Transcending The Victim/Perpetrator Cycle

By Sarah Elkhaldy

The fragmented nature of this reality means that we experience and learn through contrast and polarity. Every light casts darkness in the form of a shadow. This is also illustrated in the oriental depiction of the masculine and feminine forces: Yin and Yang.

At the crux of this reality, one of the major energetic themes that is being played out both individuality, and collectively is the Victim/Perpetrator Cycle. These two roles so seemingly opposite in their nature and appearance are mirror-reflections of each other in energy and in spirit. Once in the world of matter, they split off and so begins the swinging of the pendulum known as duality.

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The Kemetic proverb: “The tyrant is only the slave turned inside out”, captures the essence of this energy expressing itself through severe distortion of role play.

How does the perpetrator relate to his relationship as the perpetrator? In two ways:

The Overt Perpetrator

The first is the overt expression of the predator energy, where the perpetrator embodies his role as the perpetrator. His motivation is power. The actions he takes to gain this perceived power are through dominating others. Be it physically or not, it is the act of overpowering, humiliating, and inflicting pain on another that this energy expresses itself through. The Overt Perpetrator has an inner-victim and internal oppressor that is overcompensating for its powerlessness by acting outwardly domineering. This is rooted in trauma, as is the entire victim/perpetrator cycle. Therefore, each individual expression is also rooted in trauma

The Covert Perpetrator

The second form is the covert method of predator —the shadow-side of the overt predator. The Covert Perpetrator does not view himself as the predator, he operates from a state of victimhood where he justifies his motives and actions as necessary. This archetype rationalizes their predatory behavior as serving a cause or for self-preservation. The covert predator is more identified with his inner-victim even though both forms of perpetrator outwardly act from the place of his internal oppressor.

Likewise, the overt and covert victim both outwardly act from their inner-victim.

The Overt Victim

The Overt Victim is identified with being powerless and helpless therefore cannot be responsible for his life. Because the overt victim believes he is helpless, he also perceives both the problems and the solutions to his life having to come from outside himself. This constant disempowerment can lead to habitually blaming and praising others for everything created in their world due to holding the belief that they do not have the power to create.

The Covert Victim

The Covert Victim holds the inverted beliefs of this; he believes everything is his fault. He is mostly identified with unworthiness and worthlessness.

The common denominator that each form of expression shares is that they are all rooted in self-loathing.

The Victim/Perpetrator Cycle harbors unconscious hatred directed at the self for deeply held beliefs of being inadequate. The root cause of this self-loathing is from the deepest wound known to our species: Abandonment — the vague notion held in our collective psyche that we were left behind.

Even though we can be polarized to one of these archetypes, the victim/perpetrator energy takes turns fluctuating so it can be difficult to discern which aspect is being consciously or unconsciously played out. This is because their the same energy and only differ in degree, and the difference in degree means the actions taken to heal the cycle will each be in accordance to however severe of degree the experience is manifested.

For instance, in the case of a large-scale collective victimization of humanity, part of breaking the victim/perpetrator cycle – once the energetic theme is manifested to such a degree of brute physicality – is being able to identify each role in the dynamic and then before it can come to a neutral center point for healing, the victim has to take back their power and refuse to be victimized anymore. This kind of mass catharsis and purging of the victim energy will not look very classy, but is absolutely necessary once its reached critical mass of oppression.

The trick is to not fall into the trap of combative dualism and become the perpetrator thus cycling in the pattern, rather than healing the cycle.

Transcending the cycle

Albert Einstein couldn’t have been more right when he stated that no problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. When we are identified as a victim, our ability to create solutions is hindered because those solutions are being generated from the same level of consciousness that the problem was created on.

The cosmic catch-22 here is to honor your wounds by validating them and giving yourself as much unconditional acceptance as you have capacity to give yourself, while simultaneously taking full ownership of your unhealthy patterns and recognizing the parts you have played in these patterns.

The third character in this cycle is the Rescuer. This role can be used constructively, but even this too needs to eventually be integrated. In its exalted form, the rescuer is the aspect of ourselves that retrieves us from this cycle. The rescuer is born out of the necessity to correct this wounded pattern. If we use this character properly, it’s the part of ourselves that dives into the deep seas of our subconscious to observe what trauma imprinting is generating these dynamics within us.

This is alchemy in its truest sense; where we retrieve our abandoned, less desirable aspects that keep us stuck looping, and learn to accept them so unconditionally that we no longer perceive them as undesirable, shameful qualities that need to be buried and hidden, but rather as unpolished aspects of ourselves that we have the power to transmute through our acceptance. This is a radical act of self love. When we nurture this relationship with ourselves, what we are really doing is loving ourselves enough to liberate us from disempowering narratives and meet life as a co-creator.

Previous article by Sarah Elkhaldy:

About the author:

Sarah Elkhaldy is the author of “How To Set Yourself On Fire” and the administrator of “A Talking Lion”, where she uses her social media platform to help humanity gracefully tap into our evolutionary potential. She considers it her work to connect the higher with the lower; the outer world with the inner world. Sarah is also a Quantum Sphere healer and photographer. She refers to herself simply as an ‘existential detective’.