Stop Being A Victim

 Are you still a victim? Recently I read a quote by David Pelzer on people being stuck on being victimized many years after the actual event. On CNN Pelzer says "What distresses me at times is that I meet a lot of people in their 40's, 50's, 60's, who still say they're a victim of child abuse. I say, no you're not. You're an adult. If you still think you're a victim after all that time, you'll always be a victim of circumstance." This is coming from a guy who was the victim of one of the worst abuse cases. They are strong words that really make you think. If you feel this way then it's time to stop being a victim.

  One of my main goals for my brothers and I was to never use our abuse as an excuse. I'm not saying that I don’t have those times I get down and question what things would be like if I never went through child abuse or foster care. It's how you act on those thoughts and what you do with them. You see, I always felt that my abuse and trails through foster care may in some ways make it harder for me, but in other ways help me succeed. When I aged out of foster care I got straight to work getting my life together. You have to set goals and not settle.

  I do understand that not being a victim can be hard. It is the easy way out. I've seen the foster care statistics (or click here to look at the statistics) and I know that the odds are stacked against foster kids and abuse victims. It would be really easy to leave it at that and say that the situation makes it almost impossible to succeed and unfortunately many do. This is falling victim to yourself. Im not saying that therapy is a bad thing but many people go for years and years only reliving there past. There comes a time that you just have to realize and accept what happened and decide where you want your life to go. If your 30 years old and still reliving what happened to you when you were a child, then how many years have you wasted still being a victim of what happened so long ago? How many years have you not really lived?

 If this hit home then start taking steps to stop being a victim. I think we spend a lot of time trying to over analyze the situation and figure things out. Most of the time it’s something that can’t really be figured out or understood.  Take a few steps to stop becoming a victim:

• Stay positive and maintain positive thoughts. Look for things to be thankful for. What have you gained even characteristically from your situation.
• Remove negative aspects of your life. This sometime means staying away from certain people that are negative or cause you to be negative.
• Set realistic goals and put forth the effort and work to achieve them
• Stop dwelling on the past and don't allow yourself to be labeled or placed in a statistic.That is only limiting yourself.
• Accept what you've gone through, put it prospective and live!

It’s not getting over it; it’s accepting it, putting it into perspective and living your life to the fullest.