Breaking Free from the Victim Trap: Reclaiming Your Personal Power [Paperback]

Diane Zimberoff (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 7, 2011

This new millennium has ushered in the Age of Freedom. A time to break out of old, self-defeating patterns and claim our personal power. A time to face the past, heal the wounds, and move into our full potential. We've all known what it's like to be a victim. Now it is time to break free and thrive. This book is for anyone who has experienced the Victim Trap: (1) people trapped by guilt in compulsive use of alcohol, food, drugs, tobacco, gambling, spending, sex, or codependent relationships. (2) people burdened by stress-related illness, who have "taken on" the problems of those they are trying to help. (3) psychologists, doctors, therapists, nurses, those in the helping professions who may be feeding the Victim Trap by "rescuing" those seeking their services. This book chronicles the rage, the frustration, and most of all the guilt that keeps people in impossible "no win" situations. And it offers a clear, step-by-step approach to leading people out of their self-defeating patterns into new liberating freedom. Diane Zimberoff's Breaking Free from the Victim Trap guides victims attempting to communicate their despair to their therapists, and guides professionals in treating the victim client.

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

This book is written for the non-professional and provides a wonderful window on the inner workings of hypnotherapy in the healing of relationships.

About the Author

Diane Zimberoff, M.A., has been a psychotherapist for twenty-five years, using Heart-Centered Hypnotherapy to heal thousands of individuals and families. Since 1985, she has trained many thousands of professional psychotherapists in her unique style of hypnotherapy, in North America, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.

Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Wellness Press; 5th (2011) edition (November 7, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0962272809
• ISBN-13: 978-0962272806
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 9 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #202,389 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #11 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Health, Mind & Body > Relationships > General
  • #33 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Health, Mind & Body > Personal Health > General
  • #37 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Religion & Spirituality > New Age > Mental & Spiritual Healing

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This Book Changed My Life!!!!, May 3, 2010

By 

Joy D. Thompson "Merkabah Books" (Wenatchee, WA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Breaking Free from the Victim Trap: Reclaiming Your Personal Power (Paperback)

This should be a best seller for 10 years! I had just gotten stung by another betrayal and backstabbing event, I was depressed and felt hopeless... at age 45 (now 64) I had repeated this cycle a thousand times and more... from rescuing family, to erstwhile friends and boyfriends, not to mention unbelievably loser husbands, I felt like committing suicide! It was a rainy westcoast day in Everett, Wa, when I walked into a Unity bookstore, barely functioning and on a lunch break hoping to find some solace in this store as I had done so many times before... Suddenly this book popped out at me! I looked at it and looked again as my heart pounded! You mean someone actually understood that there was such a thing as a "Victim TRAP?"??? I was immediately thrilled and grabbed it off the shelf as if someone might get their hands on it before I did. My heart soared with hope and I couldn't put the book down.

What I learned about myself, the almost mystical triangle (you WILL play all three parts once you step onto the triangle-go-round, whether you are the Rescuer, or you claim to be the Victim, or whether you are the finger wagging persecutor... any of these positions that you 'fall into' (just like a trap), not to mention becoming an addicct to the DRAMA of each part, will inevitably lead you/me to becoming a Victim all over again.

I admit some of the book was tough to take at times as Dianne lays out all the pieces of the puzzle and helps you put them into their places, layer after layer, game after game, of roles we play, the games we get sucked into whether with ourselves or with others (even our pets!). But throughout the process Ms. Zimberoff reveals the secret... it is us! It is taking a position of POWER Vs. the innocent Victim, that we begin to CREATE a new life, a new expectation from ourselves and others... and ONLY then will we be 'set free' from a victim lifestyle.

What she perhaps doesn't warn enough about is when you decide you've had enough 'Black Holes' sucking you into their light sucking vortex, losing your energy, time, money, mind, etc., and you finally take a stand, you will meet resistance and even shunning from co-workers expecting you to rescue them, your children who refuse to grow up, your relatives that are 'always' in a big dramatic [self-made] crisis and expect you to bail them out as you have always done... These people will not be happy campers when you choose to no-longer give your life away to co-dependency, addiction to drama, the "need" to rescue, etc. They think they have your "number" and will whittle away on your soul fully expecting you to give in... and often we capitulate much to our chagrin.

But in the end, if you grew up in an addicted, abusive, manipulative and toxic, dysfunctional family, it is truly the only way out and on up to freedom from the "People of the Lie". Eventually we learn to turn our caretaking upon ourselves, walk carefully among our mine-field of self-made victims, loving them, but no longer being controlled by their unwillingness to grow up and take responsibility for their dramas, traumas and addictions.

I ended up ordering 10 of them from Ms. Zimberoff's website back in the 80's and have since grabbed any copy I've seen in a used book store or thrift store to share with people who, just like me, kept rescuing only to be doubly victimized by our "helpless, innocent, victims"!

26 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Read With Caution, September 10, 2005

By 

Summer Sjesvold (Maryland) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Breaking Free from the Victim Trap: Reclaiming Your Personal Power (Paperback)

The author describes dysfunctional families as those being co-dependent within a victim-persecutor-rescuer triangle. Although the author is a marriage and family therapist and on the back cover it is stated that she created a therapy model called 'Heart Centered Hypnotherapy', I was surprised to find a lack of compassion in her book. She gives many examples of her clients and it felt to me that her overall feel for them was utter disgust. She seems to assume the worst of each client .... families with alot of children purposely have that many kids to become or remain victims. rape victims attracted the rape because of faulty thought processes, children attract their victimization because of decisions made in the womb or shortly thereafter.

Read cautiously if you are feeling fragile with regards to any guilt or the normal processing of your own or your family's victimization. This author will call you a self-pitier, a whiner, a complainer, and attribute many unkind motives to why you have 'attracted' this into your life. She will encourage you to repeat affirmations such as 'I am 100% responsible for what I attract into my life". Since everything from car accidents to a child's parents arguing is something that was 'attracted' into a person's life, it gets pretty discouraging.

I tried to weed through the harsh and judgemental attitude of this author, rescuer turned persecutor, and get something good out of the book. It was difficult but I did find some usable stuff.

I hope there are other books out there a little kinder and gentler with regards to people who have been victimized.

14 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't read if you're going on Jerry Springer Show, October 12, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Breaking Free from the Victim Trap: Reclaiming Your Personal Power (Paperback)

Author shows how to deal with growing up in dysfunctional home and how to become a victor, not a victim. The book explains the dynamics of personal relationships & how to improve them & be a success. Author has a set of self-help audiotapes available through the Wellness Institute that are well worth listening to. There isn't any reason why we can't become I CAN Americans like we used to be. Read this book now!