Overcoming the Victim Mindset: Insights from 'Rise Above'

"In Rise Above: Overcome a Victim Mindset, Empower Yourself, and Realize Your Full Potential (Penguin, 2025), psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman delivers a timely and incisive critique of what he calls "victim mindset culture"-the growing tendency for individuals to view themselves primarily through the lens of past hurts and limitations, rather than as active agents in their own growth and transformation."

"Kaufman, a well-respected cognitive psychologist and prolific science communicator, is no stranger to the landscape of self-actualization and human potential. His previous books, including Transcend and Wired to Create, explored the pathways to fulfillment, intelligence, and creativity. In Rise Above, Kaufman turns his focus to what he sees as a new societal epidemic. Our culture has become rich in therapeutic language to describe our experiences, but this language has become mired in resignation, blame, and passive self-limitation."

"The first half of Rise Above examines the roots and repercussions of a victim mindset. Kaufman's approach is both compassionate and direct. He acknowledges the real pain of trauma, loss, and adversity while warning against the allure of identifying too closely with one's wounds and limitations. Over-identification with the label of "victim," Kaufman contends, can become a psychological trap-one that keeps people recycling their pain, ruminating on perceived slights, focusing on personal limitations, and preventing them from stepping outside their comfort zone."

A growing cultural tendency frames individuals primarily through past hurts and limitations, cultivating a victim mindset that emphasizes resignation, blame, and passive self-limitation. Over-identification with wounds leads to recycling of pain, rumination on perceived slights, narrowed focus on limitations, and avoidance of stepping outside comfort zones. Expansion of clinical terms into broader everyday use has broadened self-limiting narratives. A compassionate but direct stance recognizes real trauma and adversity while promoting cultivation of inner resources, resilience, and agency. Balancing acknowledgment of hardship with proactive growth enables people to move beyond past constraints and shape their own lives.

Read at Psychology Today