A Martyr Complex
I experienced a unique moment of personal insight the other day. I’d had a dear friend over to play with furniture in my living room and talk, then a client interview, then a long talk with my man about church stuff, and then started dinner and settled the house for the evening. What my day lacked was my normal routines and my normal “rest” periods that allow me to tackle the next part of the day. What the day held was a high physical element (moving furniture) and a high social element (all with different demands and needs), and my dinner required a bit more time than usual.
Past-Abby (separate from chronic health issues) would have had a distinct chip on her shoulder by dinnertime over the lack of downtime. Past-Abby would have bemoaned all that was asked of her and probably thought some unkind thoughts about the tyranny of a man who wants a hot and filling meal at the end of the day. How dare he! Past-Abby was ugly. Past-Abby was always acting put upon.
But I, me, Current-Abby, stood in my kitchen making dinner and realized with an astounding shock that I was happy. I was happy to be ending my day lovingly preparing dinner for my husband. I felt calm despite the lack of routine. I felt willing despite the lack of breaks throughout the day. I felt centered, strong, and happy with my work instead of flustered, ill-used, and angry. That flash of insight was like the balm of a cloudy, rainy day in the middle of summer.
That flash was catching a glimpse of exactly how much work the Lord has done in my heart to help ruin my Martyr Complex, my victimhood, my whining.
There are lots of definitions of a Martyr Complex, but here’s one that fits my use and pattern of behavior from Psychology Today’s website: A martyr complex is a psychological pattern of feeling like a victim and refusing to accept help. (Just replace psychological with the word sin.) The very untrustworthy Wikipedia defines it this way: In psychology a person who has a martyr complex, sometimes associated with the term “victim complex”, desires the feeling of being a martyr for their own sake and seeks out suffering or persecution because it either feeds a physical need or a desire to avoid responsibility. (Again, replace psychology with sin.)
I wasn’t seeking out suffering, I was complaining and acting persecuted anytime I was asked to do something. This is something I’ve struggled with for most of my four decades on this earth. I always feel like everyone is asking too much of me, and why can’t they see all that I’m already doing? Me. Me. Me. I took the damsel-in-distress too far, using it as an underhanded excuse to never strive, only wait to be rescued. I have found that three sins entwined together to make this a problem:
Fear: I’ve always struggled with my health and so I’ve always had to, or felt I’ve had to, guard my boundaries with great vigilance, or I’ll kill myself by never stopping. Some of that is legitimate. I have a responsibility to be a good steward over the body God gave me, but mostly it was a lack of understanding of rest. Instead of learning to manage my time and myself so that I balanced work and rest, I overworked while hissing at anyone who asked me to do anything.
My limitations were my fears.
If I didn’t fiercely guard my limitations everyone in my life would overwork me to death. If I ever acknowledged that I loved what I did, I would have to do more. If I am happy in my home and the work therein, I’ll never be free. I’ll always be chained to the sink.
Talk about a lack of love and trust, both in the Lord and in my friends and family. Talk about a lack of communication on my part to say let me slow down, think, and try. Talk about a total lack of understanding rest.
Pride: Woven with fear was a big thread of pride: me, me, me. Look at all I’m doing! Look at all I’m sacrificing for you already! And you want more? Fine. I’ll just go kill myself for you, then maybe you’ll be happy. Over and over again pride demands to be seen, acknowledged, praised, and worshiped for my self-sacrifice, for all I’m doing. This turned into resentment when I wasn’t acknowledged, seen, or I was asked to do one more thing. One place I looked, defined a Martyr Complex as “self-righteous self-sacrifice.” That’s a swift punch in the nose. That’s pride. That’s the Pharisee who says thank goodness I’m not like that sinner!
Pride that tells me I deserve to be praised for all that I do because I simply do so much out of love is so ugly.
“Then too, the very laboriousness of her life silenced her secret doubts as to the quality of her love. The more her feet burned and her back ached, the better, for this pain whispered in her ear ‘How much I must love them if I do all this!’ That is the second motive. But I think there is a lower depth. The unappreciativeness of the others, those terrible, wounding words—anything will “wound” a Mrs. Fidget—in which they begged her to send the washing out, enabled her to feel ill-used, therefore, to have a continual grievance, to enjoy the pleasures of resentment.” – CS Lewis, The Four Loves, Affection.
One of the worst aspects of a Martyr Complex, and the pride that drives it, is the way it chains us far from help. We can’t ask for help because if we get help we can no longer wallow in our self-righteous self-sacrifice. Any offer of help is immediately denied. Any offer of help is offensive because it wounds our sense of being ill-used.
Laziness: The funny thing is how easily we mix up rest and laziness. We are lazy when we should work and overwork when we should rest. We’re sinning in our laziness and we’re sinning in our lack of rest. Unfortunately, a big pattern in a Martyr Complex is laziness meshed with busyness. I ran around here and there “doing” so much because then I couldn’t get to the things I was avoiding. I felt accomplished because I was so busy, but I was not doing the calm, contented, completing-a-job work of diligently serving my home and my people. I felt exploited because I was so busy that one more thing becoming my responsibility was too much and how dare you, and what about me, and I guess I’ll just never read a book, visit a friend, watch my show, or sleep. I was so busy being lazy while ignoring actual rest.
Some of this I’m putting into words for the first time. I’ve never been able to see it this clearly even though I know it is always there and I’m always in a bloody battle with it. I don’t feel like I have any great insight into how to defeat a Martyr Complex because it has been such slow going in my own life. But I have a couple thoughts to help:
Acknowledgment: I’m a firm believer in seeing and naming a problem for what it is. Seeing ugliness drives us to create beauty in ourselves and our homes. We can’t effectively work on things when we can’t see them. We can’t do the work if we’ve mislabeled the problem. The first step is to look at our attitudes and really see ourselves as the problem. We talked about complaining in this article. Sometimes we need to see that we’re complaining because we’re indulging in a Martyrs Complex. Woe is me! No one sees all that I’m doing! No one knows all the burdens I bear and how I slave! All they want is more and more.
We must strive to see all the ways we play the martyr, feel the martyr, or think like the martyr.
Correct Our Thinking: 9 times out of 10 we aren’t being asked to do too much, we’re being proud, lazy, and fearful. We must repent and redirect our thinking. It helps to think of our brains, hearts, and souls as gardens. When we see those hideous thoughts and feelings, weed. Rip them out of the ground of your mind, roots and all, and then plant a flower. We have to replace the weed with something good and right or we’ll just grow more weeds. Replace fear with the flower of trust and a willingness to try. Replace laziness with diligence and rest. Replace pride with calm humility. Feed your new flowers rich layers of love and happiness.
Communication: Look at what is spiking the stress and look at what is being asked of you and search out whether you are needlessly freaking out or if you have failed to communicate. Have you failed to communicate with your man and family about something you’re doing? Are we trying to go it alone or have we said yes to too many things? Have we said yes to so many things outside and inside the home that when our family wants a warm meal or has needs, we balk at the need they’re asking us to fulfill? Have we mismanaged our expectations? Have we invested in something we want in the home without thinking about the cost to our family? It is important to put our feet on the ground and think about what are the things that actually must get done and what have we added on ourselves. Even desiring good things in our lives, beauty in our homes, can become a point of victimhood if we try to force them into our lifestyle when they don’t fit. Search these things out and set them aside until it is more appropriate. Some of them we may just have to let go and choose to love the life we have.
Help: Ask for and accept, with grace and humility, help from your husband. This may be his actual physical strength laid at your feet, his hard-earned money offered to hire outside help, or his mental strength gifted to you. It may be all this together. We so easily reject our husbands’ help because we don’t like the way it is offered. Don’t be that way. That’s pride.
Our children should be trained to help us in the home. Children should be taught to pull their weight, be part of the team, add to the productivity of the home. They don’t come into the world doing this naturally. They must be trained to see the work and do it. They have to be taught how to sweep, mop, fold clothes, and all the rest. But we must not rob ourselves of their youthful energy out of some weird twisting of affection. It’s bad for us and bad for them.
Help also comes from other women. You know who doesn’t survive long on the battlefield? The new guy. If we want to do our work well, we need to accept the help of the veterans in our midst. Listen to what they say with humility. Pride drives us to go it alone while also hating everyone who is letting us go it alone. Let’s look to those around us who have the scars to prove they’ve been faithful in the work and ask for help.
Pray: Prayer is a tool the Lord uses in our life to help us align our will to His. If you are struggling with this sin, take it to Him in prayer. Repent and ask for love for your work and people, joy in your work and people, trust in His goodness, and the help you need to put off fear, pride, and laziness. Then, trust Him to work in you while you work on yourself.
A Martyr Complex can ruin our relationships. Playing the constant victim of our husband, children, or circumstances will flavor our homes with an unhappy, unsafe, stagnant aroma. Let’s go to work in pouring ourselves out with delight and not resentment. If we do this, our homes and our people will flourish, and heaven forbid, we’ll actually love what we do.
Side Note: While doing research for this article, I was distraught to find that the first several definitions of a Martyr Complex that popped up defined it as a “mindset that causes someone to sacrifice their own needs and wants for others, often leading to emotional or physical pain and distress.” “A martyr complex is a psychological pattern of self-sacrifice and service to others at your own expense.” Ladies, do you see how they are twisting this from the sin of self-righteousness to the supposedly great sin in our culture of self-sacrifice? Instead of calling this sin what it is in all its ruin and ugliness, it’s being painted as a problem of serving others. We must not only root out the weeds in our inner gardens, but we must set a guard about them. It is not wrong to pour out your life for others. That is a great and good thing. Christ did that for us, we follow Him. Don’t allow the world to invade your mind and tell you that being a victim is the highest calling in your life and that sacrifice is evil.
