If you find yourself blaming others, you likely have anger issues, and it may help your relationships to take a closer look.
Blaming highlights a natural vulnerability in people because none of us is perfect and feelings of shame about this lead us to try harder. However, understanding what’s going on can help how you see your situation and improve relationships.
Have you ever felt frustrated because you blamed someone else or a situation beyond your control? Me too! Being powerless to change things you want really sucks! If, however, you’re into blaming, you’re actually disempowering yourself and harming relationships too.
What Blaming Says About You
Everything you do has an impact on others – your social environment. You can see that your actions speak, but what does blaming behaviour say about you?
Some of your behaviours will come from childhood, when you were overshadowed by more powerful people, like the adults in your family. At first, you only had those people to look up to so you could learn how to join in with conversations.
The people around you may have been emotionally immature and not taking full responsibility for themselves. You strategically used blaming to fit in with them. You know, most kids want to be like their parents.
Ultimately, you may use blaming to try to distance yourself from poor behaviour you see in others, perhaps to deny that you behave in similar ways.
“The lady doth protest too much, methinks.”
W. Shakespeare (Hamlet)
The Problem with Blaming
If you’re in a relationship, blaming is one of the worst barriers to harmony.
For example, if you imagine your partner saying, “You made me cry”, how would you feel? In that situation, you may feel responsible for hurting their feelings and feel terrible, which is not something you want to do. You would feel angry if someone’s blaming you when it’s not your fault, or even if it is!
A Closer Look
So, blaming can be about avoiding responsibility for your actions by trying to blame others. It isn’t straightforward, but there must be some truth in the matter that we can get to somewhere.
Blaming or not taking full responsibility can quickly produce or maintain frustration. For example, since somebody else is doing something, what control do you have over it? You might try to persuade or cajole them into changing how they behave.
Their refusal will probably bring conflict!
A Way to Stop
If you can see how harmful it is to blame others, it will motivate you to avoid it. Perhaps reminding yourself of your highest priority would help you let go of this damaging behaviour. Significantly, if your partner is the most crucial part of your life, you would be more motivated to stop blaming. Getting on with them would be better because they will become less defensive since they are no longer being accused.
If your blaming habit means taking it out on things, think about your peace of mind.
Getting to the root of the cause of the need to blame can be a struggle as anxiety and anger bring up the fight-or-flight response from the body. As a result, the stress hormones circulating make clear thinking difficult.
So, if you can ease off the blame game, you will empower yourself because you will realise you can improve things.
But, if stopping’s a problem, talking to someone in a calm environment might help. Now, where do you suppose you could find that?
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