Thinking About Blame

I’ve come to the conclusion that blame is not a useful concept in my life: it doesn’t serve or benefit me, others, or my relationships. Have people done things in my life that have caused me incredible pain? Yes, absolutely. Having survived childhood sexual abuse and my father’s death when I was a toddler, I understand wanting to blame someone or something as a way to feel some sense of control. Over time, I’ve come to understand how unhelpful and even destructive blame can be.

Recently someone in my life blamed me for the pain that she feels. I am someone whose default position is to assume that everything is my fault. In this situation after an initial quick guilt reaction, I was able to be clear that I had actually done nothing wrong despite what she believed. It has taken me a long time to come to this perspective in my life. I now know that just because someone is experiencing pain and thinks it’s my fault, doesn’t make this true. This is hard for me to remember and hold onto when someone is blaming me.

There is a flip side to this dynamic for people whose default tendency is to react by defending themselves or deflecting responsibility before they’ve had a chance to think or thoughtfully consider their impact on others. My co-founder here at Starling Collaborative, Annie O’Shaughnessy, explained that she spent many years with this opposite default reaction. For her, blame was a way to avoid feeling ashamed or somehow broken. This too is a common and unproductive response to harm. 

Because blame can be a way to avoid taking responsibility, I want to make sure that I’m being honest with myself and others when I see blame being used in this way. I don’t want to own things that aren’t mine to own as I’ve done too often in the past. Neither do I want to avoid facing the reality that I sometimes do or say things that cause others pain. I want to be clear what’s mine to clear up and what’s not.

When I notice that I’m blaming someone else for something that is not huge, I give myself a day or so to feel all of it, knowing that anger is protective and healthy and an indicator of when my boundaries have been crossed. As I do this, I know that blaming someone else is not a perspective I want to hold long term, and I do my best to give these feelings space while not taking them too seriously. 

Then I ask myself:

• Why is this situation causing me so much angst? 

• What is my role in what happened or how this played out? 

• What do I understand about what is happening for the other person or people involved? 

• Are there any ways I’ve been wounded in the past that are showing up in this situation?

In other words, can the triggering I’m experiencing provide an opportunity for me to heal some of the wounds I carry? I don’t want to carry these wounds with me any longer, so I see my reaction as an opportunity to see these wounds more clearly and heal them.

So what about the big, life altering kinds of trauma I’ve experienced that were clearly not ok? I still believe it is my job to do my work to heal the impacts of that trauma. I believe that it is never too late to heal. I believe in the possibility of “Post Traumatic Growth,” and I want to reap the benefits of the hard things that I’ve experienced. Then it’s my decision about when and whether I’d like to forgive the person or people who’ve caused the harm and to not pressure myself to do this before I want to and I’m ready.

In the end, I don’t want to carry blame with me in my heart and body. I would love for more of us to believe that blame is unhelpful and potentially hurtful of others. I would love for more of us to look deeply inside ourselves when we feel drawn to blaming someone else and take responsibility for our own feelings in this way.

(Stay tuned for Annie’s perspective on blame!)