The Blame Trap

“When you cast blame, you disempower yourself

and relinquish control of your destiny.”

-Kirk Charles 

Finding fault with others stops us from taking control and effectively handling difficult situations. It wastes our energy and time instead of exploring how we can positively influence the situation. We have chosen to be a part of the problem and not a part of the solution. In other words, blaming keeps us from imposing corrective action. Blame and fault finding serve no useful purpose in emergencies or our everyday lives. It involves finger pointing. Whenever we point our index finger at someone else we need to remind ourselves that three fingers are pointing back at us. So in essence we need to ask ourselves “What role did I play in this situation?” or “What did I do to perpetuate this situation?” Instead of finding fault, we can use our precious time to seek solutions.                                                                               

    When we hear ourselves blaming or finding fault with others we can be assured that we are still keeping ourselves infused in the grip of the blame trap and we are not fully accepting the vast amount of opportunities available to us. We have been conditioned to compare, rate, score, judge, and assign value to movies, oranges, music, furniture, cars, people, animals, professional sports teams, and so much more. We discuss good and bad, beautiful and ugly, skinny and fat. We notice gorgeous, awful, stupid, wonderful, nice, better, the worse and the best. Nothing seems to escape the critical, judgmental, evaluative mindset of this country (Sherfield, 2004).

    Blaming others is a good example of our con-ditioning which has provided us with a means of not taking responsibility. It is a way of using language to assign ownership to someone else for the choices we made. As a result of blaming others, we have given up our personal power and put them in the driver’s seat. We give them the power, rendering ourselves powerless and out of control which prevents us from examining our role in any given situation and diverting responsibility (White, 2008).

                       

    Some examples to help us decide if we are residing in the blaming trap are:

 

·         “It’s my parents’ fault. They were too abusive.”

·         “My spouse’s abuse ruined my life.”

·         “My boss is the boss from hell” (Coleman and Harris, 2000).

 

    Self-criticizing will trap us in the blame game. Self-criticism comes in various forms: second guessing; self put-downs; and using adjectives to describe ourselves, such as “I am fat.” We need to move from describing ourselves to describing our behaviors. Think back to our childhoods. Many of us were called a bad kid because we did something like track mud into the house. It would have been better to be scolded for not taking our shoes off at the door? Another example, we could say “I am not fun” and change it to “I was not fun last night.” See the difference. We are not attacking our entire being, only one behavior. 

    Second guessing is very easy to recognize because we add shoulds and should nots to our conversations. Avoid using the word should. We can’t change the past so we may as well learn from each and every experience. 

    Accepting reality is one the goals of many healing modalities. Facing and coming to term with reality is beneficial. Acceptance is frequently the turning point for positive change. We have many things to accept through the course of any given day. Our present circumstances include who we are, where we live and who we live with, where we work, our mode of transportation, how much money we have, what our responsibilities are, what we may do for fun, and any existing problems. Sometimes accepting the things in our life can be a breeze when things are going well, than it is when things are not going so well (Sherfield, 2004).

    When dealing with unresolved trauma, we may feel overwhelmed by problems, losses or change. Even our healing journey can reveal losses we are struggling to accept. If some things in our lives have not been going well, we may have accepted a life filled with these problems. We need to understand acceptance does not mean adaptation. It doesn’t mean resignation concerning the problems we are facing. It means we acknowledge and accept our circumstances, including ourselves and the people in our lives, as we are and as they are. It is only from the state of acceptance, we can achieve the ability to evaluate our present situation. 

    We have been conditioned to judge so many things that cross our paths from sport teams to cars. If we fall into the blame trap, we limit our opportunities to enhance our skills at handling difficult situations. Avoid using the word should which will help us to be in the present moment instead of hanging out in the past or our reaction to the past. Getting past our need to self-criticize ourselves will free us from our self-hatred prisons. We need to be careful to only judge our behaviors and not our entire being. Taking responsibility for everything life has to offer places us in control.