203. Are You Living in Victim Mode After Betrayal or Divorce? Here Is How to Tell / Part 2

Introduction

Welcome back. Last week we covered the Victim and Emerger stages — the early, often painful territory of recognizing where you have been and what thoughts have been keeping you there. If you have not listened to part one yet, start there first and then come back.

Today we are covering the final two stages: Reclaimer and Chooser.

Before we go in, one reminder. There is no good, bad, right, or wrong in any of this. You are not your thoughts. You are not your brain. You are not your body. You are not your emotions. Who you are — intrinsically — is whole and worthy and of infinite value, regardless of what stage you are in right now. This framework exists to help you become aware of where you are, not to shame you for being there.

Stage Three: Reclaimer

The Reclaimer stage is where you begin taking back what was taken from you. Not all at once. Not perfectly. But piece by piece, you start to reclaim your voice, your truth, your body, your identity, and your right to define what healthy looks like for yourself.

I am learning to trust my body. Trauma disconnects the brain and body. The longer you live inside a false reality someone else constructed, the more disconnected from yourself you become — because disconnection is how you survive. Reclaiming starts here, with reconnecting to your own physical experience. Your body has been keeping the score the whole time. Learning to listen to it again is one of the most powerful things you can do.

I will only control myself. In the Victim stage, the thought is: if they would just change, then I could be okay. In Emerger, you start to grasp that you cannot actually control them. In Reclaimer, the shift is complete: I will only control myself. Notice how the locus of control moves back toward you. That is everything.

I knew it. I am not crazy. This one brings tears in my work with clients — every single time. When the truth finally comes out, when the patterns become undeniable, there is this moment of: I knew something was wrong. I was not imagining it. That realization is profound. It does not feel good exactly, but it is reclaiming your perception of reality after someone worked very hard to distort it.

I can make good decisions. In Victim, you are paralyzed — unable to make choices at all. In Emerger, you want to move forward but are not sure how. In Reclaimer, you start to reconnect with your decision-making capacity. And part of what makes this possible is reclaiming your right to be wrong. Vicki Tidwell Palmer's Bill of Rights includes two that matter enormously here: I have the right to change my mind, and I have the right to be wrong. When you are no longer terrified of making the wrong choice, you can finally start making choices.

I am worthy of healthy. This is a beautiful thing to reclaim. Not just that you deserve better in a vague sense — but that you are worthy of a healthy relationship, a healthy home, a healthy life. And just as importantly: I get to decide what healthy means for me. This is often new territory for women coming out of betrayal and abuse. When you have never experienced what healthy actually looks like, you have to build that picture yourself. And you can. In fact, you have to, because it will only be sustainable if it is genuinely yours.

My truth matters. You may never get full disclosure from the person who hurt you. Many of my clients do not. But your lived experience is real and valid regardless of whether someone else confirms it. Your body knows what happened to you. Your memory holds your story. Reclaiming your truth — even without the other person's cooperation — is a critical part of healing. Your truth does not require their permission to be true.

I do know what is best for me — right now. This one can feel like a stretch, and that is okay. You might still be in Emerger on this particular thought. But as you reclaim your voice, your opinions, your preferences, and your values — this belief starts to solidify. Not that you know what is best for all time, but that right now, in this moment, you have enough self-knowledge to make the next right choice.

I will listen to my body's story. When someone's words say one thing and your body says another — trust your body. Especially in the context of recovery and relational repair, your body is your first and most reliable source of information. As my colleague Sarah Morales says, your sacred responsibility is to demand evidence that someone is changing. Until you have that evidence, your body's response is the evidence.

I know the difference between being on my own and being alone. This distinction matters enormously. Many women come to me saying: I feel completely alone inside my marriage, but I am afraid to be alone if I leave. Reclaimer is where you start to untangle those two things. Being on your own is not the same as loneliness.

Loneliness is an emotion — and emotions can be chosen and changed. Being on your own can actually be the beginning of a deeply fulfilling relationship with yourself.

I am stronger than I thought. When I show this to clients, it consistently brings tears. Think back to your deepest Victim moments — when you felt utterly without power, without options, without hope. And look at you now. You are still here. You kept going. That is not nothing. That is everything.

I own my story, regardless of what others think. Everyone will have opinions about your choices. Whether you are staying and being told you should leave, or leaving and being told you should stay — people will weigh in. Reclaimer is where those opinions start to hold less weight. You know why you are making the choices you are making. That is enough.

I am exploring and redefining who I want to be — not who I should be. Trauma disconnects you from yourself. When you have lived inside a false reality, you lose track of your own values, preferences, desires, and identity. Reclaimer is where you get to reclaim all of it. What do you actually like? What do you value? What does your ideal life look like when no one else is shaping the answer? This stage is rich with that kind of exploration.

I am not my trauma. You experienced trauma. It happened to you. It affected you deeply. But it did not change your intrinsic worth, your value, or your lovability. Those things cannot be touched by what someone else chose to do to you. In Reclaimer, you start to genuinely believe that — not just intellectually, but in your body.

Grief honors my loss — it does not decide my future. In Victim, emotions are mostly numbed out. In Emerger, grief is everywhere and it feels like it is seeping into everything, including your future. In Reclaimer, you start to process grief more intentionally. Grief is honoring what was lost — and a lot was lost. But it no longer tells you what your future looks like. You are starting to be able to separate the two.

Boundaries are protecting me. In Victim, there are no real boundaries. In Emerger, you start to see why they matter. In Reclaimer, you are actually using them — and holding the consequences when they are crossed. This is where a boundary becomes complete: not just stating what is not okay, but following through on what you will do if it continues. That follow-through is where your power lives.

I can feel my emotions. In Victim, it is too much to feel. In Emerger, you are noticing them. In Reclaimer, you are starting to actually feel and process them in your body. This is significant. Feeling your emotions without being destroyed by them — without identifying with them as the truth of who you are — is one of the most important skills in the entire healing journey.

Stage Four: Chooser

This is the stage the entire framework has been building toward. Not a destination you arrive at and stay in forever, but a way of orienting yourself — a practice of returning to your own agency again and again, especially when life is hard.

I trust myself and I have my own back. Victim says: I will never trust anyone again. Emerger says: I am starting to trust the patterns I see. Reclaimer says: I am learning to trust my body. Chooser says: I trust myself. I have my own back. And — for those of us who hold a spiritual perspective — I also trust that God has my back. When you truly trust yourself, the fear of being hurt again does not disappear, but it no longer runs the show. Because you know that you have boundaries, you will honor them, and you will listen to your body. That is more protection than never trusting anyone again ever was.

What others think and feel about me is not my business. Byron Katie puts it this way: there are three kinds of business — your business, other people's business, and God's business. What other people think and feel about you belongs entirely to them. When you genuinely believe this, you free up an enormous amount of mental and emotional space that was previously consumed by trying to manage other people's perceptions of you. That space becomes available for actual choosing.

My choices reflect my values. You spent time in Reclaimer identifying and reclaiming your values. Now in Chooser, you are making decisions from them. Not from guilt. Not from people-pleasing. Not from fear. From what you actually believe and who you actually want to be.

I am responsible for my own happiness. This one often gets a skeptical response when clients first see it. If the right circumstances were in place, then I could be happy. But happiness is not a state you arrive at when everything goes right. It is an emotion you can choose to create in any circumstance. Viktor Frankl, writing about his experience in Nazi concentration camps, described this with devastating clarity: everything can be taken from a person except the freedom to choose how they respond to what happens to them. That is what being a Chooser means at its core.

I am the creator of my life. In Victim, you believe your life is determined by other people and circumstances. In Chooser, you know that you are the one creating it — not by controlling what happens to you, but by choosing how you respond, what you make it mean, and what you do next. This does not mean everything is easy or positive. Being a Chooser means leaning into the uncomfortable, not bypassing it.

I nurture myself so I can help others. How many of you grew up believing that your own needs came last? Chooser flips that. You fill your own bucket first — not out of selfishness, but because service that comes from depletion leads to resentment and martyrdom. Service that comes from fullness is something else entirely. It is genuine. It is sustainable. And it does not require a particular response from the person you are serving in order to feel meaningful.

Everything that happens is for my growth. I will be honest — when a therapist first offered me this thought, I almost walked out. It felt dismissive of everything I had been through. But Chooser is not naive positivity. It is a growth mindset that refuses to let what happened to you be the end of your story. When you believe this, the person who hurt you no longer gets to write the meaning of your experience. You do. That is a profound shift in power.

I live in power, not fear. Fear does not disappear in Chooser. But it is no longer what drives your decisions. Your choices are anchored in your values, your agency, your self-trust — not in avoiding the worst possible outcome.

Everything works out as it should. I know. I know. Many of you just scoffed. That is okay. I have shown this to clients who could not receive it at all — and then come back months later and said, actually, I am starting to see it. Especially when they stopped trying to control outcomes and started trusting the process.

I am the author of my today and my tomorrow. Not your trauma. Not the person who victimized you. Not the narrative someone else built around you. You. You get to write what comes next.

There is no limit to my potential. There is no arrival point. There is no age at which this stops being available to you. You can keep learning, growing, building, trying new things, becoming more of who you are. That is not reserved for people who had easier lives. It is yours.

I can find a way because I have options. Victim sees no options. Chooser expands the view. When the option you most want is not available — and sometimes it is not — a Chooser does not shut down. She widens her vision, looks at what is actually there, and creates something from it. I scrubbed floors and knocked on neighborhood doors with flyers after my divorce because the option I wanted was not available to me. That was not rainbows and butterflies. That was choosing, in the most gritty and uncomfortable sense of the word.

I am grateful for what I have learned. This one will feel impossible in the earlier stages. That is appropriate. You are not supposed to be grateful for trauma before you have processed it. But on the other side of the work, many of my clients — and I can say this for myself — reach a place of genuine gratitude. Not for what was done to them, but for who they became because of how they chose to move through it. The forest burned to the ground. And the root system held. And something new grew.

I can make requests of my people. As you heal, your social circle changes. It often gets smaller before it gets richer. The people who remain — the ones you have vetted through the lens of your new self-awareness — are the ones you can be fully honest with. With them, you do not need defensive boundaries. You can make simple, direct requests, because they actually want to meet your needs. That is a qualitatively different kind of relationship than you may have had before.

I am not my body, my brain, or my emotions. I simply experience them. You will have over sixty thousand thoughts today. You are not those thoughts. Your body will change constantly throughout your lifetime. You are not your body. Your emotions move through you like weather. You are not your emotions. You are the one experiencing all of it — and in Chooser, you become the curious, compassionate observer of your own inner life rather than someone swept away by it.

Because you can. This is the last thought in the Chooser stage. And it is how I end every episode of this podcast. Because you can create the life you want. You can define what healthy looks like. You can say no. You can choose differently. You can begin again. This is your right as a human being with full agency. No one can take that from you — no matter what they took.

Moving Forward

If you found yourself in every stage today, that is completely normal. Pull toward the Reclaimer and Chooser thoughts that feel even slightly possible. Practice them.

Question the ones in Victim and Emerger that are no longer serving you. And if you feel completely stuck in the earlier stages, please reach out for support. You do not have to move through this alone.

The full printable list of all four stages — Victim, Emerger, Reclaimer, Chooser — is linked in the show notes. Print it. Sit with it. Come back to it as you grow.

Journal Prompt

Which Chooser thought feels the most impossible to believe right now? What would have to shift inside you for that thought to feel even five percent more true? What is one small action you could take this week that would be evidence of you choosing?

Resources

Free printable PDF — Victim to Chooser thought stages: link in show notes

Believing in You Coaching Membership — Wednesday morning and afternoon groups: amiewoolsey.com

Work with Amie one-on-one, including Brainspotting sessions: amiewoolsey.com

Free monthly live Q&A — first Thursday of every month: amiewoolsey.com