Tag Archives: blaming others

Blame: “It’s all your fault!”

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“Purpose” — Einstein by Mimi Stuart ©
Live the Life you Desire

When it comes to blame most people fall into two camps. They either blame everyone else for their pain or they blame themselves for all of their problems.

In reality, there’s enough blame to go around — for ourselves and others.

The benefit of apportioning blame

While assigning blame seems like an exercise in futility, it does serve a purpose, as long as you don’t dwell in negative emotions that can accompany it. The purpose of assigning blame is to develop the ability to recognize problematic patterns in your own and others’ behavior.

For example, if you have a friend who repeatedly disappoints you by promising one thing and doing another, it’s important to make the connection — “I probably can’t trust what my friend promises.” That friend is responsible for her words and her actions or non-action and she is to blame for not following through.

However, if you continue to count on that friend, then you are also to blame for the disappointment that results, because you have not learned from your experience. Blaming yourself here is the acknowledgment that your desire for a positive outcome tends to blind you from recognition of the other person’s weaknesses.

The problem with dwelling on blame

Even if we carefully divvy out the proper proportions of blame, we can still get stuck brooding in the state of blame. “Ah, look what he’s done to me and look how I’ve contributed! Can you believe this rotten state of affairs?!” Dwelling in blame, resentment, and anger will only worsen relationships and bad situations.

Blame is only useful in problem-solving when we use it to figure out how to avoid repeating the harmful behavior, not when we use it to brow beat ourselves or others.

How to use blame to improve your life

Here are some questions we can ask ourselves in order to move from blame and shame to arranging positive change:

1. How do I tend to project my fears and hopes onto others, contributing to the way people will respond to me? How can I change that?

2. How can I change my interactions with others to avoid repeating this painful pattern?

3. How should I change my expectations of others to avoid inevitable disappointment?

4. Am I allowing myself to dwell in blame?

5. How can I change the focus of my thoughts and feelings to help me move on? Nobody can “make” us feel any particular way — only we have control over our own emotional reactions and the focus of our thoughts.

In short, we can draw conclusions and learn from those who are to blame, be it others or ourselves, as long as we don’t drop into a state of self-pity and hopelessness or start carrying a grudge.

No heavier burden than to carry a grudge. Let go, don’t judge, Forgive.

~Ros McIntosh “In Search of the Good Life”

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Negative Projection:
“I never had children, because my husband didn’t want to, and now it’s too late.”

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"Mastery and Mystery" — Queen Bess by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

It was Carl Jung who stated that thoughts and fears that remain unconscious get projected onto others. A wife blames her husband for their decision not to have children, unaware of her own fear of such responsibility.

People tend to project qualities that are incompatible with their own self-image. For instance, a person who sees himself as kind and generous might not want to acknowledge his own greed, and consequently sees it only in others; or a husband blames his wife for having given up his dreams of traveling the islands with a guitar, unaware of his own preference for the security of his stable job, lifestyle, and wife.

When we make negative projections, we rarely recognize the seeds of those qualities in ourselves. Painful or incompatible qualities get projected onto another person, and that person ends up becoming the target of our wrath.

Our task is to take back our projections in the quest for wholeness.

By projecting the decision not to have children on your husband, you disown your own free will. You disregard your own part in that decision. Ultimately, you made the choice not to have children. You could have talked your partner into it, discussed it before getting together, or left him rather than abiding by his preference. You chose to stay with him and thereby agreed with his desire not to have children.

By taking back responsibility for making your own decisions, you become aware of your true priorities and choices. When you stop blaming others, you gain freedom and control in your life. As a result, you don’t live with resentment toward others in your life — a key to happy relationships.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Childhood impairment: The family projection process.”

Read “Positive Projection: ‘He’s so amazingly intelligent and articulate!”

Don’t Blame:
“WHO tracked all this mud into the house?! How thoughtless!”

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"Sergio's Shoe" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

Being able to speak up and ask people to do things differently and to ask for help without blaming is absolutely key to improving day-to-day life and relationships.

Assigning blame does not fix the wrong or prevent it from happening in the future. It only causes people to feel defensive.

Focus on cleaning up, not on WHO made a mistake. When people know you are not going to blame them, they will feel better about helping.

Ask for help in an upbeat way. For example, “I’d love to get some help cleaning up this mud.” Or: “It doesn’t matter who did this. It matters who will help fix it!” Or: “Who will help me put this right?”

People prefer to get praised for doing the right thing than chastised for mistakes. They’ll eventually learn.

In dealing with children specifically, you can ask how it can be avoided next time. It seems to help when they make the observation themselves, and they usually know the answer.

Don’t quiz an adult, however. You don’t want to get in a parent/child relationship with an adult. It’s better to simply ask for help.

If you don’t speak up at all, you’ll become resentful and you’ll be dealing with a lot of mud in the house, and other things that annoy you.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Why Threats Backfire.”