A Parkinson’s disease (PD) diagnosis is life-changing, and feeling sorry for yourself is natural. However, playing the victim is not a good place to linger if you want to be around for the long run. It took me eight years of living with the victim mindset before its impact became clear—I had created a self-limiting belief system that was making life miserable. Since then, my overall contentment and happiness have grown each year with occasional visits by an untethered joy that leaves me in tears, marveling at the power of its raw authenticity.
Acquiring a victim mentality occurs with subtle persuasion under the care of a medical system that, no matter how inadvertently, quietly rewards the victim: it’s “doctor’s orders,” after all. Exacerbated by a materialistic culture of “more is better” that advocates gadgets for commercial gain that are supposed to make life easier, living as a victim is an insidious soul-less endeavor that provides only fleeting happiness and never joy.
Happiness is a choice but not a cheap or easy exchange. It takes hard, daily, often painful work, but you learn to love it. Doing things the easy way closes the window to your soul, the only part of you that truly matters. Everybody suffers to some extent. Personal challenges elevate us, putting us firmly in the moment and leveraging distress into destiny.
This may sound harsh, but please think of it as tough love. The hard road to contentment and joy is all about accepting life as it is, not the victim mentality’s how it “should” be. I love you all.