“Woe is me!”

Have you ever heard someone actually say this in real life?

I doubt it. It’s an overly dramatic phrase that you’ll only really hear in old plays and classic Hollywood movies.

But the sentiment that it expresses is still alive and thriving today in people who love to play the victim.

Yes, these folks are trying to grab your attention and sympathy by making it seem like they’ve been horribly injured or unjustly wronged. The thing is, though, that they’re just making these things up.

They may have been hurt a little bit – it happens to everyone. Or they may not even realize that they’re doing it but just expressing themselves in excessive ways.

So what do they say instead to try to get you to feel sorry for them?

Here are 12 phrases of people who regularly play the victim in life when things aren’t actually all that bad at all.

1) “I can’t believe what (insert name here) did!”

If there’s one thing that perpetual victims excel at, it’s blaming others.

After all, if there’s a victim, there has to be an attacker or a foe. Sure, they might sometimes blame luck, life, or the world at large, but it’s a little bit more reasonable to blame another person.

That’s why you’ll hear them name the perpetrators directly a lot of the time. 

Other times, they may make their statements more broad and unclear. That might make you feel like they’re being noble by not ratting people out directly, but it’s probably because the whole thing is fiction anyway.

2) “How could they say that!?”

I’ve never met anyone who’s perfect. Maybe you have, but I kind of doubt it.

That leaves at least 99.9% of the population being people who may make the occasional mistake or do things that aren’t quite up to snuff.

In other words, everyone is liable to receive criticism at some point or other in life. 

The thing is, though, that chronic victim-players (is that a word?) can’t take criticism. What other people might accept as a perfectly normal critique of something they’ve done, these people feel attacked and can get really offended.

It’s like they’re actually being assaulted and assailed rather than simply criticized.

They’ll play it up like it’s the worst thing that anyone ever did to them!

3) “This is the worst day ever!”

Speaking of “the worst,” people who always play the victim seem to break their own records constantly.

They have no problem at all emphasizing the negativity of any situation. But it’s pretty obvious that they’re blowing things out of proportion if you actually know them well enough because they’ll have the worst day ever pretty darned often.

When they have no one else to blame but still feel like they need sympathy and attention (which is what this behavior is all about), why not blame the universe?

4) “I need your help!”

If you’re acquainted with a perpetual victim, you’ll definitely hear this phrase a lot. 

If you’re friends with them, you’ll get to hear it even more.

We all run into little crises in our lives and even tiny issues we have to deal with.

That’s the way life works!

But for these people, those little problems are made out to be insurmountable. Their mole hills quickly become mountains, and their needs are immediate and pressing.

To get attention, they’ll call you up and say, “I need your help!”

They’ll expect you to enact a dramatic rescue for even the most mundane situations, like a spider in the living room or a toilet that won’t flush.

5) “This is soooooo bad.”

For professional victims to get validation, they need to receive your sympathy. And to do that, they do what they can to get attention.

One way they do this is to play things up and be melodramatic.

They’ll exaggerate how bad things are so that they seem really and truly victimized, though, of course, they’re always doing it to themselves.

If they order food and it’s not great, it’s going to be horrible. If they have trouble getting a refund for something they want to return to a shop, they get the worst service ever.

It’s amazing that they, alone, have the worst luck and get hurt and abused everywhere they go, isn’t it?

6) “They’ve always had it out for me.”

What’s a victim without a perpetrator?

For someone who’s a victim all the time, what makes more sense than an archenemy with a grudge?

You’ll hear these people say things like, “They’ve always hated me,” to explain how they’re unfairly targeted and even persecuted.

With an enemy that never goes away, they’re free to play the victim forever, which is exactly what they want to do.

7) “You wouldn’t understand.”

Oh, man! Have you ever heard this one?

This is such a manipulative phrase that it gives me shivers just writing it down!

Saying this is designed to draw you into a trap.

They’ll tell you that they’ve been hurt, and if you suggest that they’re overreacting, boy-oh-boy, get ready!

They’ll pull this old gem out to make you feel like you’re too dumb to get it and not empathetic enough to relate.

So you can’t call them on their bullshit because it will always flip around and splat in your face.

8) “No one’s ever been treated so badly.”

One thing about perpetual victims that most people don’t realize is that things always have to be about them.

They even take away from real victims and their situations by feeding their own fantasies.

In a lot of cases, this is because they don’t have much empathy and don’t think about the feelings of others.

So you’ll hear them saying phrases like this to make it seem like they are the only ones in the world who have ever been mistreated. 

But just watch what happens if they ever run into a real victim. They’ll often try to out-victim them or devalue their experiences to make their own sound worse by comparison.

9) “It wasn’t my fault!”

We all know that blaming the victim is considered almost as bad as what was first done to them.

So if you want to get away with anything, playing the victim actually makes a whole lot of sense.

Who would dare to blame you for a situation that made you into a victim?

What a perfect way to avoid responsibility!

When something goes wrong, and it’s their own fault, these people will suddenly make it clear to you that they’re the ones who got hurt in the whole thing.

What a strategy to make sure nothing ever sticks to you!

10) “You can see how bad it was, right?”

Since these faux victims are always searching for validation, you’ll often hear them asking for it directly.

It’s not enough just to tell a sob story; they have to make sure they’ve sold it by getting you to back them up.

They’ll try to pull you into their fiction by having you repeat their story and tell them just how bad you think it was.

For most polite people out there, this kind of phrase is too hard to contradict, so they feel forced to agree.

And then they’ve got you.

11) “It’s the same thing all over again.”

People who always play the victim love dragging the past out to give present insults more significance.

Logically, it makes no difference if the same thing has happened to you before or not. It shouldn’t make it hurt more, and it might even hurt less because you’ve developed a thicker skin.

But that’s not how these folks want you to think.

They want to pile on all the similar things that have happened to them at different times and at the hands of different people to show you just how pitiful they are.

They’re always being hurt, and therefore, they need more attention and sympathy than someone who was just hurt like this for the first time.

See how crafty that is?

12)  “Why does this always happen to me?”

Last but not least, we get to our title phrase.

You’ll always hear fake victims saying this because it reinforces the fiction of their suffering by making it sound unique and special.

They’re worthy of your sympathy because, for some reason, the universe is aligned against them and them alone. You’ll normally also find this phrase, along with over-sharing of personal details, to really play up just how bad they’ve had it.

Their suffering is special and, therefore, all the more worthy of your concern.

Conclusion

These 12 phrases of people who regularly play the victim in life should all be pretty familiar.

You just may not have realized how sneaky, manipulative, and fake a lot of them are. But make no mistake, they’re designed to elicit sympathy so that the person gets a shot of attention they so desperately need.