The victim and victimizer are the most predominate roles we reenact in all of our special relationships and events in the world. We vacillate between being the perpetrator (victimizer) and the beneficiary (victim) of behaviors. Most think these are two distinct roles, and therefore, two different sets of problems requiring various solutions. In a Course in Miracles (ACIM), they're really one problem requiring one solution: Correct your brain of all ego judgments which is forgiveness. This solution is available to the victim and victimizer equally when they're not focused on what the other does in form. What is happening in form (behaviors and things) is a estimated movie based on the screenplay (judgments, choices, beliefs, agreements and opinions) in the mind. When the screenplay is set upon, the plot takes shape (form) in the movie as our experience. In the book, the plot has both a noun and verb meanings. Since we've all agreed to these descriptions as the word symbols in the ego world, let's look at those as well as the ones for victim and victimizer who are the characters in the plot. Plot as a noun (victim): The plan manufactured in secret to do something harmful. Victim: Someone who has been harmed, injured, damaged or wiped out by another. Plot as a verb (victimizer): Covertly taking those things of making the plan to do something harmful. Victimizer: Someone out for vicious and unjust treatment (harm) of another. Notice the similar plot for both characters and the common denominator of "harm" in the four (4) descriptions. Going back for a moment, let's recall the Course teachings on off shoot, sharing, identity and function. You expand (share and extend) based on who you think you are which is ultimately the ego or God. The belief of who you think you are is also your identity and work as those are the same. To use the example of victim and victimizer, the Course is saying that we are extending ourselves, sharing our identity as the victim, into the function (purpose and activity) of the victimizer. Since identity and function are the same, the victim would be the victimizer. In this article, we're going to explore why the victimizer is really a victim in an expanded role, and not a different role as we wish to think. However, we must first acknowledge that in the ego thought system, the victim and victimizer are located in the idea of splitting up and differences. Because of this, they're heavily engaged in condemning the opposition party and then forgiving their transgressions. That's subject-object forgiveness of the ego also known as forgiveness to destroy. It's where we find bargains and compromises to end conflicts between the roles based on their mutual belief in harm. A quick review of these roles ensures that their idea of splitting up may not be the truth. Victim Anyone saying yes with the ego thought system enough to say they have been harmed (something happened and there's a problem in the plot) is one choice away from the victimizer role. That doesn't mean they're different. It means you're hiding judgments from yourself. Subjects talk about their harm to encourage others, and themselves, that their harm experience is real and true. They believe they are in need of some kind of form ego help within the ego world. Ego help goes two ways. First, it can be with forms things like money, food, places to live, etc. The second way the ego helps is in form behaviors like retribution contrary to the victimizer who caused the harm. Retribution (deserved punishment) is a responsibility judgment in the mind that the victim wishes carried out in the form experience. It is making a purposeful choice to become (extend into) the victimizer who is out for vicious and unjust treatment, or harm, of the perpetrator. What you do not have considered is that through retribution (victimization), the victim is asking to feel harmed again, i. e., to feel like a victim again. It's the same plot. To look at this another way, let's use fear as the example. When someone feels harmed (victim role), they fear so much the harm that happened in the past as well as what harm might happen in the future. It's the anxiety about the unknown since harm has been judged possible. Choosing retribution to cause harm (expanding into victimizer) simply means the victim expects to be harmed again which adds yet another layer of fear. When you attack (retribution, victimizer), you must now live in anticipation (anxiety and fear) about when the person you've now made a victim will need retribution against you and what that will look like. Thus, you already feel like a victim from that requirement and got exactly what you chose which was to feel harmed. If he or she retaliate, and they probably will, you get even more of the experience. Victim-Victimizer A victimizer is activities like a victim. No victim goes out for retribution unless he or she first believes they have been harmed how the definition of a victim. The judgment being hidden is that the role of victim was merely expanded to include attack (victimizer) so you can continue to feel like a victim. Attack, or retribution in this example, has compromise as a major dynamic. All bargains and compromises to end conflict (forgiveness to destroy) in the victim-victimizer relationship are attempts to achieve a balance in the guiltiness and get needs met within the form experience. Simply believe in splitting up, each will have to give up something to the other. In the ego world, however, someone must lose for another to gain so subjects and victimizers must be focused on constraining their own loss in the form experience. Giving up something in the bargain, they believe than can save some other part for themselves, i. e., compromise. This is how they balance the guiltiness without realizing this accomplishes activities like making the victim-victimizer a slave to guiltiness both ways. Someone isn't going to uphold their end of the bargain and a compromise will be needed. When that fails, further attack (retribution and fear) will take place and the guilt-attack cycle continues as does the perceived separate roles since you've asked (chosen in the mind) for the return harm experience. That's how fear-based and building plots work. What you may not realize is that the compromise was self-sacrifice. Your sacrificed love, peace, joy and happiness so you could continue to feel harmed. Additionally, you sacrificed your identity-function with God and chose the ego, again. The problem Back at our wrongly recognized idea of splitting up in the metaphysics, we thought i would believe that we were the victim of God. Blaming God and making Him into the victimizer is from continued judgment that God allowed the splitting up to occur. God was vicious and unjust which caused us harm and that is the very definition of these two roles which we project into our form experience. Each time we (as the victim) responsibility and want retribution (as the victimizer), we forget that we are holding ourselves responsible for our beliefs because we are doing it through responsibility (ego, projection) instead of forgiveness a course in miracles (Holy Spirit). The culprit the victimizer (projection) while we choose the victimizer (retribution) is the reminder of the Course teaching: Ideas don't leave their source. You see the victimizer in another because you are already choosing that function for yourself. Remember, subjects (identity) extend themselves into the victimizer (function) to miscreate more of the same idea of harm. The victimizer is hinting that you are responsible for your beliefs. In other words, all action (function) is based on belief of who you are (identity). Ideas don't leave the origin (you). The victim-victimizer war could only be on yourself. The fear, guiltiness and pain in the victim's mind is the same fear, guiltiness and pain in the victimizer's mind as there is no splitting up in the one ego. With no splitting up in ego, then there is no splitting up "in" God. All you're doing giving in the victim judgments is ending the idea that you separated "from" God since judgment is not "in" God. This changes your identity-function to God-Love so you no longer extend the ego's identity-function of victim-victimization. The problem with the victim-victimizer is that we've hidden this realization from ourselves. Cease all attack (victimizer) and take responsibility for your wrongly recognized identity as a victim. The way out is to take the victimizer function with you. Forgiveness in the Course works equally well for the victim and victimizer since they are really the same.