I Call It Love.....

I can feature you're thinking, okaaay, so the girl likes coffee--alot. LOL! Indeed. Actually I kinda hated it alot as a young person. Though I LOVED the smell of it. As a youngster, every time mom opened a new can (Puttnam's Inn) I'd race to get a deep whiff!! Our house was coffee central..still is. I loved coffee ice cream and candies too, those are still a big favorite. So a bit odd I didn't like it in a cup. 

Somewhere in my twenties I finally smartened up and got it, oh man WHAT I had been missing out on!  I figured out, for me, it's gotta taste like those whiffs--STRONG!! The best guilty pleasure of all.... Starbuck's Caramel Frappuccino Affogato! Never would I have believed I'd love it cold too. And now, well, I'm known as an addict. And I love cool pics of it too!! Just a small nod here to what I think 
is one of earths great gifts....

Don't Buy Into All The Hype

Nine Persistent Cancer Myths Debunked

Google 'cancer' and you’ll be faced with millions of web pages. And the number of YouTube videos you find if you look up ‘cancer cure’ 
is similarly vast.

The problem is that much of the information out there is at best inaccurate, or at worst dangerously misleading. There are plenty of evidence-based easy to understand pages about cancer, 
but there are just as many, if not more, pages spreading myths.

And it can be hard to distinguish fact from fiction, as much of the inaccurate information looks and sounds perfectly plausible. But if you scratch the surface and look at the evidence, many continually perpetuated ‘truths’ become unstuck.

In this post, we want to set the record straight on 9 cancer myths we regularly encounter. Driven by the evidence, not by rhetoric or anecdote, we describe what the reality that research actually shows 
to be true.

• Myth 1: There’s a miracle cancer cure
• Myth 2: 'Acidic diets cause cancer
• Myth 3:  Superfoods prevent cancer
• Myth 4: Big Pharma is suppressing it
• Myth 5: Cancer has a sweet tooth
• Myth 6: Cancer is a fungus use Baking Soda
• Myth 7: Cancer is a man made modern disease
• Myth 8: Cancer treatment kills more than it cures
• Myth 9: We’ve made no progress in fighting cancer

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Myth 1: There's a miracle cancer cure

From cannabis to coffee enemas, the internet is awash with videos and personal anecdotes about ‘natural’ ‘miracle’ cures for cancer.

But extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. YouTube videos and Facebook posts are emphatically not scientific evidence and aren’t the same as good quality, peer-reviewed evidence.

In many cases it’s impossible to tell whether patients featured in such anecdotal sources have been ‘cured’ by any particular alternative treatment or not. We know nothing about their medical diagnosis, stage of disease or outlook, or even if they actually had cancer in the first place. For instance, we don’t know what other cancer treatments they had.

And we only hear about the success stories...what about the people who have tried it and have not survived? The dead can’t speak, and often people who make bold claims for ‘miracle’ cures only pick their best cases, without presenting the full picture.

This highlights the importance of publishing data from peer-reviewed, scientifically rigorous lab research and clinical trials. Firstly, because conducting proper clinical studies enables researchers to prove that a prospective cancer treatment is safe and effective. And secondly, because publishing these data allows doctors around the world to judge for themselves and use it for the benefit of their patients.

This is the standard to which all cancer treatments should be held.

That’s not to say the natural world isn’t a source of potential treatments, from aspirin (willow bark) to penicillin (mold). For example, the cancer drug taxol was first extracted from the bark and needles of the Pacific Yew tree.

But that’s a far cry from saying you should chew bark to combat a tumor. It’s an effective treatment because the active ingredient has been purified and tested in clinical trials. So we know that it’s safe and effective, and what dose to prescribe.

Of course people with cancer want to beat their disease by any means possible. And it’s completely understandable to be searching high and low for potential cures. But our advice is to be wary of anything labelled a ‘miracle cure’, especially if people are trying to sell it to you.

Wikipedia has this excellent list of ineffective cancer treatments 
that are often touted as miracle cures, which is worth a browse.

If you want to know about the scientific evidence about cannabis, cannabinoids and cancer...a topic we’re often asked about (please take a look at our extensive blog post on the subject), including information about the clinical trials we’re helping to fund.

And if you’ve seen links to article about scientists in Canada “curing cancer but nobody notices”, these refer to an interesting but currently unproven drug called DCA, which has also been written about before.

Myth 2: 'Acidic diet causes cancer

Some myths about cancer are surprisingly persistent, despite flying in the face of basic biology. One such idea is that overly ‘acidic’ diets cause your blood to become ‘too acidic’, which can increase your risk of cancer. Their proposed answer: increase your intake of healthier ‘alkaline’ foods like green vegetables and fruits (including, paradoxically, lemons).

This is biological nonsense. True, cancer cells can’t live in an overly alkaline environment, but neither can any of the other cells in your body.

Blood is usually slightly alkaline. This is tightly regulated by the kidneys within a very narrow and perfectly healthy range. It can’t be changed for any meaningful amount of time by what you eat, and any extra acid or alkali is simply peed out in urine.

To maintain the correct balance within the body, your urine can and does change pH, depending on what you’ve eaten. (explained in detail in this post). This can be seen by testing urine pH (acidity) after eating different foods and is the basis of the mistaken belief that diet can “make the body alkaline”. But that’s all you’re changing, and anyone who claims otherwise simply doesn’t understand how the body works.

While eating lots of green veg is certainly healthy, that’s not because of any effect on how acid or alkaline your body is.

There is something called acidosis. This is a physiological condition that happens when your kidneys and lungs can’t keep your body’s pH (a measure of acidity) in balance. It is often the result of serious illness or poisoning. It can be life-threatening and needs urgent medical attention, but it’s not down to overly acidic diets.

We know that the immediate environment around cancer cells, the (microenvironment) can become acidic. This is due to differences in the way that tumours create energy and use oxygen compared with healthy tissue. Researchers are working hard to understand how this happens, in order to develop more effective cancer treatments.

But there’s no good evidence to prove that diet can manipulate whole body pH, or that it has an impact on cancer.

Myth 3: Superfoods Prevent Cancer

Blueberries, beetroot, broccoli, garlic, green tea… the list goes on. Despite thousands of websites claiming otherwise, there’s no such thing as a ‘superfood’. It’s a marketing term used to sell products 
and has no scientific basis.

That’s not to say you shouldn’t think about what you eat. Some foods are clearly healthier than others. The odd blueberry or mug of green tea certainly could be part of a healthy, balanced diet. Stocking up on fruits and veg is a great idea, and eating a range of different veg is helpful too, but the specific vegetables you choose doesn’t really matter.

Our bodies are complex and cancer is too, so it’s a gross over simplification to say that any one food, on its own, could have a major influence over your chance of developing cancer.

The steady accumulation of evidence over several decades points to a simple, but not very newsworthy fact that the best way to reduce your risk of cancer is by a series of long term healthy behaviors such as not smoking, keeping active, keeping a healthy body weight and cutting back on alcohol.

Myth 4: Big Pharma is suppressing it 

Hand in hand with the idea that there is a cornucopia of ‘miracle cures’ is the idea that governments, the pharmaceutical industry and even charities are colluding to hide the cure for cancer because they make so much money out of existing treatments.

Whatever the particular ‘cure’ being touted, the logic is usually the same: it’s readily available, cheap and can’t be patented, so the medical establishment is suppressing it in order to line its own pockets. But, as we've written before, there’s no conspiracy.... sometimes it just doesn’t work.

There’s no doubt that the pharmaceutical industry has a number of issues with transparency and clinical trials that it needs to address (the book Bad Pharma by Ben Goldacre is a handy primer). We push regulators and pharmaceutical companies hard to make sure that effective drugs are made available at a fair price to the NHS although it’s important to remember that developing and trialling new drugs costs a lot of money, which companies need to recoup.

Problems with conventional medicine don’t automatically prove that alternative ‘cures’ work. To use a metaphor, just because cars sometimes crash doesn’t mean that flying carpets are a viable transport option.

It simply doesn’t make sense that pharmaceutical companies would want to suppress a potential cure. Finding a highly effective therapy would guarantee huge worldwide sales.

And the argument that treatments can’t be patented doesn’t hold up. Pharma companies are not stupid, and they are quick to jump on promising avenues for effective therapies. There are always ways to repackage and patent molecules, which would give them a return on the investment required to develop and test them in clinical trials 
(a cost that can run into many millions) if the treatment turns out to work.

It’s also worth pointing out that charities such as Cancer Research UK and government funded scientists are free to investigate promising treatments without a profit motive. And it’s hard to understand why NHS doctors who often prescribe generic, off-patent drugs wouldn’t use cheap treatments if they’d been shown to be effective in clinical trials.

For example, we’re funding large-scale trials of aspirin a drug first made in 1897, and now one of the most widely used off patent drugs in the world. We’re researching whether it can prevent bowel cancer in people at high rise, reduce the side effects of chemotherapy, and even prevent cancer coming back and improve survival.

Finally, it’s worth remembering that we are all human even politicians and Big Pharma executives and cancer can affect anyone. People in pharmaceutical companies, governments, charities and the wider ‘medical establishment’ all can and do die of cancer too.

Here at Cancer Research UK we have seen loved ones and colleagues go through cancer. Many of them have survived. Many have not. To suggest that we are collectively and individually hiding ‘the cure’ is not only absurd, it’s offensive to the global community of dedicated scientists, to the staff and supporters of cancer research organizations such as Cancer Research UK and, most importantly, 
to cancer patients and their families.

Myth 5: Cancer has a sweet tooth

Another idea we see a lot is that sugar apparently ‘feeds cancer cells’, suggesting that it should be completely banished from a patient’s diet.

This is an unhelpful oversimplification of a highly complex area that we’re only just starting to understand.

‘Sugar’ is a catch-all term. It refers to a range of molecules including simple sugars found in plants, glucose and fructose. The white stuff in the bowl on your table is called sucrose and is made from glucose and fructose stuck together. All sugars are carbohydrates, commonly known as carbs molecules made from carbon, hydrogen and oxygen.

Carbs, whether from cake or a carrot, get broken down in our digestive system to release glucose and fructose. These get absorbed into the bloodstream to provide energy for us to live.

All our cells, cancerous or not, use glucose for energy. Because cancer cells are usually growing very fast compared with healthy cells, they have a particularly high demand for this fuel. There’s also evidence that they use glucose and produce energy in a different 
way from healthy cells.

Researchers are working to understand the differences in energy usage in cancers compared with healthy cells, and trying to exploit them to develop better treatments (including the interesting but far from proven drug (DCA).

But all this doesn’t mean that sugar from cakes, sweets and other sugary foods specifically feeds cancer cells, as opposed to any other type of carbohydrate. Our body doesn't pick and choose which cells get what fuel. It converts pretty much all the carbs we eat to glucose, fructose and other simple sugars, and they get taken up by tissues when they need energy.

While it’s very sensible to limit sugary foods as part of an overall healthy diet and to avoid putting on weight, that’s a far cry from saying that sugary foods specifically feed cancer cells.

Both the ‘acidic diet’ and ‘sugar feeds cancer’ myths distort sensible dietary advice, of course, nobody is saying that eating a healthy diet doesn’t matter when it comes to cancer. You can read about the scientific evidence on diet and cancer on our website.

But dietary advice must be based on nutritional and scientific fact. When it comes to offering diet tips to reduce cancer risk, research shows that the same boring healthy eating advice still holds true. Fruit, vegetables, fibre, white meat and fish are good. Too much fat, salt, sugar, red or processed meat and alcohol are less so.

Also, this post, "What would you eat while being treated for cancer", is packed with links to evidence-based advice from our CancerHelp UK website. And this post, from the Junkfood Science Blog, explores the science behind sugar and cancer in more detail.

Myth 6: Cancer is a fungus 

Sodium Bicarbonate Is The Cure

This ‘theory’ comes from the not-very-observant observation that “cancer is always white”.

One obvious problem with this idea apart from the fact that cancer cells are clearly not fungal in origin is that cancer isn’t always white. Some tumors are. But some aren’t. Ask any pathologist or cancer surgeon, or have a look on Google Image search (but maybe not after lunch…).

Proponents of this theory say that cancer is caused by infection by fungus candida, and that tumors are actually the body’s attempt at protecting itself from this infection.

But there’s no evidence to show that this is true (and plenty of evidence going back at least as far as 1902 that it starts from faults our own cells).

Furthermore, plenty of perfectly healthy people can be infected with candida it’s part of the very normal array of microbes that live in (and on) all of us. Usually our immune system keeps candida in check, but infections can get more serious in people with compromised immune systems, such as those who are HIV-positive.

The ‘simple solution’ is apparently to inject tumors with baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). This isn’t even the treatment used to treat proven fungal infections, let alone cancer. On the contrary, there’s good evidence that high doses of sodium bicarbonate can 

lead to serious even fatal consequences.

Some studies suggest that sodium bicarbonate can affect cancers transplanted into mice or cells grown in the lab, by neutralizing the acidity in the microenvironment immediately around a tumor. And researchers in the US are running a small clinical trial investigating whether sodium bicarbonate capsules can help to reduce cancer pain and to find the maximum dose that can be tolerated, rather than testing whether it has any effect on tumors.

As far as we are aware, there have been no published clinical trials of sodium bicarbonate as a treatment for cancer.

It’s also worth pointing out that it’s not clear whether it’s possible to give doses of sodium bicarbonate that can achieve any kind of meaningful effect on cancer in humans, although it’s something that researchers are investigating.

Because the body strongly resists attempts to change its pH, usually by getting rid of bicarbonate through the kidneys, there’s a risk that doses large enough to significantly affect the pH around a tumor might cause a serious condition known as alkalosis.

One estimate suggests that a dose of around 12 grams of baking soda per day (based on a 65 kg adult) would only be able to counteract the acid produced by a tumor roughly one cubic millimetre in size. But doses of more than about 30 grams per day are likely to cause severe health problems, you do the math.

Myth 7: Cancer is a  modern disease

It might be more prominent in the public consciousness now than in times gone by, but cancer isn't just a 'modern' man-made disease of Western society. Cancer has existed as long as humans have. It was described thousand of years ago by Egyptian and Greek physicians, and researchers have discovered tell-tale signs of cancer in a 3,000 year old skeleton. It's even been discovered in dinosaur bones.

While it’s certainly true that global lifestyle-related diseases like cancer are on the rise, the biggest risk factor for cancer is age.

The simple fact is that more people are living long enough to develop cancer because of our success in tackling infectious diseases and other historical causes of death such as malnutrition. It’s perfectly normal for DNA damage in our cells to build up as we age, and such damage can lead to cancer developing.

We’re also now able to diagnose cancers more accurately, thanks to advances in screening, imaging and pathology.

Yes, lifestyle, diet and other things like air pollution collectively have a huge impact on our risk of cancer smoking for instance is behind a quarter of all cancer deaths in the UK but that’s not the same as saying it’s entirely a modern, man-made disease. There are plenty of natural causes of cancer for example, one in six worldwide cancers is caused by viruses and bacteria.

Myth 8: Treatment kills more than cures

Let’s be clear, cancer treatment whether chemotherapy, radiotherapy or surgery is no walk in the park. The side effects can be tough. After all, treatments that are designed to kill cancer cells will inevitably affect healthy cells too.

And sometimes, sadly, treatment doesn’t work. We know that it’s very difficult to treat late-stage cancer that has spread throughout the body, and while treatment can provide relief from symptoms and prolong life, it’s not going to be a cure for very advanced cancers.

Surgery is still the most effective treatment we have for cancer, provided it’s diagnosed early enough for an operation to be done. And radiotherapy helps cure more people than cancer drugs. Yet chemotherapy and other cancer drugs have a very important part to play in cancer treatment in some cases helping to cure the disease, and in others helping to prolong survival.

The claims on the internet that chemotherapy is “only 3 per cent effective” are highly misleading and outdated, and are explored in more depth in this post from the Science Based Medicine blog.

We also wrote this post in response to concerns that chemotherapy might “encourage cancer”.

It important to point out that in an increasing number of cases, the drugs do work. For example, more than 96 per cent of all men are now cured of testicular cancer, compared to fewer than 70 per cent in the 1970s thanks in part to a drug we helped to develop called cisplatin. And three-quarters of children with cancer are now cured, compared with around a quarter in the late 1960s – most of them are alive today directly thanks to chemotherapy.

We know that we still have a long way to go until we have effective, kinder treatments for all types of cancer. And it’s important that doctors, patients and their families are realistic and honest about the best options for treatment, especially when cancer is very advanced.

It may be better to opt for treatment aimed at reducing pain and symptoms rather than attempting to cure the disease (palliative care). Balancing quality and quantity of life is always going to be an issue in cancer treatment, and it’s one that each patient must decide for themselves.

Myth 9: No progress in fighting cancer

This simply isn’t true. Thanks to advances in research, survival from cancer has doubled in the UK over the past 40 years, and death rates have fallen by 10% over the past decade alone. In fact, half of all patients now survive at least 10 years.

This article by our chief clinician Professor Peter Johnson, outlines some of the key facts.

By definition, these figures relate to people treated at least 10 years ago. It’s likely that the patients being diagnosed and treated today have an even better chance of survival.

To see how the picture has changed, make yourself a cuppa and settle down to watch this hour-long documentary we helped to make The Enemy Within: 50 Year Of Fighting Cancer. From the early days of chemotherapy in the 50s and 60s to the latest ‘smart’ drugs and pinpoint-accurate radiotherapy, it highlights how far we’ve come over the years.

There’s still a long way to go. There are some cancers where progress has been much slower such as lung, brain, pancreatic and esophageal cancers. And when you lose someone you love to cancer, it can feel as though no progress has been made at all.

That’s why we’re working so hard to beat cancer sooner, to make sure that nobody loses their life prematurely to the disease.

Article From Cancer Research UK

The Victim Mentality

I have experienced this particular personality a few times throughout my adult life. If you've known and been involved with a person with these traits, and I think most of us have run across it...it can be one 

of the most baffling, frustrating and exhaustive things one can experience.  

Their mainstay is how wronged they have been in life..whether it is the doctor, the crooked lawyer, the landlord.... Listening to  the tales of woe and utterly bizarre stories that would so many times strike me as being way too out there to have any basis in actual correct fact or truth. At least to my senses. It is not long before it becomes wholly evident the person is embellishing things in such an over the top way in their attempt to convince you of their terrible tales. And just too dim to make out that their extreme posture is a total give away and bell ringer to NOT believe them. I would unfailing experience a mixture of amazement, an odd curiosity of what really makes them tick, but ultimately just wanting to call them out and bluntly say what I really thought of their unorthodox behavior. Which I found so undignified. But by nature, I am one to just keep my composure and tact. Like many, I think, I dread this kind of confrontation. So instead I'd make the attempt to stick to the facts and weed through the unsound reasoning and deluded chaotic beliefs that were so apparent. This tactic typically ends up with the person cork screwing themselves into their own miasma of confusion and frustration as their story does not hold up to scrutiny. Then naturally comes the predictable attempt to divert. Sometimes it would result in an admission of faulty thinking, though very rarely. And sadly, they 
will just revert right back, bringing it up again and again. Sigh....

Understandably, I would come away from these interactions agitated and completely weary and depleted. Mostly what I came away feeling was a deep sense of gratitude for not being afflicted in such a way as this. As well as a profound sense of sadness and pity that people can end up so emotionally crippled. I hold my own grace and dignity in dealing with life's trials as a pretty high priority. And grateful to God for giving me the fortitude I've needed to maintain that, particularly after witnessing this type of dreadful self inflicted torment.

In the end you usually find that these people are pretty much fixed and intractable in their ways and thinking. So to preserve your own sanity you are really left with little choice but to create distance. And most times to just walk away. I have done that, though very against my nature. But I have learned that you cannot help someone who refuses to help themselves.....

"If you always play the victim, then

you are the victim of your own reality"

A person who adopts a victim mentality is said to not only cause self-harm, but also cause a lot of stress and negativity in the people around him. 

Did You Know?

It is said that the victim mentality develops as a result of emotional, physical, and other needs not having been met during childhood.

Have you ever been around people who just have to make everything about themselves? And not in a narcissistic sort of way, no, but in a more depressing, 'the world is out to get me', 'why does this always happen to me', 'I'm always wronged' sort of way. Draining, isn't it? These people seem to have the ability to turn everything into a superlative form of suffering that always seems to affect them and only them―so if someone speaks about the bad day they're having, you can bet they have a story of an even worse day to trump that one.

All these signs, in addition to several more, are a clear indication of what is known as a 'victim mentality', and the adoption of the same is not only harmful for the person portraying it, but also taxing for the people around who have to deal with it. 

Victim Mentality Characteristics

It's a learned behavior

The victim mentality is a learned and acquired behavior, which means that it does not have at its base in any biological or genetic workings. It's something that the person has brought on due to constant churning and spinning of negative thoughts.

The Victim Believes He Has Been Wronged

In the true sense of the word, a victim is described as someone who has been harmed even though he was not responsible for the incident and could not prevent the same, and therefore, deserves empathy. People who have a victim mentality are always under the impression that they have been treated unfairly, and have been wronged against without any fault of theirs, even though there is clear evidence that proves that they were responsible (completely or partially) for what happened.

The Victim Believes He Has No Control Over Life

These people believe that they have no control over the outcome of anything, and they therefore shed responsibility too. When faced with any negativity or setbacks in life, they refuse to do something about it and move on; instead, they focus on the negative, play it over and over again in their heads, and thrive on the drama.

It Leads to 'Believing in the Worst'
People who adopt a victim mentality are a classic example of pessimists, they look at every situation as a potential wet blanket. They also feel that the world is out to get them―even though there might be evidence pointing otherwise. They are the first ones to point out the possible negative outcomes of any new situation, and therefore, not only do they only refuse to try something new themselves, but they also discourage others with their constant negativity.

It is Rampant with Negative Emotions
The victim mentality leads to people constantly being guided by negative emotions like anger, fear, and sadness. There is always a suspicion about the intentions of people.

The Victim Expects Sympathy
One of the main characteristics of this behavior is that the 'victim' expects sympathy for all the bad things that he has gone through. He wants the attention and constant validation from others that he has suffered a lot even though he did not deserve it, or how brave he is for having gone through so much and is still managing to go on in life.

The Victim Plays the Blame Game

At no point will the victim take responsibility for what he's going through. Instead, he will shift the blame onto others and hold them responsible for all his 'misfortunes' and troubles.

The Victim is Stuck in a Self-pitying Mode
One of the most prominent signs displayed by a person with a victim mentality is playing the self-pitying role well. He believes that life has dealt him an unfair hand and is constantly seen lamenting with sentences like 'Why me'. He also believes that others are luckier, happier, with better lives than him, and that he is suffering more than anyone else.

The Victim Spins Tales of Woe

In order to continue garnering sympathy and compassion, the victim begins to spin tales of woe. These may either be exaggerated versions of what really happened, or they might be downright lies. He needs to do this because he has gotten used to living in the shadow of sympathy, so he has to constantly spin better tales to elicit the same response from people. He also knows that in order to garner this sympathy, there needs to be a shock factor in his tales, which he works towards developing.

The Victim is Defensive

The victim develops a negative outlook, wherein he believes that everyone is out to get him and bring him down, such that whenever someone says something about him, no matter how neutral it is, he immediately attaches a negative connotation to it and goes on the defensive.

The Victim Puts Himself Down
The victim develops a tendency of putting himself down. Due to this self-abasing quality, he/she is low on confidence and self-esteem. He is also seen to commonly use terms like I can't (negating one's ability) and 'I must' (having no choice).

The Victim Refuses to Analyze and Improve

When people around him notice his self-victimization tendencies and initiate ways to tell him about his self-harming ways, he refuses to analyze his actions and thereby fails to improve as well. Instead, not only does he go on the defensive and dismiss all the suggestions, he also develops a negative opinion about any person who suggests change.

The Victim has Passive-aggressive Tendencies
These people are extremely passive-aggressive in their dealings with others. Being low in confidence and having conditioned their minds to believe in things like 'I can't' and 'I have no choice', they cannot express their anger in proper ways. As a result, they tend to sulk, withdraw, lie, make excuses, and purposely spoil a task.

The Victim Sets Himself Up for Failure

They are so self-defeating in their actions and words, it is almost as if these people are masochistic by nature, in that they thrive to hurt themselves. They will purposely get into situations that will lead to harm, and even though there are better choices to be made, it seems like they are putting themselves up for failure.

"Self pity is easily the most destructive

of non-pharmaceutical narcotics

IT IS ADDICTIVE

It gives momentary pleasure and

seperates the victim from REALITY"

                                            

                                                ~John W. Gardner

Dealing with a self-victimizing person is not an easy task. For one, they thrive on being miserable, so they ensure that there is a steady flow of negative comments and a prediction of negative outcomes happening constantly―it is very difficult to be around such negativity and negative people at all times. Moreover, they ensure that they are the center of attention when it comes to relating anything bad about life. Nobody else is allowed to have a bad experience or relate a misfortune. To add to this, whenever someone tries to speak to them about their self-harming nature, they react very strongly, go on the defensive, refuse to analyze and change, and tag the person as being 'bad', 'jealous', or 'hurtful'. Dealing with a victim mentality in relationships can be extremely draining for the partner of the victim, and is one of the main reasons that these people find it difficult to sustain a relationship for long.

"Sometimes the easiest way 

to solve a problem is to STOP

participating in the problem"

                                    ~Jonathan Mead

A person afflicted by the victim mentality is himself responsible for degrading the quality of his life. Which is why, it is important for him to not only understand that he has got into this self-abasing mode, but also learn to take appropriate steps to overcome the same. Not only will this help in improving his life and lead to a more positive outlook on a personal front, but also help in improving relations 

with the people around him.