When we’ve been traumatized, we’ve experienced victimization. We’ve experienced something harmful, hurtful, painful. In the video, Gabor talks about Lindsey, the individual who experienced her mother’s drinking. Lindsey experiences herself as a victim of her mother’s drinking. Lindsey was indeed victimized by her mother’s drinking, in that it occurred, and it affected Lindsey.
The crucial point is, that victimization does not automatically lead to victimhood. Victimhood happens when someone is victimized, but victimhood happens when we give up our power over the situation. We cannot change the fact that we were victimized, but we can choose what we do now that it has happened. As soon as we reclaim and own our power, we’re no longer a victim. And this applies whether we are the addicted person in a family, or a family member. When we take our power, then we choose how we respond. We become, as Gabor puts it, “response-able.”