If you find yourself questioning whether it’s okay to step back from someone who is always playing the victim (and perhaps blaming you for almost everything wrong in their life), you need a way out and a way back to your sanity and well-being.
People who play the victim create a draining dynamic that can leave you feeling exhausted, guilty, and trapped. With these people, you find yourself in a one-sided relationship where you’re always the listener, the helper, the one trying to fix things while they continue cycling through the same complaints without ever seeking real solutions.
Understanding how this pattern works and what you can do about it can help you reclaim your energy and create healthier boundaries.
Some people make victimhood their full-time job. They believe the world is against them, that bad things always happen to them, and there’s nothing they can do about it. They’re at the mercy of circumstances, other people, and life itself.
While we’re all subject to what happens around us, we also have choices in how we respond. What I sometimes refer to as the “professional” victim (those who seem to have a full-time job playing a victim) don’t (or choose not to) see those choices. They stay focused on how powerless they are.
This is different from someone who’s actually going through difficult circumstances.
A true victim wants a solution. They want closure. They want things to get better.
The person playing the victim doesn’t want closure because that would end their source of attention. They want you to side with them, validate their righteousness, and feel sorry for them. But they don’t actually want help.
You can spot this pattern when you offer constructive advice, and they immediately respond with “Yeah, but that won’t work because…” Every suggestion gets met with an objection. They’ve already thought of why nothing will work, not because they’ve tried it, but because finding an objection allows them to stay in the victim role.
Then, when they discover something might actually work, they won’t pursue it because then they’d no longer be a victim and wouldn’t get the benefits that come with it: secondary gain.
Secondary gain is a benefit someone receives that makes a behavior worth continuing, even if they appear to be suffering. Often, that gain is attention. When someone plays the victim, kind and caring people naturally respond with compassion. They say, “I’m so sorry that happened to you?” and “What can I do to help?” This flood of love and compassion feels good to the victim, even though it’s an unhealthy way to receive it.
The cycle works because victims find people who are compassionate, supportive, and sometimes overly helpful. If you’re someone who hates to see others in pain, who wants everyone to be happy, who likes to rescue and fix, you’re the perfect match for someone playing the victim! It becomes a complementary dysfunction:
The taker finds the giver. The talker finds the listener.
And both enable each other’s patterns.
This creates what amounts to a therapeutic relationship, but you’re not their therapist. In a friendship or family relationship, there should be balance. Both people should contribute, interact, and have space to share. When it becomes one-sided, with one person always venting and the other always listening, that’s not a balanced relationship. That’s someone using you as their emotional dumping ground.
Breaking the cycle
If you want to stop enabling someone’s victim mentality, you need to change how you respond to them. Instead of offering the compassion and support they’re fishing for, turn the responsibility back to them. When they complain about something, instead of saying “Oh my God, I’m so sorry, what can I do to help?” try asking “What are you going to do about it?”
This simple shift puts them on the spot to take responsibility for their own life. They might say there’s nothing they can do, but you can respond with “Wow, that sounds hard” without offering to rescue them. You’re not being cold or uncaring. You’re just not feeding into the dynamic that keeps them stuck.
If they truly want help, they’ll ask for it directly. They’ll say, “This happened to me. Can you help?” That’s no longer playing the victim because someone genuinely seeking help is looking for a solution.
The person playing the victim doesn’t want the solution. They want the attention that comes from being in distress.
Another approach is to hold them accountable by offering to help them solve the problem immediately. If they’re complaining about being overcharged, say, “Let’s call that company right now and fix this. I’ll help you.” Most people playing the victim will backpedal because they don’t actually want to resolve the issue. That would take away their talking point, their source of attention and sympathy.
Dealing with the victim mentality can be draining
Toxic and manipulative people feed off your emotional responses. They read your facial expressions, your body language, the inflection in your voice, and the words you choose. When you say “I’m so sorry” with a sad face and sympathetic tone, they’re getting exactly what they need from you. This is how they figure out what makes you feel guilty, what makes you feel bad, and what makes you feel sad.
By showing your internal emotional state externally, you give them the opportunity to take advantage of that. If you’re around someone who consistently drains you this way, you need to become aware of what you’re expressing and how you’re showing up. You might need to pull back on the emotional affect you’re displaying.
This doesn’t mean becoming cold or robotic. It means being more conscious about not feeding the dynamic. You can still care about someone without enabling their dysfunction. You can still be kind without being their emotional punching bag or constant source of validation.
Of course, certain people in this world can make dealing with the “professional” victim truly difficult, and that’s family. With family members, these dynamics become even more complicated because many people believe they have to maintain those relationships no matter what. With family, you might think “That’s my only sister” or “That’s my mom” and feel obligated to accept treatment you wouldn’t normally tolerate from anyone else.
Just because they’re family, that doesn’t give them the right to drain you, guilt you, or treat you disrespectfully.
You’re allowed to have boundaries with family members. You’re allowed to say, “When you try to make me feel guilty, it hurts. I’m here to help you, but please don’t do that.” If they truly care about you, they’ll want to treat you the way you want to be treated.
When you express a boundary, and they respond by trying to make you feel worse, by saying things like “I thought we were friends” or “That’s what family does for each other,” that’s more manipulation.
A person who loves and supports you wants you to have boundaries. They want you to honor yourself because they know that’s what’s best for you and for the relationship.
Sometimes you just have to step away
If you need to disconnect from someone who’s constantly playing the victim, know that you’re not abandoning them. You’re actually giving both of you a gift.
When you step away, you stop enabling their behavior. You give them the opportunity to reflect on their patterns without having you there as their constant audience.
Controlling and manipulative people carry what I call the burden of always thinking about how to control everyone and everything around them. situation. It’s a burden because they’re always worried about maintaining their power instead of just relaxing into letting things be.
Removing ourselves from a toxic person’s life can actually help relieve them of this burden. After all, when you remove yourself, you give them the chance to be alone with their thoughts and potentially do some healing work, if they choose to. You also protect yourself from continued exposure to toxic behavior. And you might discover that the person never reaches back out, which tells you everything you need to know about the relationship. Or they might come back having done some real reflection and growth.
If you want to avoid the guilt trap that you may feel before releasing someone or walking away from them, before you disconnect, offer a final invitation. Tell them, “I’m here if you need me. Just reach out.” This puts the ball in their court. It makes them responsible for maintaining contact and asking for help if they want it.
For someone playing the victim, this usually doesn’t work because reaching out feels vulnerable to them. It requires them to admit they need help, which takes them out of the power position of making others come to them.
Some people never want to stop playing the victim
When you’re dealing with someone who plays the victim, remember that you can’t change them. You can only change how you respond to them:
You can stop offering unsolicited advice.
You can stop showing the emotional responses they feed off of.
You can hold them accountable by offering to help them solve problems immediately.
And you can create boundaries around how much time and energy you’re willing to give.
If expressing these boundaries damages the relationship, that tells you the relationship was only working because you were playing your assigned role. When you step out of that role and ask to be treated differently, a healthy person will adjust. An unhealthy person will resist, get angry, or try to make you feel guilty for having needs.
You deserve to be in relationships where you feel valued, where your time and energy are respected, and where there’s balance. You deserve to be around people who want to hear what you have to say, not just people who want you to listen endlessly to them. And you deserve to honor yourself enough to walk away from dynamics that consistently leave you feeling drained and resentful.
The people who love you want you to have boundaries. They want you to honor yourself. If someone in your life doesn’t want that for you, they’re not showing up as someone who truly cares about your well-being. And that’s important information to have as you decide how to move forward.