The concept of victimization is present from the idea of victim and victimizer. We can start by defining the victim as a person who is attacked or neglected by another person. The victim may be a victim of physical abuse, verbal abuse, psychological abuse. However, the concept of victimization opens up a bit from this definition because it already supposes a certain degree of exaggeration in the condition that a person determines of himself (or that others determine of him) to consider himself a victim in situations that do not necessarily they assume it.
For specialists in psychology, victimization is a condition of the mental health of a person from which that person sees himself as the center of all the attacks and aggressions that can exist in a human relationship. For many, victimization is a way of drawing attention to oneself but in a negative way. Unlike someone who draws attention to himself from elements that he considers positive, victimization supposes a negative view of the reality that the person in question suffers.
There are different roles that a person can adopt in the face of reality. Victimization is an example of toxic behavior since it leads the person to position themselves as a passive subject in the face of external circumstances that they take as a personal threat.
That is, this attitude is toxic because it leads to a constant complaint that feeds that feeling of helplessness typical of victimization.
Negative position before reality
And what is truly determining of this type of psychological discomfort is that this position in the face of reality does not have to be determined by an objective and realistic fact that has produced pain but, in some cases, is the perception of the person who is victimized. the one that marks the conflict of the situation.
That is, the person can be offended by a fact in which there is no conscious aggressor, however, the distorted view of reality marked by hypersensitivity can also lead to the victimization of whoever gets in exchange for this role: draw attention. There is a common characteristic in the situation that accompanies victimization: the perception of having been the victim of an unjust situation.
It is very important to establish a difference in nuance between the concept of victim and that of victimization. In other words, victimization has more to do with the attitude that the subject himself contributes to what has happened to him.
An attitude marked by drama, exaggeration, negative thinking ... It magnifies what happened and takes pleasure in it despite the passage of time. That is, a person may have been the victim of an unfair situation, and yet not victimize himself. Victor Frankl, founder of Logotherapy, a prisoner of a concentration camp, is an example of how it is possible to experience unjust pain and not carry the burden of anger towards the guilty. His book "Man's Search for Meaning" is an example of inspiration. "
Affects mental health
The problem with victimization is that it even affects mental health. That is to say, it produces a discharge of negative energy that, for this reason, the closest environment also ends up exhausted by the behavior of the person who assumes this position in life.
It damages mental hygiene for the simple reason that whoever is at this point does not behave as the protagonist of his life but lives adrift from his own negative attitude.
Victimization can become a problem both for the person and for others insofar as it implies an altered or untrue vision of reality. Thus, the person who is permanently victimized suffers from actions or ways of communicating that are considered normal for other people. It also shows high susceptibility and this can definitely cause problems if the situation does not warrant concern or exaggeration about a particular act.
