Bad things happen to you.

They happen to me too. They happen to everyone — the leader, the follower, the CISO with a $50M budget and the analyst grinding through alerts at 2 AM. Loss, betrayal, bad luck, unfair systems, people who lied to you, people who left you holding the bag. Real things. Things that hurt.

None of that is the problem.

The problem is when you make it your identity.

The Posture

There’s a difference between experiencing hardship and performing it.

One is just life. The other is a choice — conscious or not — to build your whole identity around what’s been done to you. To frame every setback as evidence that the world is against you. To lead with your wounds instead of your work.

I’ve done it. More than I’d like to admit. And every time I did, I noticed the same thing: the people around me got quiet. Not sympathetic quiet. Just… distant. Waiting for it to pass.

Because nobody follows a victim.

Not at home. Not at work. Not in this industry.

People follow someone who acknowledges the hard thing and then keeps moving anyway. That’s it. That’s the whole formula.

In Leadership, It’s Disqualifying

If you’re in a leadership role — any leadership role — victimhood isn’t just unattractive. It’s disqualifying.

Your people are watching how you handle adversity. They’re taking notes. When the budget gets cut, when the project fails, when leadership above you makes a bad call — they want to know if you’re going to point fingers or figure out next steps.

I’ve sat in enough boardrooms and leadership meetings to tell you: the leaders who blame circumstances, blame their teams, blame the market, blame the board — they lose credibility faster than they realize. One victim narrative might slide. Two and people start wondering. Three and you’ve lost them for good.

Leadership is fundamentally a contract. You’re asking people to follow you somewhere. That requires them to believe you can handle hard things. Victims, by definition, can’t handle them — they can only react and lament.

Nobody signs up for that expedition.

In Cybersecurity, It’s an Epidemic

Our industry has a victim problem.

We are chronically underfunded. We are misunderstood by the business. The attackers have the advantage. Nobody listens until something breaks. We’ve been saying the same things for thirty years and nothing changes.

All of that has some truth to it.

And we have weaponized it.

We’ve turned legitimate frustration into a professional posture — a way of explaining why nothing is ever really our fault. Why the breach happened. Why the program isn’t mature. Why we can’t move faster. The adversary is too sophisticated. Leadership doesn’t get it. We didn’t have the resources.

Sometimes those things are genuinely true. But when they become your default explanation, you’ve stopped being a security professional and started being a professional victim.

Nobody follows that person either.

The CISOs who earn trust — the ones who actually move the needle — are the ones who say “here’s what we’re up against, here’s what I need, and here’s how we’re going to make progress anyway.” Not “here’s why this is impossible and here’s who to blame when it goes wrong.”

The posture you choose shapes how people perceive your competence. Victim posture signals helplessness. Helpless people don’t get resources. They don’t get seats at the table. And eventually, they don’t get listened to at all.

Personally, It’ll Hollow You Out

This one’s harder to write.

I’ve watched victim mentality destroy people I care about. Not quickly — slowly, over years. Each grievance added to the pile. Each injustice told and retold until it was all they were.

And I’ve felt the pull myself. The temptation to explain my failures by pointing at what was done to me. It’s seductive because it’s partially true. Someone probably did do something unfair. The circumstances probably were hard. The deck probably was stacked.

But the moment I lean into that — really lean into it — I can feel something leaving me. Some part of the person I want to be.

Victimhood is comfortable in the short term and corrosive in the long term. It relieves you of responsibility today and robs you of agency tomorrow. It’s a trade, and it’s a bad one.

The people I most respect in my life — the ones I’d walk through a wall for — aren’t people who never got knocked down. They’re people who got knocked down and stood back up without making the knockdown their whole personality.

That’s who I want to be. That’s who I want on my team. That’s who I want my kids to watch me be.

What It Actually Looks Like

Let me be clear: I’m not talking about pretending bad things didn’t happen.

Acknowledging pain is healthy. Processing hardship is necessary. There’s a real difference between “this was hard and here’s what I learned” and “this was hard and here’s why I’m owed something.”

One is honest. The other is a trap.

You can be candid about the obstacles without becoming the obstacle. You can tell the truth about what went wrong without fishing for sympathy. You can feel the weight of unfairness without letting it set the direction.

The question isn’t whether something hard happened to you. The question is what you do next.

• Do you lead with it or learn from it?
• Do you carry it as a wound or a lesson?

Those are choices. Every single day.

The Bottom Line

People are looking for someone to follow. At home, at work, in this industry — they’re watching to see who’s going to step up, own the situation, and move forward.

That person doesn’t have to be perfect. They don’t have to have all the answers. They just have to refuse the victim posture.

Because nobody follows a victim.

Not because people are heartless. Because victims, by the nature of the role, are pointing backward. And everyone else is trying to figure out how to move forward.

Be the person pointing forward.

Even when — especially when — you’ve been genuinely, legitimately wronged.

That’s the work.