What is victim blaming? It’s when someone blames you instead of the person who harmed you. It’s a tactic used, not only by abusers, but also by everyone else. Victim blaming invalidates our experience as victims of emotional and psychological abuse and coercion. If you’re being blamed for your husband’s lies, manipulation, and infidelity, you need support. Attend a Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Session TODAY.
Kate and Anne Blythe, M.Ed. tackle the question: What is victim blaming on this Betrayal Trauma Recovery Podcast episode.
To discover if you are a victim of emotional abuse, take this free emotional abuse quiz.
7 Victim Blaming Examples
In this episode, to answer the question, “What is victim blaming?” We’ll highlight seven victim blaming examples:
- Connection is the solution to addiction
- Reactive Abuse
- Drama Triangle
- Trauma Bonding
- Stockholm Syndrome
- Learned Helplessness
- Pro-dependency
Transcript: What Is Victim Blaming?
Anne: Kate, you’re a member of our amazing community, and you see these themes come up over and over.
Anne: Let’s start with number one, connection is the solution to addiction. What is victim blaming about this?
1: Connection Is The Solution To Addiction
Kate: “The opposite of addiction is connection,” that is all crap. Connection will not heal or fix them. It’s not going to be, “If I connect with him more, he’s not going to be abusive.” That does not happen. They gave the example of rats addicted to cocaine. Then they put them in the other rat park, and suddenly the rat didn’t want the cocaine anymore. He wanted to be with other rats. That doesn’t happen in reality.
If it did, most of our husbands would not be abusive. Because we’ve given them all the connection, attachment, and love in the world. And it doesn’t work.
Kate: It’s not even what wives interpreted. It’s literally what the guy in the TED Talk said. He gave examples of helping an addict and wiping the sweat off of his brow and blah, blah, blah. He made it seem like you just got to be there for them and help them through this. That does not work with sex addiction.
Addicts Need To Learn How To Connect
Anne: If the Ted Talk guy had said, “addicts need to learn how to connect, and until they stop using their drug, people who try to connect with them won’t be able to.” That would have been more accurate.
Kate: That would have been much better. That’s not what he said sadly.
Anne: What is victim blaming? If anyone suggests you can fix him or help him by connecting with him. Just no, that’s not even possible if he’s not connect-to-able. And then we all know that if he’s connect-to-able, he starts making efforts to connect with you consistently over time. If he initiates it. If he starts the hard conversations, asks you how you’re doing, is vulnerable, is instigating all those things. That might be an indication.
Kate: Sometimes wives feel like he was in this raging river, and it must have been so hard. You got to remind yourself that he jumped in that raging river. His choices led him there. If he does show up at the door, one way you might notice he is safe is if he is more vulnerable about his experience versus come rescue me. I need a towel.
Anne: “Where’s dinner? Why isn’t dinner on the table? I can’t believe I was out there struggling for my life and you did not make dinner.”
Kate: Yeah, instantly walk in there like, “I’m entitled, give me stuff.” So you already know, you’ve got connection, reactive abuse, the drama triangle, trauma bond, Stockholm syndrome, learned helplessness, and pro-dependency. All of these are victim-blaming.
2: What Is Victim Blaming? Reactive Abuse
Anne: All right, let’s talk about “reactive abuse” next. What is victim blaming about reactive abuse? Many victims may have heard this term. Can you describe what it is and why it’s victim blaming?
Kate: Let’s say a husband is standing in the doorway, a wife wants to get out, and she pushes him or throws stuff. They call that reactive abuse. You are reacting abusively. Or you were being mutually abusive. So he’s being abusive, and you’re being abusive. That whole thing is completely bogus, because of the intent behind it. If an abuser is standing in the doorway, blocking you, and you push him, it’s self-defense. Self-defense is not the same thing as abuse.
If somebody came into your home and tried to kill you, tried to kill your family, and you shot them, why would anybody call it reactive murder? What would they call it? It wasn’t murder. It is self defense.
Anne: The foundation of this is misogyny and entitlement, and this is why. Abuse is, she should be treating me in a certain way, give me certain things, should act certain ways, and how she should support me. If she doesn’t do that, “abusive” to me because I am entitled to these things. So if dinner isn’t on the table, or if I don’t have intercourse, or if she doesn’t treat me with respect (meaning do everything I want her or to do), she’s not respecting me.
Abusers will view themselves as the victim responding to abuse. They will claim their victim is either at fault or abusive. Because of their paradigm of entitlement, they genuinely feel she is abusing him. He is just reacting to the abuse, rather than his entitlements are what makes him abusive in the first place.
Misogyny & Entitlement In Abuse
Kate: I’ve heard many wives say, maybe I was abusive, I don’t know. I called him a bunch of names. I even threw something at him, so maybe I was abusive too. Who has more control in the relationship? Is it you? Or is it probably him, because he’s been lying, gaslighting, and abusing?
Anne: He’s also the breadwinner. He is making the money. You have no money.
Kate: Some people say, why does it matter? If I call it reactive abuse, it will still help me not to react that way. The words we use matter. If we call it mutual abuse, other people who hear that will think you’re equally at fault. Even if you don’t believe you are, other people will, even the abuser. For example, they did a study where the participants read, “Lisa was approached by Dan at a party. Dan gave Lisa a drink spiked with a drug. Later that night, Lisa was assaulted by Dan.”
Then the participants had to basically rate the level at which they felt it was Lisa’s fault. The researchers then switched the perpetrator to the subject in the sentence, and it had a huge impact. Dan approached Lisa instead of Lisa was approached by Dan. They discovered that people were less likely to subconsciously blame the victim when the perpetrator was the subject.
So words matter. Any words that make it sound like the victim is at fault will always make people, even if they don’t mean to, subconsciously view the victim as actually at fault. So we cannot use words like that. It is self-defense.
Being Angry Is Totally Normal
Anne: There are people out there who tell wives of online explicit materials users. If he ever tells you about his use, if he ever feels safe enough with you to tell the truth. You need to react a certain way. And I’m like, no, a victim never needs to react a certain way in order to help her own abuser. So let’s say he’s been emotionally and psychologically abusive to you for 10 years. He’s been manipulating you and gaslighting you, and he says, to you, “I’ve been using online explicit material.”
You, as the victim of these 10 years of emotional and psychological abuse and coercion. You don’t owe him anything. He owes you a lot, but you don’t owe him anything. And if you’re angry, upset, confused, and if you don’t want to talk to him. Good for you. You’re totally normal. That’s how anyone would feel. Anyone who had been abused and lied to would feel angry, upset and confused.
A woman who is responding carefully, like, okay, thank you for telling me about your use. I love you. I care about you. Thank you for sharing. She is doing that out of this visceral attempt to protect her own family. She is resisting the abuse in that moment. Because she thinks the safest thing to do in that moment is protect her family or her marriage.
But anybody who tells a victim, hey, you need to be careful about how you respond to his abuse. So you don’t hurt him. That’s bonkers.
Kate: It is insane. We know it doesn’t work. Don’t do it.
What Is Victim Blaming? Confessions Of Lying For Years vs. Child Pornography Exposure
Anne: There are many organizations trained to teach parents how to react to their children. When their children talk to them about use. What is victim blaming? We are only talking about when a woman discovers her husband has been using, and that her husband has been lying to her for years, putting her at risk, and coercing her.
If anyone is trying to suggest a woman should respond the same way to her child talking to her about their use. And discovering that her husband has been living a double life and lying to her face for years. That is crazy. Those are two completely different situations. So when it comes to abuse victims, discovering that their husband has been abusing them. There should be no discussion about the “right way to react” in order to help him out.
Because this is a safety issue for her. I needed to learn the safest way to resist my ex’s abuse. And so I discovered the Living Free strategies, and then I developed The Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop, Telling a victim, hey, you’ve got to react to him in a different way to help him out. Or that it’s your fault because you didn’t react the right way. If you had reacted differently, he would’ve done something different. That is a harmful victim blaming lie.
You didn’t do anything wrong. It’s not your fault. And now, due to the injuries he caused you, we as victims need to learn safety strategies to protect ourselves. In the back of my book, Trauma, Momma, Husband Drama, there are a bunch of infographics that illustrate how victims are blamed.
3: The Drama Triangle
Anne: And one of these infographics illustrates how there is no drama triangle. If you don’t have a copy of my book, you can get it at our books page and there’s that infographic at the back. Women who aren’t familiar, what is the drama triangle?
Kate: The “drama triangle”, is also called the Karpman triangle, or the persecutor and rescuer triangle. Whatever, they have so many names. They have three roles: the victim (the woe is me), the persecutor (the bully), and then the rescuer (let me fix you). The interesting thing is that the victim in the model is thought to be the start or catalyst of the entire drama triangle.
Anne: What is victim blaming? Yeah, that tracks because the addiction industrial complex says it’s her being triggered, that’s the problem. Not that he is triggering her, which is the real problem. The real problem is that he is abusing her, not the way she reacts.
Kate: Yes, this is just another example where the victim is considered the worst person possible. Way more than the abuser. Even though Stephen Karpman came out and said these are people playing the role of the victim. They’re not actually the victim, they’re just manipulating. If you have somebody who is legit being abused, that drama triangle should not apply at all. Don’t use it. Stay away from it. It has nothing to do with you.
Victim vs. Perpetrator Roles
Kate: What is victim blaming? You were an actual victim; this is not you playing the victim.
Anne: I was going to say that exact same thing. You cannot play the victim when you are actually the victim. In fact, when you are the victim, the abuser is the perpetrator. Then he plays the role of the victim. He also plays the role of the rescuer. He does that to manipulate you. There are not three roles. There are only two roles in reality, real actual roles, the perpetrator and the victim.
The perpetrator can act like a victim. He can act like a rescuer and groom. He can Hoover and manipulate, but he is always the perpetrator, and she is always the victim in that scenario.
Kate: He can play all those different things, but that doesn’t mean you are part of the drama triangle. There are some people who’ve tried to say to wives, “You need to get out of the drama triangle.” You were never in the drama triangle in the first place. So why do you need to work on getting out of something you were never in?
Anne: Totally.
4: What Is Victim Blaming? Trauma Bonding
Anne: Alright, now let’s move on to trauma bonding. What is victim blaming? The second I heard trauma bond or trauma bonding, I was like, that is victim blaming. So I developed my own model, called the manufactured relational tether. We have a good YouTube video about it.
Comment on this episode below. We’d love to know what you think. If there’s some victim blaming that we don’t end up bringing up in this episode, go there and write all the ways you’ve been victim blamed. But yeah, the trauma bonding concept is victim blaming. And I think my manufactured relational tether is a better way to describe what’s going on.
Kate: Yes. exactly, these last three are actually my favorite. Stockholm Syndrome, learned helplessness and prodependency.
5: Stockholm Syndrome
Kate: Stockholm Syndrome, it turns out the whole diagnosis is bogus. It has no foundation whatsoever, no truth in it. What is victim blaming? It is only a way to blame victims and make them sound crazy, because their choices aren’t making sense to the rest of the world. Many people thought Elizabeth Smart had Stockholm syndrome. Why didn’t she get away? She had so many opportunities to get away. Why didn’t she escape? Oh, it’s because she had Stockholm syndrome.
Stockholm Syndrome was made up in 1973 by psychiatrist Nils Bejerot. He helped the police during a bank robbery, which led to about four people being taken hostage. The police botched it completely from the start. They were reckless and put the hostages in danger. The hostages were actually more scared of the police than the bank robbers.
From the beginning, one of the hostages, Kristen Enmark, she’s amazing, was outspoken to the police. She called the radio stations and tried and said, “Tell the police to stop and we will be safe. The bank robbers are letting us call our families, they just want to get away, they will not harm us.” She talked to the radio station two times. She even talked to the prime minister and was like, “Please get the police off our backs.”
Police still didn’t listen. They actually ended up hanging up on her at one point. They were just treating her like crap. Whereas I love this story so much. They have recordings of her even talking to the prime minister. Her voice is so calm. You can tell she’s smart and knows what she’s talking about. She’s not somebody who’s freaking out and doesn’t understand. No, she knows what she’s talking about.
Misogyny In Stockholm Syndrome
Kate: What is victim blaming? It’s just sad. They then said she had a syndrome and made her not credible, to fit their mold of how they think a woman should or should not react.
Anne: Misogyny is the foundation there, because how could this woman know better than the police?
Kate: Yeah, exactly.
Anne: And all these men and this psychiatrist, how could she know better about what to do? She must be crazy.
Kate: Exactly, beause they are like, we’re just trying to help you, and you’re mad at us. Oh, boo hoo, “You’re not helping. You’re going to get us killed. Stop it.” They messed up on so many different things. They even brought in one of the bank robber’s brothers. But it turns out not to be his brother. They blamed it all on her. This doesn’t make sense, so she must be the problem. This happened to Elizabeth Smart.
She said, “Nobody should ever question why you didn’t do something. They have no idea what they would have done, and they certainly have no right to judge you. Everything I did, I did to survive.”
Anne: They weren’t on the side of the bank robbers. They knew the bank robbers were not the best people in the world, but they were just trying to get to safety, and the police were making it worse.
Kate: Natasha Cambush said, “Looking for normality within the framework of a crime is not a syndrome.” People get annoyed when I say that, but I love all these. There’s no example of Stockholm syndrome that is legit, because if you look at why they did what they did, it makes sense. There’s nothing wrong with them.
What Is Victim Blaming? Police Pathologized The Victim
Kate: There is this psychiatrist who was helping the police at the time. She didn’t want to talk to him. So he decided to make up this brand new syndrome. Why? Because she wasn’t cooperating with the police. So he decided to come up with Stockholm syndrome. This was in Stockholm.
Anne: Hence Stockholm syndrome.
Kate: Yes. What is victim blaming? She has never spoken to this guy. He diagnosed her with something he has never even spoken to her about. He made this whole syndrome up. It got spread around. Who has not heard of Stockholm syndrome? Everyone has heard of it, and it’s not even based on any facts.
She has a YouTube video, and if you actually listened to her first account story, everything they did makes a hundred percent sense. It was for survival. Nothing they did was like, “Why did they not try to escape?” She wasn’t acting like the good little victim that the police wanted her to. She wasn’t fitting the mold of what a victim should look like, and they were upset with that. They thought there must be something wrong with her.
It’s basically a way to silence victims and pathologize them for normal behaviors to make them look unstable. Smart even stated once, “The syndrome is a condition of illness. I became stamped as ill and thus not credible.”
Anne: Yeah, abusers often say I don’t know anything about betrayal trauma, because I’m so traumatized. That I can’t think straight apparently. And so they know better than me what happened. And I’m like, no, the purpose of all these victim blaming strategies is to discredit the victims.
6: Learned Helplessness
Anne: All right, let’s go to learned helplessness.
Kate: So learned helplessness is a term coined by psychologist Martin Seligman. He wanted to understand depression. You’ve heard of Pavlov’s dogs and all the studies they’ve done on dogs. He ended up doing this study, where he took dogs and put them in these Pavlov slings. It looks like a hammock with their feet sticking out. He attached electrodes to their hind legs, and then he had the electrodes deliver an inescapable shock to half of the dogs.
The ones that got the shock are called the yoked. He then took the yoked group, put them in a shuttle box with an electrified floor and half the wall in the middle. And continued shocking them in hopes the yoked group would jump over the wall, which would end its shock. If they jumped over, they wouldn’t be shocked anymore.
What he found interesting was that 60 percent of the dogs just whimpered, yelped, and then eventually laid down during the entire 60 seconds of shock and didn’t try to escape.
His conclusion was that the yoked dogs didn’t jump over because they had learned to be helpless. Some people might think, I can understand that. The dogs didn’t feel like they had anywhere to go. So they just laid down and whimpered. What is victim blaming? Although he mentions in his study that when the door to the shuttle box is open, the dogs tried to run out. For some reason, he doesn’t consider that escaping.
Because that sounds like an escape to me. If a dog is gonna try to run out of the box, then that is escaping.
Anne: Let me restate. They did a study abusing dogs and not letting them get out.
Critique Of Learned Helplessness
Anne: What is victim blaming? They said it was their fault they couldn’t get out.
Kate: Basically, “The reason you’re like this is because you have learned helplessness, not because I forced you to be in this position”.
Anne: That is insane.
Kate: They’ve done similar studies with rats, monkeys, and even with humans. The humans were like, “I can’t escape the shock, so why am I going to try? I can’t control it, so why try?” Which to me sounds logical. You literally can’t do it. So then they try to apply this to abuse victims, saying, “They, the victim, learned to be helpless.”
Anne: instead of saying they were acting logically for the situation they were in, he’s saying they should have done more to get out? Even though they couldn’t get out?
Kate: It’s ridiculous. They did this study with a classroom full of kids. They gave half the kids a test that was actually answerable, and the other half didn’t. Tthey were like, try to solve this problem. Half of them were able to solve it. They were like, okay, who solved number one?” All the kids that weren’t able to solve it, the teacher asked them, “how did that make you feel?” They were like, “I felt stupid. I felt like I couldn’t do it.”
She’s like, “This is learned helplessness. The cause of you feeling the way you’re feeling is because of learned helplessness.” The cause is because you rigged the study and did it to them. The reason they’re feeling the way they’re feeling isn’t because they have learned helplessness. The reason is because you’re abusing them. The cause is you did it. Why are you blaming the victim? It is insane.
Anne: In fact, some prominent addiction people are using that.
7: What Is Victim Blaming?Pro-dependency
Kate: This last one is pro-dependency.
Anne: What is victim blaming? This one is ridiculous, because it’s saying codependent was bad. Pro-dependent is the same thing, but it’s good. But it’s still a little bad.
Kate: I’ve done a lot of research on pro-dependency. I’ve read the book, I have listened to tons of YouTube videos, and I have read tons of articles. Pro-dependency is by Rob Weiss. Yes, he claims codependency is bad, pro-dependency is good. I agree. codependency is bad. I think it’s crap. Even one time I said, F codependency. I just started giggling. Because I’m like, I agree with you there.
I feel like this is another example of men trying to make up labels for women. He claims it’s not a label. He says, pro-dependency cannot be a label, but then he says, “the craziness of someone you might call codependent, I would call them pro-dependent.” I’m like… you just… that sounds like a label to me.
Anne: You just used a label. If you’re not going to use a label, then you would say this is a healthy woman who’s reacting in normal ways. To not pathologize it, that’s what you would say.
Kate: He’s against codependency is because it pathologizes women, then he turns around and talks about how he likes co-addiction. Which literally, by definition, pathologizes women.
Anne: Whoa, whoa, he says, I don’t like codependence, but I like co-addiction? What? They mean the exact same thing!
Kate: Then he says, “I don’t stick by you as a co-addict because there’s something wrong with me. I may stick with you as a co-addict because I learned how to stick by people in my childhood, and so I know how to do it. But that’s not pathology.” No, that literally is pathology.
Contradicting Statements
Anne: He knows codependent is bad, so why are these women doing what they’re doing? I don’t know.
Kate: What is victim blaming? They’re not victims. We can’t make them victims, so how can I rationalize this? How can I twist everything to make it still have something to do with them otherwise you just say, no, they’re reacting in a totally normal way to being abused. That’s all you have to say.
Kate: The weird thing is he actually uses the word abuse I think once. Then he mentions you have co-addiction. Or he says, “I certainly think Al Anon is a wonderful program, and Al Anon, by the way, never implied you were addicted to your husband or wife.” And I’m like, yes, it did.
Anne: Al Anon says you’re diseased. Al Anon says that you have a disease, too, just like your diseased spouse.
Kate: Exactly. He says these things, and they’re so contradicting. He even says codependency is a trauma-based theory. What are you talking about? It’s a disease-based theory. He says, “That’s why pro-dependency is an attachment-based theory.” He basically wants to keep the codependency model. He knows he can’t call it that anymore, because the word is too offensive. No, not just the word, the whole model is offensive.
The Trauma Model Debate
Kate: One of the things he says he doesn’t like about codependency is that it automatically assumes the wife is coming from a traumatic place.
Anne: What is victim blaming? That is absolute word salad. If he claims he doesn’t like codependency because it assumes the wife is coming from a traumatic place. He’s basically saying I don’t subscribe to the trauma model. I do not think this is abuse. And then he goes even further to propose it’s her fault. Because her trauma, like somehow “attracted.” this abusive man to her. This whole thing doesn’t make sense.
Kate: He has a chapter called twos don’t marry sevens. Because he believes you are attracted to someone who is just as dysfunctional as you. He believes you will not end up with a person with higher emotional intelligence than you. And betrayed partners perpetuate and facilitate the disease. What does that say for every one of us who married addicts? Are you kidding me?
Anne: That is so offensive, numbering people. What that says is that if twos can’t marry sevens, someone who is healthy could never, ever be victimized by abuse. Which I don’t agree with at all. Abusers can victimize anyone. They can lie and manipulate. All, these victim blaming things. There are so many, whew. Okay, so if we didn’t cover something you personally want to have covered, please scroll down and comment below. I want to hear your victim blaming examples.
Kate. You’re amazing. Thanks so much for hanging out today.
I’m wondering though if you’re getting Dr Doug Weiss and Dr. Rob Weiss confused???
I don’t recall reading about Pro-dependence and hearing Dr. Robb say anything about women being coaddicts. Please help me. I need to know where you found this in his material and even with Dr. Doug because I’ve been suggesting their materials to other Betrayed Partners and I don’t want to hurt anyone with their views.
Thank You.
Hi, Trina! We actually don’t recommend either Weiss because they don’t call “addiction” what it really is: abuse. We only recommend people who view adultery, online explicit materials use, otherwise known as “addict behaviors”, etc as the abuse that it is. Hugs!
My husband has been gaslighting me for years. Last Wednesday we had a “blowup” because he refused to give me the car I owned prior to the marriage (we’ve only been married 14 months). It got heated and he manhandled the keys from me and took off.
He often “abandons me” and retreats and doesn’t tell me where he is for days etc. He told me I owed him an apology. Then, 4 hours later I was in a very serious accident that was not my fault. The airbags went off and broke my nose, teeth, gums, cheekbone and I was scared to death. I’ve had PTSD since childhood and he knows it.
My sisters and family came to the rescue, and took me for treatment
My husband told them he was at work and would be home next day. He never came home and I got increasingly upset. I had 14 stitches in my mouth, a broken nose! He hasn’t been home and said I owe him an apology. I’m beside myself. So anxious and upset I’m going out of my mind. He knows this about me deep down. I have no idea what to do! I’m sick. And I think he’s counting on it.
Tonya! I’m so sorry. Have you considered going to live with your family or friends? They sound supportive? In the meantime, our coaches are here for you it you’d like to talk:).
I am so happy I found your podcast. The goddess in me thanks the goddess in you.
Omg!! With Stockholm Syndrome they said that the bank robbers strapped bombs to the hostages. And how one of the robbers and hostages got married!! Is that not true??