Unvictiming: The 3 a.m. Spiral That Haunts Trauma Survivors

Trigger Warning: Abuse

It's 3 a.m., and you're staring at your phone in the dark, scrolling through your past. Your thumb hovers over holiday photos where you both looked so happy, old texts full of inside jokes and heart emojis, and social media posts about your "perfect" life together. Your chest tightens as you stare at these digital fragments of joy, trying to reconcile them with the memories of abuse that live in your body. How can both be real? The screen shows one story, but that knot in your stomach tells another.

That knot remembers what the photos and messages hide. But society tells you to distrust its wisdom.

The Voices of Doubt

The voices start in your head, right on cue:

"But look how happy we were in these photos..."
"Why did I stay so long if it was really that bad?"
"Sometimes I pushed back, fought back...what does that make me?"
"Why do I still miss them, after everything?"
"Maybe I deserved it all..."

These aren't just random doubts haunting you in the dark. They're the echo of a culture that has very specific ideas about who deserves sympathy and who doesn't. Each question that tears at you at 3 a.m. was embedded by a society that sorts survivors into "deserving" and "undeserving" victims. And these thoughts don’t just haunt you. They sink their claws in, stirring agitation, self-blame, the urge to escape by any means. They can drive you to the edge, where self-harm or even the thought of ending it all seems like the only way out. Or worse, they pull you back toward the person who hurt you—because sometimes, even pain feels safer than this unbearable doubt.

The Calculated Nature of Abuse

Abusers are experts at exploiting this system. They know exactly how to weaponize these unspoken rules about who gets to be a "real victim":

"Go ahead, call the police. I'll tell them you hit me too."
"No one will believe you. Look how you're acting right now."
"Who would believe someone who keeps coming back?"

These aren't just cruel comments thrown in anger. They're calculated steps in a larger trap. They'll provoke you until you snap, then point to your "crazy" behavior. Force you to fight back, then claim it was mutual. Create situations where you have to lie or steal just to survive. Push you toward ways of coping that they can later use to discredit you.

The Three Layers of Unvictiming

This process of being sorted into "deserving" and "undeserving"—what I call "unvictiming"—happens at three levels that entangle with each other:

1. Inside Our Minds (Self-Unvictiming)

It starts in those quiet 3 a.m. moments when we take society's impossible standards and turn them into weapons against ourselves:

*A real victim wouldn't have talked back."
"A real victim wouldn't still love them."
*A real victim wouldn't have stayed so long."

2. In Our Culture (Cultural Unvictiming)

Then it spreads through everyday conversations, through raised eyebrows and subtle judgments that teach us to doubt ourselves more:

"Well, she didn't leave the first time he hit her."
"He seems so nice in public, though!"
"If it was really abuse, why did she keep posting happy family photos?"

3. In Our Institutions (Institutional Unvictiming)

And then comes the cruelest cut: When those 3 a.m. doubts solidify into concrete barriers in the very systems meant to help. This is where being labeled "deserving" or "undeserving" stops being just about feelings and starts determining who gets help and who gets hurt.

The "deserving" survivors—the ones who fit society's impossible template—find doors opening. Their restraining orders are granted. They get priority for emergency housing. Police believe their stories. They win custody cases.

But for those of us labeled "undeserving"? The vast majority? Those same systems become another form of trauma. We're called "mutual combatants" instead of victims. Sometimes we're the ones getting arrested. Our children are taken away "for their protection." We're diagnosed with personality disorders instead of complex PTSD.

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This institutional unvictiming hits hardest at those who already face systemic barriers. If you're not white, not middle class, not able-bodied, not cisgender, not heterosexual—if you don't match society's image of the "perfect victim" in any way—these systems are even more likely to mark you as "undeserving."

Even trauma diagnoses reflect this sorting process. When the International Classification of Diseases (ICD) introduced complex PTSD in 2022, it seemed like long-overdue validation. But with recognition comes exclusion. The trauma responses left out are, unsurprisingly, the ones that defy the mold of the "meek, compliant victim." As I argued in the British Medical Journal, this diagnosis risks becoming yet another way to decide whose pain is real enough for care—and whose isn’t. Even progress can deepen the divide between those deemed worthy of help and those left behind.

Understanding the System to Break Its Hold

Those 3 a.m. doubts aren't just personal demons. They're the product of a system designed to sort and classify trauma survivors. When we understand our "undeserving" status as a systemic issue rather than a personal failing, we can:

• Build solidarity and challenge institutional barriers collectively
• Create alternative support systems that don't require "perfect victimhood"
• Transform our "disqualifying" experiences into tools for change
• Reclaim our messiness as our humanness

The next time you find yourself scrolling at 3 a.m., trying to reconcile the photos with what your body knows, remember this: Those ambivalent feelings, those messy reactions, those “disqualifying” behaviors? They aren’t proof of your unworthiness. They’re proof that you survived what was never meant to be survivable.

Your story doesn’t need to follow a script to be real. Your pain doesn’t need a permission slip to matter. And your worth was never measured by how well you performed victimhood.