I'm No Longer a Victim of MS

I decided over the past few years that I would no longer allow myself to play the victim of MS. Throughout my past articles I’ve tried to help explain why I feel this way. I have been through hardships and problems, but after I had my son I decided; no more. For too long I adopted the victim mentality. I was afraid to face the things I had dealt with head on and I allowed myself to make excuses for my behavior. When you experience tragic events, it’s easy to permit the feelings of stress, anger, and fear to turn into feelings of being hurt or wounded. Thus, you become a victim to yourself. I was a victim to myself and to MS for too long. As I have explained in recent articles I allowed it to control who I was as a person. Everything negative seemed to be happening to me, and that was overwhelming. I realized how childish of me it was to act that way. I had to learn how to heal and how to cope, instead of allowing myself to play the victim any longer. Once I quit denying the anger and hurt and accepted those feelings, I learned that I was the one responsible for feeling like the victim, and I was able to choose more constructive ways to deal with those emotions. The universe wasn’t out to get me; I was the one letting problems swallow me whole. I had to get out of that pit of despair. I had to make some serious life changes.

Learning to accept responsibility

First I had to learn to accept responsibility. Blaming everything and everyone for my MS and my problems wasn’t getting me anywhere. I had to look in the mirror and decide; would I be hopeless or hopeful? Then I had to learn to practice gratitude. I didn’t want to dwell over the bad anymore, so I decided it was time to remember all that I was grateful for. Once you do that, you realize there is a lot more to be thankful for then you realize. Sometimes, like me, you even realize that the difficult times have brought you things to be grateful for as well. It was all a matter of my perspective. I learned a lot, and even learned that the source of difficulty can indeed be a reason for gratitude. For me, that was life changing. Life teaches you lessons even when you’re unaware. The most important thing for me though, was learning to shift from the mentality of a victim to that of a survivor; of a warrior. One of my favorite quotes I’ve found says this:

“The biggest obstacle you’ll ever have to overcome is your mind. If you can overcome that, you can overcome anything.”

I can change how I view myself

Playing the victim doesn’t do anything but cause us to dwell in our own flaws and self-pity. It’s hard to improve when you’re stuck in that mindset. We can’t always know why circumstances play out the way they do, but if we take responsibility for the things we are allowing, then we have the power to change them. No, I can’t change the past or what has happened, and I obviously cannot change having MS. However, I can change how I view myself, and now I view myself as a survivor of this disease. It doesn’t matter what tomorrow brings, because I can face it. I can no longer make excuses for feelings of self-pity; because I’m not a victim, and once you change that mindset, the willingness to move forward arises.