why didn’t they change?” ask “Why didn’t I leave sooner?”

Those questions aren’t comfortable. They’re not supposed to be.

Awareness precedes change. Comfort delays it.

The Pattern Recognition Exercise

I walk clients through this process, and it consistently breaks through victim mode faster than anything else.

Take out a piece of paper. Write down three toxic relationships or situations from your life. They don’t all have to be romantic.

For each one, answer these questions:

What red flags did I ignore?
Be specific. What did you notice and dismiss? What did you explain away?

What boundary did I fail to enforce?
Where did you say yes when you meant no? Where did you tolerate behavior that violated your values?

What was I getting from this dynamic?
This is the hard one. What need was this relationship meeting? What were you avoiding by staying?

What story was I telling myself to justify staying?
What narrative did you construct to make the dysfunction tolerable?

When you look at all three situations together, you’ll see a pattern.

Same red flags. Same boundary violations. Same justifications.

That pattern is your contribution to the toxicity.

You didn’t cause their behavior. But you created the conditions where their behavior could thrive.

What Happens When You Stop Operating From Victim Mode

I’ve seen this shift happen dozens of times.

Someone comes in completely identified with their victimhood. They can’t imagine an identity that isn’t built around what was done to them.

Then something clicks.

They start seeing their own patterns. They start recognizing their participation. They start taking responsibility for their choices.

And everything changes.

They stop needing validation from people who can’t give it.

They stop waiting for apologies. They stop needing their abuser to admit fault. They stop making their healing contingent on someone else’s accountability.

They stop repeating the same relationship dynamics.

They recognize red flags immediately. They enforce boundaries without guilt. They leave situations that don’t serve them without needing permission.

They stop telling the same story.

The narrative shifts from “look what they did to me” to “look what I learned.” The past becomes material for growth instead of evidence for victimhood.

They build something new.

They create relationships based on reciprocity instead of rescue. They develop a sense of self that isn’t dependent on someone else’s approval. They move through the world with clarity instead of chaos.

That’s what’s on the other side of victim mode.

Not perfection. Not the absence of pain. But functional autonomy.

The Truth You’re Avoiding

You already know what I’m saying is true.

You’ve known it for a while. You just haven’t wanted to look at it directly because looking at it means giving up the story that’s been protecting you.

Here’s what I need you to understand:

Acknowledging your role doesn’t erase their responsibility. It just gives you back your power.

As long as you’re operating from victim mode, you’re still giving them control. You’re still letting their behavior define your reality. You’re still waiting for them to change so you can heal.

That’s not healing. That’s stalling.

Real healing starts when you stop waiting for rescue and start building your own exit strategy. When you stop defending your powerlessness and start examining your patterns. When you stop needing to be right and start needing to be free.

You were a match to the toxicity.

That’s not an indictment. It’s an invitation.

Because if you were a match to dysfunction, you can become a match to something better. You can rebuild your internal architecture. You can change the patterns that made you vulnerable.

But you can’t do any of that while you’re still operating from victim mode.

So the question isn’t whether you were harmed. You were.

The question is: what are you going to do with that information?

Are you going to keep using it as evidence for your powerlessness? Or are you going to use it as material for transformation?

That choice is yours.

And making it means you were never really a victim at all.

• blurb
• Codependency
• dear diary
• Healing & Recovery
• Love addiction
• relationships
• Thought Box
• thoughts and realization
• toxic