When people play "the victim"?

[Lamb]

How do you deal with people who play the victim? You know the ones...the ones who might break a rule and then pretend they didn't know about the rule? Or insist someone else did it instead of them? Or the other guy started it first?

 

[tango]

So much depends on the situation.

Assuming you're not talking about small children, the people who always play the victim get really tedious. In a work situation there might not be very many options to avoid them, so documenting everything is a good thing because the chances are sooner or later they will try and pin something on you.

In something like a volunteer situation or a church, decide whether you can deal with it and either escalate it or leave. My wife and I left our last church over something very much like this, because one person in leadership was becoming abusive and others in leadership showed more interest in containing fallout than in addressing the issue.

 

[Frankj]

Sort of depends on why they are doing it, and why it bothers me that they are.