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True Victim
Jesus' sacrifice was one of love and mercy knowing He was the Innocent One! His was a willing sacrifice that He chose freely, “I lay my life down freely, no one takes it from me.” He knew that He did not deserve to die, that He had done nothing wrong, never having committed any sin. And in His Innocence He chose to die for those who were not innocent but were guilty, to pay the price for them since they could not do so to redeem themselves. “There is no greater love than to lay one's life down for one's friends.” His was an act to fulfill His role as Redeemer. To die as the God-Man to defeat death, to become sin and to be crucified in order to nail sin to the cross, to suffer in order that suffering might become a means of grace instead of a curse and shame. His was a conscious act of love, He didn't have to, He wanted to. And He wanted to out of pure Charity to save us because He is the Savior, true Priest and Victim. There was no underlying ulterior motive such as fear in Him.
There is only one Savior, and you have to be God to be Him. Man can be His helper, suffer co-redemptively, and in this help always point to God as The Savior. He alone can save, ours can only be a participation in His, but we can not save on our own, we haven't the power to do so. But there are those who identify their own abuse wrongly as a victim soul and in doing so see themselves as victim saviors. This couldn't be more erroneous and false and there are too many differences to fully enumerate here, but I will mention the main ones throughout this.
True innocence
True innocence means blameless, without fault. Only God has this innocence in Himself. Jesus though He is also Man joined to God, has no stain of original sin as well as no personal sin so He is Innocent in the absolute sense. Mary, by gift of God, had the stain of original sin removed at the moment of conception, and therefore had no sin either, and although this is still salvation it is salvation beforehand. St. John the Baptist had it removed in the womb and was made innocent then, so even he had original sin for a short time. Therefore, only Jesus and Mary had no sin original or personal sins ever and they alone could be classified as innocent in the absolute sense. All others have at least original sin and in this sense are not innocent in a general way even if they are innocent of any specific grave sins. This is why Jesus is the Redeemer and Mary is the Co-Redemptrix. This is why They alone can be classified as True Victims and Redeemers. And all those who would be victim souls and co-redeemers must follow after the pattern of them. All others are false victims.
Victim Souls
Victim souls are those souls who God inspires to offer themselves as a sacrificial offering in union with His sacrifice to save souls, to bring souls to Him. This is a free offering that is made out of love for Him and love for souls in Him. It is a desire born out of gratitude for all He has done for the soul, and the soul wants to do something for Him in return. “How can I make a return to the Lord for all the good He has done for me, the cup of salvation I will take up and I will call upon the name of the Lord.” It is done out of an authentic desire to give all of oneself that others may receive the same benefits he has. This is true love of neighbor. Authentic victim souls generally have this inspiration in a particular phase of the spiritual life, namely during the purification from the illuminative to the unitive stage, or during the dark night of the spirit. Why then? Because this is where a soul feels his own limitations and weaknesses and where his natural desire for people's good and to help them turns into a supernatural desire to save souls. He realizes that his actions are very little and that no matter how much he helps and does for people he can not change them and even by directing their souls along the right path he can do very little to effect change for the good in their lives. What they need is more grace and only God has the power to change their hearts and remove their tendencies toward sin and error. So he decides that the only way to really give them what they need is to offer himself to Jesus as a victim soul that he may make of his whole life a sacrifice to obtain graces for souls and to participate in the saving work of God and become a co-redeemer as he feels it is not enough to simply make sacrifices and mortifications and do penances in order to obtain graces from his prayers for others. His desire has become infinite and only God is infinite and only He can do what the soul is now wanting with all his heart mind soul and strength. His love for God has become a love for what He loves and that is His children’s good and for them to be with Him now and for eternity. God's love has become the soul's love and he now truly loves all souls in God and for God. This has become an unquenchable fire and the soul now knows there is nothing he can do to fulfill his desire for souls as he is not God, but since He has put this desire in his soul He must want to fulfill it and therefore he gives himself to Him fully so that He may fulfill His desire through this soul which He has purified enough to make a partner in the work of salvation and redemption. There is no underlying self motivation in the soul who offers himself as a victim soul, it is a desire to first and foremost be united to Jesus and then through this union assist in saving souls. And they are innocent of grave sins as they have gone through much of their purification and are on the verge of divine union with Him. They do not commit mortal sins as they are purified in their senses and have been for some time and no longer have the tendencies of the concupiscent flesh.
False victims do not make a free choice, nor do they embrace this identity out of love for souls and neither are they inspired by God to make this choice. They feel it has been decided for them by force (the violent force of their abuse) and consent to this idea passively (even though it is depressing to them), and instead of doing this out of charity it is done out of self protectiveness and manifests as a savior complex. False victims are afraid that no one will be saved since they often project all their abuse issues onto others and therefore see most people as possible abusers. They believe that God Himself cast them into the role of victim soul since He allowed them to be abused. They therefore see it as their role to be passive to others so that others will not sin. They willingly let others get what they want (from them) and sacrifice their would-be desires so that others will be happy. They erroneously believe that if others are happy they will not sin, since they only see anger, rage and violence as sin. Therefore, never do anything that will make another angry is the first and only commandment. They do not grasp that you can do the right thing and someone could still get mad at you. This fits in well with their decision to repress in order to do the right thing. Since they repress their own anger, and therefore believe they have no anger in themselves, they can now judge all who get angry as abusers and sinners. St. Thomas Aquinas says, “anger is proportionate to one's sense of justice.” This means anger is a natural good that helps us to avoid injustice and to right wrongs. It also helps us to develop our moral compass. If I get angry at what another does to me then I should avoid that behavior myself knowing it will injure my neighbor. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It is the free choice to hold onto anger that is a sin, not the natural reaction to a perceived injustice; this is not only not a sin but an aspect of a virtue, in fact the cardinal virtue of Justice. But the false victim can not see it this way since they see anger as violence and abuse and therefore see it as a sin and judge it in themselves and others as such.
Free Will
False Victims deep down do not believe in a savior, do not see God, who is the only being who can save, as a savior. They have interpreted their own abuse as meaning that God does not save otherwise He would've saved me. But they can not reconcile the fact of their abuse, believing that it just should not have happened. Let's be clear, all abuse of an innocent is intrinsically evil and is not willed by God as He can only will good since He Is Goodness itself. In His permissive will He allows man to exercise his free will and allows man to do evil. In the mind of the false victim this is tantamount to willing evil. But free will must be understood properly to not entertain this false notion as a truth. It is the same free will that allows us to do good that allows us to do evil, the same free will that allows us to love that allows us to hate, free will means it is our choice to do good or evil, and with choice comes responsibility and culpability and all injustice will be dealt with by God who is the Just Judge and will seek to convert the sinner and lead him to repentance and expiation so as to receive a prodigal child and not lose a soul to the pains of hell where he would be separated from God our loving Father eternally. In essence they judge God for allowing their abuse by allowing free will and no longer have faith in Him as a savior as they see a savior as one who prevents all evil from happening, not as one who can turn all evil into good. But they see this though their anger at being abused. And since they erroneously blame God instead of their abuser(s), they can not be reconciled with their abuse because they never truly forgive their abuser. If you don't blame the right person(s) how can you forgive them of their abuse? If a savior is one who prevents all evil from happening then they themselves must become a savior in order to prevent all evil from happening, since as they see it, no one else will. In case it is not yet clear, they have judged that God was wrong in allowing free will.
Savior Complex
Nevertheless, it is this state of mind that prompts them to become a savior to all others indiscriminately. They see all suffering as unnecessary. All suffering should have been prevented. If they see someone suffering, they simply believe that someone did not prevent that person from getting hurt, so they need a savior; God will not so I will. They see all other's suffering as their own abuse which should have been prevented, so that other person's suffering should not have happened either. Subconsciously they are continually trying to prevent their own abuse by attempting to prevent other's abuse. This is the savior complex of the false victim.
How the false victim tries to save is unique. They lay themselves down for the one who is suffering but not in the way Christ did and does. Instead of laying down their true self, they absent themselves in order to choose the other's good over their own. They do this by repressing their passions, to cut off their instincts so that they can't experience their natural reactions which may be a repugnance to the act. What is normal, what Our Lord did, was to not shut down in any way, and to allow His natural feelings and reactions, and go against any repugnance He may have naturally had and be charitable regardless. The false victim does the opposite and shuts down in order to bypass the affective part of themselves so that they feel free to act in accord with the demands of charity. But this is not charity, it is repression in order to do the perceived right thing and is not done out of love but fear, fear that someone will experience abuse, and since they identify with all sufferers as abuse victims, and therefore project their own fears onto others, they really are fearing a repetition of their own abuse. So they are really trying to save themselves by saving others. In their own way they are trying to show themselves that abuse can be prevented since their own abuse gave them the message that it can't. This becomes compulsive behavior, to repress to save another by absenting themselves to give without hesitation so that no one may experience any suffering in their presence. They see this behavior as the greatest good possible. Much of the time it is only a perceived suffering or the perceived threat of future suffering that triggers this compulsion.
Compulsion and Coping Skills
A compulsive act is one that has become an instinctive reaction through repression of emotional responses which ordinarily provoke our natural reactions. When emotional repression becomes a habit, it becomes the new “instinct”, and therefore overrides the natural emotional response. At first the person represses because they believe it is the right thing to do in order to be able to act in what they perceive is the correct behavior. In this case it is that no one should feel victimized by another's actions. Consciously acting this way repetitively makes it a habit and then instinct. Often this initial decision is made at an early age, even before the age of reason. Trauma provokes an emotional response, and at an early age a person is not capable of reasoning out how to deal with it. Children are not capable of dealing with trauma and therefore the decisions made are childlike and motivated by childlike reasoning. The most common one is to feel safe, and this is what motivates the decision to repress as their main way of coping. Since it is not possible for them to truly deal with trauma it is inevitable that they would then instinctively resort to coping skills, this is built into the human person. This coping skill, however, can not and is not intended by God to be a permanent replacement for fully processing our life experiences that are painful and traumatic. When a person is ready to deal with the trauma they will see signs of it. It can not be forced. Attempting to do so will only reinforce the coping mechanisms. Trauma is a forced experience and so forcing brings back the same feelings associatively and therefore the same response that was already decided was the best way to feel safe surfaces as the coping mechanism again. Nevertheless, when a person becomes aware they repress compulsively, it is then time to seek to stop. But first their conscience must change; they must believe that repressing is no longer what is best. The coping skill was necessary for survival but is now a hindrance to their emotional and psychological stability. Coping skills are survival skills, they are necessary as long as there is a threat of real harm. But they were not meant to replace the ability to work through our wounds for a lifetime. There is a natural process to go through that if allowed will run its course in due time. That is why people who have been abused and traumatized into repressed memories usually begin to remember their abuse once they are physically removed from the threat of harm. For instance if a child was abused by a parent, once that person lives on their own or out of the house of that parent, they usually begin to remember within a few years. The farther removed they are from the abuser and the environment they associate with their abuse, the sooner they will feel safe enough for the memories to begin to surface.
Just because the person is still afraid of being abused does not mean the threat is real. The fact that they have now lived more years not being abused than they did being abused should be enough evidence that the abuse is no longer an immediate threat. It may seem strange but the person generally comes to regard the coping skills as a friend since they have become dependent on them to escape being abused. They feel that to get rid of them is to become vulnerable to being abused again. I said before that they are a child's reasonings, and one can see how this is true. They do not let go of their coping skills easily.
Misplaced anger
One of the many effects of abuse is repressed and misplaced anger. When abuse happens to a young child he is not able to process the experience. Yet anger is the natural response to injustice. So there is always anger. But if the abused is not capable of expressing it toward the abuser for any reason it is then repressed. Repressed does not mean sealed shut however, it simply becomes the undercurrent. It becomes the primary motivational emotion. What a repressed person often fails to see is that repression does the opposite of what they are intending. The consequence of not being able to express anger at the abuser, and therefore repressing it, is that there is no resolution or closure to the experience; it is for all intents and purposes an open ended situation. To the psyche of the abused person it is an experience that never ended, it is present; in other words there is an immediate threat to harm. Couple that with the psyche remaining at the age of the abuse (a trauma fixation), and if it happened as a child (who thinks there is no past or future only the now), and you get an omnipresent abuse experience. This means the fear never fully leaves, nor does the anger or any of the other emotions and feelings associated with the abuse. Anger and fear can not co-exist, so generally one will repress the other. They can be distracted for short periods of time. Usually the distraction must be able to reach several of the senses to be able to override this. The only way this recedes is to experience that they can actually feel safe in another person’s presence.
So who's fault is it? Abused people have a very difficult time allowing anger toward their abusers. There is a fear of retribution. This is compounded by the threats often made by abusers toward those they abuse about not telling anyone or else... They generally end up blaming themselves to some degree, but also generalize it often to authority figures since they believe that it should have been prevented. So they often blame God for not preventing it, parents or parent figures. They also often blame the church since it is God's church and it represents Him. The anger often generalizes toward all authority figures eventually.
A very sad effect that causes great difficulties in life, particularly in the spiritual life is that they have a hard time obeying. It is difficult to obey an authority figure that you blame for your abuse. They may not be conscious of the anger and therefore not know exactly why they have such a hard time, but their anger overrides their ability to obey. They will feel anger at all things that they are ordered to do, and they will project abuser traits onto the authority figures. When a person has that much anger at another he emotionally separates himself from the person he is angry with and this separation disallows him from understanding the person who he is angry with as well as giving him a complete aversion to obeying that person.
False Judgments
Typically, false victims are judgmental. Of course there is a reason behind it, or should I say a cause. Of course it has to do with the repressed anger and the tendency to transfer it toward people who are not their actual abusers but those who they perceive are their abusers since they associate all anger with abuse, even if it is just anger, as well as firmness and non-affective behavior in others. In other words if someone is not smiling or showing some sign of positive affectivity toward them in speech or mannerism or body language then they perceive it as standoffish or anger or that they are disinterested or cold hearted; abusive behavior in their perception. They transfer their repressed anger onto those who they perceive are abusers. This is done out of fear of being abused. They project this as a means to try to avoid getting abused. I know it sounds convoluted but they believe if they can perceive all the potential abusers ulterior motives and underlying deceptive meanings of their behavior, then they can protect themselves and prevent potential abuse. But this makes them invent bad motives and sinful intentions on another person's part and they therefore judge their neighbor falsely without any proof or reasonable reasons.
This may be a good place to make sure what I say is understood properly. I am not saying that all this is entirely their fault. God alone knows a person's culpability for their actions. Most all of a false victim's behavior is survival skills and coping mechanisms that they acquired when very young and had good success in self protective means of not being abused again. This served as affirmation that this behavior is not only good but necessary and to not make use of would be reckless and imprudent and just plain asking to be abused again by making oneself so vulnerable as to trust people who to their thinking are obvious potential abusers.
But this behavior is not only self destructive, it can be used by the devil as a means of persecuting innocent people. It destroys most relationships they have with others, as most people will not understand this behavior and just feel constantly judged and not want to be in relationship with such people. Back to persecution. Since false victims are repressed people they do not keep their affectivity open and therefore do not feel their natural feelings of aversion to what is bad for them or affection toward what is good for them. They consequently do not then possess the natural instinct one has in relating to others and therefore do not really know who is bad or good for them to relate with. So what do they rely on in relating with people? The self protective coping skill of projecting the abuser label onto all who they perceive is a potential abuser. This includes most men as it includes almost all of what is distinctively masculine in behavior. And it includes all women who are not affective in relating. Particularly those who take on masculine, or what they perceive is masculine behavior, as a coping skill to project that they are too tough to allow themselves to be abused. So who do they end up trusting? Those who are affective or appear to be affective in relating. Since their natural warning system is not functional, this includes all those who are not sincere and those who use emotions to manipulate. The largest percentage of these are other false victims who are repressed and equally judgmental as they see eye to eye about the potential abusers and affirm one another in their respective delusional judgments of others. I have always noticed how uncanny is their ability to make quick and deep bonding friendships with each other without having any prior knowledge of each other's abuse. There is a hidden but very real psychic connection between people who have been abused and are repressed and have become false victim personalities. There is the obvious sympathetic nature, but what I have observed is much more than that because the sympathy precedes the friendship and knowledge of each other's abuse, often by many years. They seem to know by instinct who is another abused person and they instinctively trust them in an implicit manner. This is more than a type of solidarity however as they often trust each other even more than they do their own spouses. How often I have witnessed the sad scene of a false victim taking the side of whoever was in disagreement with their spouse. Why? Because the perception was that their spouse was behaving like an abuser by being aggressive in their speech simply because they were impassioned by what they were talking about, because it was important to them, like truth was important to them. It appears too much to the false victim that being impassioned is anger and anger is evil according to the false victim since it feels like abuse to them and therefore they see whoever is on the opposite side of the argument with the impassioned person is a victim to be saved and thus they defend the perceived victim and treat their spouse like an abuser. Now obviously they do this in all their relationships and not just with their spouses, but the fact that even their spouses are not immune to this behavior shows that it must be a matter of conscience for them as well as compulsive. They believe that all behavior that is not meek or emotionally positive is force and therefore abusive, and they will take the other person's side simply because of how it makes them feel. In other words the person they perceive is being victimized is sided with not because they believe they are right but because they need protected/defended and saved from abuse. I was once in a discussion with a dozen or so young adults (I was one at the time also). We were discussing whether or not Our Lady's virginity was perpetual. Three of us were maintaining that it was and that it was Church teaching, most of the others were maintaining that it wasn't and the rest were uncertain as to what was true. As it progressed and those who did not believe it was Church teaching were stubborn in their unbelief, I was personally very animated in my defense of the truth. At some point 2 of the women who were there said, “we believe they are right because they are more calm.” They pointed to those who did not believe it was Church teaching. They based their belief on how it made them feel that I was animated. Finally, I looked it up in Harden's catechism and he stated the same arguments that I did and they believed it because it was a catechism and not me. The two women were both sexually abused when they were young. My point is that with this effect in their person they will always side with whoever they perceive is a victim and always demonize who they perceive is an abuser. This is tragic when it comes to faith, because their faith, system of beliefs, what is truth and what is false is compromised. I do not mean to say that they have no faith or no ability to have faith but that their faith can not stand up to the experience of feeling victimized or perceiving that someone else is being victimized. At that point their faith is inaccessible and the survival skill takes over as they go into repressed mode. It is not that they have a multiple personality but at times it may seem so to them and to those who know them well. While not under the pressure of threat of being victimized their faith can be as strong as anyone's, but if under threat it can even seem non-existent.
The Problem of Truth
Truth is not easy to apprehend for a false victim. Truth equals authority. This is natural, but for the false victim authority equals abuser who used authority wrongly in order to abuse. Therefore truth is scrutinized critically and subjected to stringent tests to be proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in order to be believed.
Lies on the other hand do not equal authority so there is no threat apprehended by the false victim. All unresolved trauma creates errors in a soul. These are false messages received by the traumatized person who can not understand why the trauma happened and instinctively make up their own reason for why it happened. Remember that false victims always feel an exaggerated sympathy for other abuse victims and therefore are sympathetic to all other false messages accepted by other abuse victims as they are open to their feelings through a false sympathy. Since the false victim believes it is necessary to save other abuse victims; in this instance the way to save them is to sympathize and agree with them. Therefore, it is easy for them to believe lies while it is difficult for them to believe the truth. And this is how liberalism spreads so quickly, by false victims accepting other false victims' false messages, which are errors and lies.
So how does a false victim accept truth and not lies? Even though the familiar feeling of lies is easily accepted by a false victim, it still does not feel good, it feels bad and causes depression and sadness and even despair. These are bad fruits and by recognizing them, they can be rejected as the lies that they are. It is paramount to begin a habit of rejecting the lies as it will make it easier to accept the truth. How to be open to the truth. Again, recognition is the key. By recognizing the thought patterns of mistrusting authority, or anger at authority or just plain rebellion simply because one feels the pressure of authority, a soul can then make the choice to believe what is true and oppose the real pressure to believe a lie.
Responsibility
It is one thing to be responsible, it is an entirely different thing to be ultimately responsible. The former simply means doing your duty, to be held accountable for what are your true and actual responsibilities. The latter is to feel that you are the only one who can and should be responsible and accountable in a way that precludes there being a God who can intervene, save, make up for, redeem or change anything at all about a situation. Remember they do not truly believe that God saves and that they alone can save in the way that is necessary, that is, before anyone gets victimized or hurt in any way. This means that they must take the responsibility on their own shoulders for making sure nothing bad happens. By being this way they often fool their peers into believing that they are very capable people, born leaders, people of action who can get things done. But this is not virtue but fear motivated and is actually a lack of trust in God and/or others. But they seem very competent people; they can take care of bills and checking accounts and never make a mistake. They can organize and budget and take care of very minute details, cover all the bases. Yet they do this neurotically, we would now say they micromanage very well but the reality is that they are so afraid of making a mistake that they treat their lives as if one small mistake spells doom for all of humanity. They do not just have a plan B for every thing but a plan C and D. Everything is just in case. They spend so much time worrying about what might happen and how to prevent it that they do not focus well on the present situation and doing what is right, right now and doing it well. To them there is no such thing as waiting on the Lord, being patient, trusting in God to take care of a situation, praying and waiting to be shown what to do in a situation that is very complex and so many variables to make discerning difficult. No, to do this is tantamount to doing nothing. And doing nothing is to leave results to chance, to others or to God who does not save beforehand. Since none of these options are allowable in their malformed conscience they see these things as equal to willing a wrong deed. In other words, “if you do nothing and a bad consequence happens then it is your fault because you did nothing to prevent it.” Remember the highest good has become to never allow anything bad to happen.
Jezebel
I mentioned earlier that because of the repression it makes it easy for the devil to instigate a persecution of an innocent person, usually a person who is fulfilling God's will and accomplishing His purpose in his life and leading others to that as well. There is a particular spirit (demon) that oppresses the false victim and often is an obsessive spirit and sometimes possesses them. The difference between obsession and possession is that an obsession is one that the soul experiences as something on the outside oppressing him, trying to push him into doing something sinful that he does not desire to do. It can last up to a few days in duration but usually lasts from a few hours to half a day. Its object is to get a good soul not yet fully purified and therefore not yet perfected from at least some incentive to sin, to fall from grace, to get discouraged about the spiritual life and give up on seeking holiness and union with God. Possession is when the soul experiences being dominated by a spirit from within. Most of the time, this is from consenting to mortal sin repeatedly and obstinately resisting repentance. There are times when a person who is good and not in mortal sin gets possessed in order to oppress a person close to the possessed person who is in sin and to make him despair, but this is rare by comparison. This spirit is called the Jezebel spirit because of how the person obsessed or possessed by it attempts to influence a person who either is being led by the Holy Spirit in whom the prophetic spirit is flowing, or holds an office through which that is supposed to happen, to influence others to good. In scripture Jezebel influenced Ahab, the King to commit evil and even usurped his authority for her own gain and persecuted the prophet Elijah. To understand this spirit I recommend reading the story in the bible where she is mentioned. I also recommend the book Unmasking the Jezebel spirit by John Paul Jackson and the personal testimony and insights from Vassula Ryden on dealing with this spirit at tlig.org. Essentially this spirit opposes what the Holy Spirit is doing in a particular group that was authentically inspired by the Holy Spirit and is doing God’s work and His will. The signs of this spirit are manifested in innumerable ways but have specific characteristics. Control, emotional manipulation, assimilation to a group’s identity, indocility, creates sympathy, divides, creates atmosphere of doubt and mistrust in leadership.
Control: The aim of this spirit is to wrest control away from the authentic leadership of a group, to stop or disable the prophetic flow by either influencing the leader or influencing others to oppose the leader so that they are no longer influenced by the Holy Spirit but by the Jezebel spirit. It will always attempt to influence the leader directly first as this is the shortest route to influencing the outcome of destroying the work inspired by God. It will attempt to get the leader to be passive to it by getting him to be passive to the person who is obsessed/possessed by the Jezebel. This is what Jezebel did to Ahab. When Ahab was reluctant to follow her advice, she did what she wanted on her own pretending to act on his behalf and then force him to accept what she had done so that he was complicit after the fact. Ahab knew it was wrong but let her get away with it so as to not have a confrontation with Jezebel. She took control of the situation in a direct way. If the direct approach does not work however, the Jezebel will try other ways less obvious but still with the aim of control.
Emotional manipulation: The main way the Jezebel uses to influence others is through emotional manipulation. A Jezebel will get hurt by things the leader does in front of others to draw sympathy toward herself and to instill doubt in others about the leader. She will also be able to cry on cue for the same purpose. She is very calculating in what she says and does and uses her affections to make others feel what she wants them to feel in order to get them to trust her. She is so believable that she most often gets others to believe her since it seems too improbable that it is all an act, “no one is that good an actress”, as the saying goes. She can look you straight in the eyes and lie without the least semblance of fear of being found out.
Assimilation: The Jezebel can assimilate into any group. She is a master of picking up the sensibilities of a group, their likes, dislikes, lingo, everything. She will become one of the group in a short time and seem like one of the most faithful on the surface.
Indocility: While on the surface the Jezebel will appear as one of the group, she will secretly do things that are not in keeping with what the group is about. She may profess that she is the same but is actually very willful and will not obey the leader. She will introduce new things as if they were inspired but only to get others to follow her lead instead of the leader.
Divides: the Jezebel makes people choose sides between her and the leader through the emotional upheaval she creates. She is able to make herself appear persecuted while in truth she is persecuting the leader.
If the false victim is merely oppressed by the Jezebel spirit then she may be unaware of the spirit’s agenda and has her own reasoning, which is separate from the spirit, as to her actions and words. Her true intentions (and possibly virtuous as well) however will not manifest properly and she will unwittingly co-operate to some degree with the Jezebel spirit. If she is possessed by the spirit then she is in full compliance with the agenda of the Jezebel spirit but believes she is using the spirit to get her own agenda fulfilled while it is the spirit who is using her to get its agenda fulfilled.
How to deal with a Jezebel
Firstly, since it is a spirit, the spirit must be prayed against. Secondly the group must be told about this spirit to expose it since it may happen that a person in the group may realize that he is oppressed by a spirit and therefore have the opportunity to reject it as such and repent for any consent to it. Thirdly, if there is a person in the group that is affected by this spirit and does not realize it and/or repent of it, he must be confronted about it by the leader. The leader must have the resolve to defend the work of the Holy Spirit he has been entrusted with. The Jezebel must not be allowed to run the group or it will mean its ruin. The Jezebel will seek to get the leader to compromise a foundational tenant of the groups’ mission and will attempt to get the leader to believe it is right to do so under some reasonable idea that would appear to be both humble and good for the members and the group as a whole. It will attempt to pit the good of following the mission as it is understood by the leader against the apparent good of one or more of the members. The Jezebel will try to make it seem as if the leader does not have the members good at heart or does not know how to obtain that good. This way, if the leader says no to what the Jezebel wants, it will appear that he is doing the wrong thing and can’t be being led by the Holy Spirit.
Concluding thoughts
I want to make an appeal to anyone who has experienced identifying themselves as a false victim. Before anyone can be a co-redeemer and participate in saving souls one has to experience being saved first. Get out of this pattern; find a good counselor and an even better spiritual director. Allow yourself to experience your need of a savior. As much as is possible, free yourself from structures and environments that persuade or pull you into the behavior of a false victim. Try to begin to focus on having the right intentions for your actions instead of focusing on doing the best thing. The pressure of being perfect and not making a mistake is too much for you and you will repress in order to do what you think you ought and will then fall into compulsive behavior. Seek to understand that you are a free child of God and that He wants you to come to Him in freedom not fear. Love is not really love if it is from fear and doing your duty out of fear is not really obedience but self protectiveness. True obedience is done out of love. And love is given freely not in coercion. And last but not least, acknowledge you have this problem and seek healing from God. Do not choose to remain in this cycle of behavior. It can only continue to bring you harm. If you choose to continue this behavior you will continue to experience extreme deprivation from giving and giving in the wrong way and not receiving in your relationships with others, including God. One only receives in giving when one does it out of charity. You will continue to have an emotionally unfulfilled life. You will continue to get in arguments with people by trying to defend who you think are being abused. You will continue to experience self-victimization when attempting to save people who are neither desiring nor needing to be saved. And in this vein you will continue to experience being misunderstood and others feeling persecuted by you. And by not being able to trust authority but trusting those who are manipulative and self protective and repressed you will continue to put yourself in situations where you can be taken advantage of and abused.
I have endeavored to give an overview of the false victim personality and its characteristics. I hope it will assist people in recognizing this false self-identification of being victimized by an abuser with being a victim soul and a savior. Not everyone who suffers abuse will become a false victim. Not everyone who does become a false victim will have all of these characteristics.
May our tender and loving Father grant all those who suffer from this, deliverance from it and all its effects, and the sure knowledge of being a child of the Father who has a savior in Jesus Christ. Amen.
Br. Mariamartin de la Cruz SDBV General Steward
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