Is victimhood the new social currency?

Hi there,

I know two twin brothers, born minutes apart. Same family. Same genes. Same alcoholic father. Same mother who worked two jobs and came home every night smelling of fried fast food and sacrifice.

Fast-forward twenty-five years.

One twin is in prison for assault and burglary. The other is a lawyer with a rising career and two kids he tucks in every night with a kiss he never got himself.

When asked why their lives turned out the way they did, both answered the same way:

“With a father like mine, how else could I have turned out?”

Same sentence. Completely opposite meanings. Entirely different lives.

That’s the power of interpretation. Of meaning-making. Of deciding what your past gets to become.

When Struggle Becomes Status

There’s a well-intentioned narrative in pop psychology these days that says you are the sum of your past pain and everyone seems to be carrying around a diagnosis or label. Somehow, every fear, quirk, or dysfunction is rooted in some deep past event, either yours or your ancestors’.

And the idea that we can outgrow our circumstances… has become controversial.

We’ve stopped believing in our potential for change. We’ve traded transformation for never-ending trauma, possibility for pathology. Nowadays, we’ve become so fluent in the language of what’s wrong with us that we’ve forgotten how to ask what might be right.

Not only do we cling to our struggles. Sometimes, we even invent them. We’ve turned pain into an identity and suffering into a social currency.

And yet, let’s not pretend we had it all figured out before. The world used to dismiss hardship completely. People were told to keep quiet, power through, smile more. That didn’t work either. Suppression isn't strength.

But somewhere between silence and spotlight-seeking, we overcorrected and the solution has become the problem.

Sadly, we live in a time where people feel more seen in their suffering than in their strength. And while that may be validating in the short term, it can quietly erode our sense of agency.

I get it. Life is brutal sometimes. It can knock you down and keep kicking. But life can also be stunning. Full of moments that crack you open in wonder, unexpected kindness, second chances, fresh beginnings, the relief of your own breath after a hard cry.

And to be fair, there’s value in acknowledging our past and our patterns.

But there’s a trap in this: Too many people stop there.

They wrap themselves in a well-justified narrative of pain and unknowingly place their agency in the hands of a story they didn’t write.

They wait for healing to be complete before they act.

They wait for peace before they move forward.

They wait for someone to fix what happened before they live.

Just look at the culture: scroll TikTok for five minutes and you’ll see mental health labels turned into identity tags. “Neurodivergent,” “ADHD,” “CPTSD,” “Narcissist”—real experiences, yes. But also, increasingly used as swords and shields. Substitutes for self-agency. Sometimes, done for attention-seeking and status.

And here’s what I want to say, bluntly and with all the love in the world:

You don’t need to be fully healed to start making powerful choices. You don’t even need to be healed to change your life.

The Past is Not the Future

In The Courage to Be Disliked, a bestselling book rooted in Adlerian psychology, a philosopher makes a confronting claim:

“Trauma does not exist.”

Not because pain isn’t real, but because past pain isn’t a future destiny.

Adler believed we are not defined by what happened to us, but by the meaning we assign to it and the goal that meaning serves. In other words:

The point isn’t that trauma didn’t happen. It’s that you don’t have to live as if it’s still happening.

Even if your upbringing was brutal, even if your ancestors passed you pain, you can still choose how you move. And what you become.

This lens is incredibly useful for people who have already identified their patterns but are still stuck in them. It breaks the cycle of victimhood and says:

You are not just the product of your pain. You are also the author of what comes next.

The Pattern Is Doing Something for You

If you’ve ever said:

• “This is just how I am.”

• “It’s because of my childhood.”

• “I’m like this because of my dad/mom/horrible teacher/traumatic event/etc.”

I get it. That language can be comforting. But it can also be a trap door.

We don’t just inherit patterns. We inherit permission slips not to change.

And if you stay too long in the trauma frame, it can quietly harden into identity.

Adler’s view isn’t soft.

It’s not self-soothing.

It’s sharp. And freeing.

“You’re not anxious because of your parents. You’re anxious because anxiety gets you something.” (Avoidance. Control. Comfort.)

Adlerian psychology asks: What is this pattern getting you? And do you still want it?

How Are You Holding Yourself Back?

Let me be clear: this is not about blame. You can absolutely be a victim of something and refuse to live as one.

In fact, most of us fall into a victim mindset at some point, especially when something feels so unfair that it hijacks our sense of power. The danger is not in visiting that mindset. It’s in pitching a tent and calling it home.

The longer you sit in it, the more convincing it becomes.

That’s why this newsletter exists. To offer a way out. A mindset shift rooted not in magical thinking or toxic positivity but in radical responsibility.

Here’s the shift:

You don’t need to minimize your pain to reclaim your power.

You just need to expand your story.

You can say:

• “Yes, that happened. And it doesn’t define me.”

• “This shaped me. And I still get to choose how I show up.”

• “I want to be more than the worst thing that’s ever happened to me.”

That’s Yes/And thinking, a technique I learned from improv comedy, where every performer accepts the reality given… and builds from there.

• Yes, that hurt. And here I am.

• Yes, it was unfair. And I still get to build something better.

This isn’t toxic positivity. This is adult-level emotional fluency.

It’s the quiet courage to stop pointing at the wreckage and start designing the rebuild.

If you're stuck, here's what I want to share from my own lived experience:

💥 You don’t need to go back and heal every wound. You need to choose what story you’re going to live by from this moment forward.

💥 You’re powerful—so powerful, in fact, that you survived a brutal past by becoming resourceful, adaptive, even ingenious in your self-protection. That’s not weakness. That’s proof of strength in disguise.

💥 You don’t need a breakthrough. You need a decision to choose a different meaning.

READER POLL

Final Thought

Life is what you make it. That’s not just a slogan, it’s a skill set.

A daily choice.

You can sit in the bleachers and explain why other people get to play. Or you can get in the damn game.

You may not feel “ready.” Most people don’t.
But growth isn’t a feeling. It’s a pattern. A practice. And living forward into possibility.

So here’s a radical idea:

What if nothing in your past has to change… for your future to?

What if you stopped trying to explain who you are…

…and just started becoming who you want to be?

The past is a fact. But it is not a cage. Unless you keep building the bars yourself.

It’s time to choose something better.

The culture may try to sell you helplessness wrapped in empathy. But don’t buy it. It’s not the full picture. Empathy without direction is comforting, but ultimately incomplete.

The most compassionate thing you can do for yourself is to believe you’re capable of growth. Of effort. Of becoming someone that even your younger self wouldn’t recognize, not because you’ve abandoned your past, but because you’ve integrated it.

That’s not erasure. That’s evolution.

And if you’re reading this thinking, “Well, that’s easy for you to say…” I wrestle with the exact same choice: pain or power. So no, this isn’t easy. But it’s possible.

So what will determine whether the fire of your past burns you, or fuels you?

Your move.

Shakila

P.S. Here’s the results of last week’s poll.