Why I Stopped Playing the Victim Card
My Backstory and Five Insights from a Self-Proclaimed Victim
Before I begin, I want to note that traumatic experiences are all uniquely painful, horrifying and different for everyone. Comparing simply isn’t productive, I’ve only found value in looking for where I can relate.
All I can do is tell my own story as I’ve experienced it myself. I’ll start with some history.
In my other stories, I sometimes touch on my experiences working at big marketing agencies. For over a decade, my job was the key focal point of my life. I was an impatient ladder-climbing, people-pleaser on a mission. Everything else came second. I was driven to succeed at all costs. In many ways, this made me an ideal agency target.
No matter how impossible the task, no matter how much I hated the work, no matter how abusive the client was, I’d never, ever give up. Throwing in the towel just wasn’t something I did. Adversity never stopped me. I beat it into submission through sheer force of will.
I earned a reputation. I was described as determined. I was told I was tenacious. Agency executives noticed my tendency to go beyond the call of duty, to give my work a higher level of polish, to work outside normal hours, to always say yes and to cope with unmanageable stress.
