Today in a conversation with my partner I finally realised that I had been living in blame for most of my life: blaming people, circumstances, and especially women. This blame was so normal for me that I did not even see that it had been running my life for so long. Until yesterday, if anyone had indicated that I was living in blame ā or in other words not taking responsibility for myself and basically acting as a victim of life ā I would have said they were completely off track.Ā
So how did this all start? Where did it come from and how does this continue to play out even today?Ā Ā
It all started when I was very young. My mother, who was very sick, demanded that I make her happy, which was a mission impossible because nobody can make somebody else āhappy.āĀ
I then chose to withdraw to my own room, feeling a victim of the whole situation, thinking I was unable to solve it. I created my own little bubble of life, with dreams, music and creative activities like building with Lego and aircraft modelling. I became angry with my mother, that she had ruined my life and I blamed and disrespected her. The disrespect and anger played out in my irritation of the things she said or did throughout the whole of my life.Ā Ā
I consider I am an intelligent man, so on a mental level I knew I had to love my mother. But in my body there was anger and the blame, so I was mentally controlling this behaviour.
The big problem here is: if you blame, or even be angry with your mother, this is transferred to all relationships with women. This stems from a fundamental psychological law: the relationship you have with your mother is the model you use to relate with other women. So, in a very subtle way I started to be angry with all women without even being conscious of it.Ā
After this conversation, calling out my blaming behaviour, actually renouncing it, I felt like a huge weight was released from my body. I felt my body filling with a warm quality and the colour in my skin immediately changed from pale to more brownish. My hands, parts of my arms, my feet started tingling. What was happening? Then I felt sharp pains in several parts of my body and realised what was actually happening:Ā Ā
Blame had been the ultimate protection of not wanting to feel my own hurts, my feelings of discomfort in my body.Ā
For years I have been saying that I wanted to heal my hurts. Being a student of The Way of The Livingness I understood very well that my hurts were my buried unresolved emotional issues and were the opening gates through which non-loving energy could manifest itself.Ā Ā
When touched upon, I have cried about some of my hurts, but normally if anyone came into contact with them, most often my dear partner, I immediately would turn the attention towards her, not wanting to feel my hurt. In hindsight it was blame in action. I basically said every time a hurt was revealed: āYou are the one causing me to feel miserable, weak and sad and I became angry and defensiveāā¦ at first openly irritated, sometimes angry, but I learned to manage this anger because I knew that was not how I was supposed to act as a āgoodā man.Ā
I became a very sophisticated and āniceā man ā a wolf in sheepās clothing.Ā
But when this behaviour kicked in, I thought in anger and walked in anger. And sometimes I exploded; my charade dropped and showed how very angry and frustrated I was feeling on the inside ā believing āWhatever I do you are never satisfied with me, why canāt you be happy with me? Stop criticising me!āā¦ or something in that style.Ā Ā
It was the little boy speaking, and my partner had turned into my mother. I understood mentally that I was still playing the same game, just as I did as a boy, but could not find a way to stop this. Better said, I chose to not find a way out, not wanting to see and deal with the root cause and feeling the deep hurt which was underneath.Ā
Meanwhile my beautiful relationship was like a war every now and then, seeing my partner as the enemy when I chose to go into this blame pattern again.
I even aligned with a friend of mine so that we could āsupportā each other in our struggling relationships, as he was also in a relationship that was not going so well. But it was no support, because basically we were talking in anger and frustration about āhow women play these insidious gamesā and we were always āthe bad-guys”.Ā
When we want to hang onto a behaviour, do not want to let go, and if we are not honest, we will seek the support of the exactly those people that support the very behaviour we donāt want to let go of.Ā
I chose to hang onto blame. And when there is blame, there can be no love.
Of course I understood I should not blame and not play being a victim. This was a mental concept that I understood very well. The reality was: I did not live this. This pattern was so ingrained in my body, and the thing I was doing was controlling and suppressing this behaviour with mental discipline, and that just does not work.Ā
In hindsight I could have easily observed the anger, the hate, the disrespect, the not wanting to take responsibility and seeing myself as a victim, which was all caused by living in blame.Ā Ā
Examples are:Ā
- When any of my numerous relationships ended ā even though I saw my own part in it ā I concluded that she was not the true love I was seeking and/or there was something wrong with her.Ā Ā
- Not really wanting to hear with my whole body when my partner pointed out my unloving behaviours.Ā
- Withdrawing in self-pity and victimhood when my partner had pointed out something I had ādone wrong.āĀ
- Being glad to leave for work, after my partner and I had another argument.Ā
- Being glad to go shopping, or do chores so I could avoid my partner.Ā
- Eating things to feel better, just like a drug addict who thinks that the drug is the only thing that can make him feel better: a victim in action.Ā Ā
- Blaming one of the directors in a company I used to run, or all the things that he did wrong even though I was the one who employed him and did not take the responsibility to correct him or to let him go when the time was right.Ā Ā
The days after the āletting go of blame’, more miracles followed. People around me observed my eyes opened up more, people expressed that they saw more love in me and that I walked in a different more, gentle loving way.Ā
When I place things down the way I used to do it now feels hard in my body, so I changed these movements. I felt I could, and that I had the power to hold the connection with myself, feeling an almost constant radiation of love in my hands. Sometimes it went away ā for example when I got absorbed or distracted in a discussion ā but then I could bring the feeling back easily.Ā Ā
I even started laughing more, about myself too, so much so that tears would roll down my face!Ā
Hardness out ā love in.Ā
Is this blame pattern now resolved? Sometimes it still creeps in, when somebody and especially my partner, points out something I have done in an unloving or irresponsible way. I then get this uncomfortable feeling in my body because I know I have made an irresponsible choice. Accepting now that I have the choice to feel in full and not shift the attention to someone else, instead of silently blaming them because I have perceived they are making me feel so awkward and knowing it is me who has to deal with the higher level of self-responsibility.Ā
So thank you deeply, my dearest partner, for pointing out this ugly pattern of blame ā that I have been carrying around for such a long time and even considered to be my normal.Ā
Choosing to let āblameā go has changed my life and my body, and continues to do so. I am a powerful man, an adult and I know I can deal with anything and any hurt that surfaces in my life. Thereās no need to defend what is there to be felt; I know I can handle it.Ā
I know and feel that our relationship can blossom AT LAST.Ā Ā
By W.P.
Further Reading:
Relationships are always about evolving – the key to making relationships work
Breathing my Own Breath
Having The Right to React?
Being shown is so very different from being told and very refreshing. I know from my own experience I hated being told what to do as a child, which has led to me dig my heels in to resist as an adult. Being shown that there is a different way to live and interact with people comes with no judgement, no push, just the reflection of a possibility of living differently.
Very beautifully said Greg, when we can understand that it is not us but the energy we are choosing that makes us what we become. To understand that we are just vessels and there are only two energies to choose from. As we deepen this awareness of how life really works it all makes sense of our split personality, or more truthfully said the difference between choosing spirit over our soul.
When we can get to the nub of the games we play, then we can let go of those hurts that we hang onto that can literally ruin our lives and keep us in the same old patterns that we have hung onto may be for life times. When we release the energy of those hurts, they no longer have any hold over us and we are free to make different more loving choices towards ourselves and others.
There has long been a game where women blame men and men blame women, this energy is hard and harmful.
Now more than ever it is for each gender to drop the blame game and instead bring and be the responsibility the world needs to see.
We are either in love and letting that energy in and out through our bodies or we are in blame letting in and out all manor of nasty stuff.
I find that when I get thoughts of blaming or niggling against my partner or another that can lead to even further separation if I allow those thoughts to fester. I know now to nip those thoughts in the bud with appreciation for them rather than entertaining the blame.
Thank you for what you have shared here because patterns of behaviour can be so embedded that we fail to see clearly with our eyes, or hear clearly with our ears! Being honest and choosing to see these dysfunctional patters does not need to be an emotional breakdown, it can be as simple as we want it to be once we choose to let it do.
When we drop the brittle shield of our hurts we rediscover the innate love that we are.
Appreciating our “innate loveā or essences is foundational in our True evolution.
Once we realise that it’s not possible for anyone else to make us feel crap, it’s a game changer. Sure other people can do all manner of crappy things to us but none the less it’s still a choice that we make if we choose to be affected by whatever it is that they’re doing. We spend so much time berating other people and blaming their behaviour on how we feel and all so that we can choose to continue with our own behaviours.
Without the reflections from others, where would we be? We may not like being pulled up but when we ponder on our behaviour if we are honest we can see the truth and loving care in the calling out and then make different choices.
“This blame was so normal for me that I did not even see that it had been running my life for so long” We can be so blind to our own behaviours. Waking up and owning up to them takes courage. Then we can begin to deal with them until they no longer form part of our life. I’m currently working to remove self-blame.
Blaming others has become a bit of a cultural pastime, we love to indulge ourselves in the art of ‘passing the buck’. We are quick to join in with others when they take the lead, secretly relieved that the heat is not on us and therefore keen to collaborate with others. It takes considerable effort to not enjoin when others are in the tempo of blaming but after a while it gets very easy and I have found that my starting point of simply not joining in has now shifted to one (if appropriate) of actually suggesting different ways of looking at the situation and also venturing to gently suggesting that we all have a responsibility to look at our part in all that we see and experience.
Love this Alexis – ‘gently suggesting that we all have a responsibility to look at our part in all that we see and experience.’ Blame is everywhere in life – in many conversations. So much better to venture alternative viewpoints rather than merely withdrawing form the conversation.
Yes, even not speaking up can contribute to the culture of blame. At the right moment and with grace, someone opening the door to the possibility that we can contribute to the world we see is addressing the passive acceptance of the world as it is now.
Our immediate behavior and way of being often has much bigger consequences than we would care to admit,
āThe big problem here is: if you blame, or even be angry with your mother, this is transferred to all relationships with women. This stems from a fundamental psychological law: the relationship you have with your mother is the model you use to relate with other women.ā
I have found this to be the case with many so called ‘normal behaviors’, how great when we can stand back and look objectively to what we have been caught in, ‘This blame was so normal for me that I did not even see that it had been running my life for so long.’
Through The Way of The Livingness and practising this as my religion I now have such a deeper level of understanding of myself and others, I have watched deep heavy hurts I have carried for so long drop off me by living and accepting the love I am.
Whether you are man, women child adult whenever we blame another we do not accept the learning that it is on offer for us.
Whenever I go into blame or finger pointing it is almost always that I don’t want to take responsbility for my behaviour or actions in something.
Very true, it is always important to look at what is being reflected to us, what is our part and responsibility in the situation.
We do not know what we are being constrained by till we make a choice to see with fresh eyes.
Yes, simply the choice to nominate and look at why we are blaming opens up a whole new world of vision, hearing and sensing that we had blocked ourselves off from. There is so much awareness waiting for us if we drop the fear and protection of being wrong.
Lucy I have realised it’s when we block off our awareness to the fullness of life that we resemble the zombies we see in movies. It’s almost as though without our awareness we withdraw from life because we have lost our compass on how to live in life.
We can spend out time blaming others, or we can choose to look at what it is we are reacting to and consider why. The unraveling is such a freedom as you have shared here.
Yes, we can get caught in the blame game, so as to not feel what is truly happening in our body, āBlame had been the ultimate protection of not wanting to feel my own hurts, my feelings of discomfort in my body.ā
I know this one so well …. the difference between saying and doing ‘For years I have been saying that I wanted to heal my hurts’ for we can ‘say’ something until the cows come home but it will not make an ounce of difference if this is not lived or we do not truly allow ourselves to go there. Very inspiring that you went there and started to heal this.
Seeing something wrong with another is the spirits age old trick of avoiding the intimacy and love that knows is ultimately there.
Anger is simply an emotion carried out to avoid love; any emotion running through the body is purposely a movement to cover up or deny the truth of who we are.
Without honesty and being open to honesty when another is honest we just stay imprisoned and not able to be with another as we otherwise could. I’m learning that no matter how ugly it feels to be honest it’s so much better than continuing to carry whatever it is around, and if it’s not love, then it’s not a part of me and I can let it go.
Blaming anyone for our ills is irrelevant to living as a student of life. Responsibility is the name of the game,
Blame is often a hard habit to break, even now I catch myself blaming my husband, blame offers no evolution.
And when there’s love there can be no blame. Impossible.
Blame ultimately retards us, if we stop and look at ourselves we are far more likely to grow and learn.
Not only does blame retard us but it retards the other person too. Both parties are immobilised. Where as understanding frees us up and also frees the other person too.
So often men and women are hurt by one member of the ‘opposite sex’ and then rule out the rest and often for really long periods of time. It’s actually quite ridiculous when you think about it but we do it none the less.
Blaming others will only and can only bring us more sorrow.
I can relate to this far too well and I absolutely celebrate your healing around the topic. Its so easy to withdraw and then go into victimhood and it leaves us not as full as a result. I so appreciate the incredible way in which this was written.
Yes, I too have had a habit of blaming others, so being a victim of life, and not taking responsibility for my part in the situation, ‘I was living in blame ā or in other words not taking responsibility for myself and basically acting as a victim of life’. Now I have awareness of this old pattern I am choosing to not have it a part of my life anymore.
The world is currently in the mess it is in because we have allowed blame to become rife, there is no real responsibility taken in society, our first port of call is to look outward before we look within and hence as a result we have a world where we remain stagnant and un-evolving.
Blaming others is such a great way to excuse oneself of responsibility and therefore such a great way to dis-empower oneself.
Its interesting how when something occurs in our life it can stay in our body and comes back in a similar situation until healed. Same hurt in a different setting
‘This blame was so normal for me that I did not even see that it had been running my life for so long.’ I am constantly uncovering ever more subtle levels of blame that I’m running. I noticed this recently when I decided I’d had enough of being negative. I didn’t realise how much I wanted to put a negative spin on life so I would then have justification to be defensive, grumpy and blame everyone but me for how I was living.
‘The days after the āletting go of blame,ā more miracles followed… people expressed that they saw more love in me and that I walked in a different more, gentle loving way.’ It is amazing that when we let go of our stuff like this, just what can happen.
This is so true Bridgette blame, righteousness and irresponsibility are so normalised and championed in our societies that to walk away from these can feel like a big thing and for me sometimes challenging thing to do but it is so worth doing.
I have noticed that I am much more reactionary to judgement or criticism from others if I am already being judgemental and critical of myself. So for me it all comes back to the relationship I have with myself and how honest I am prepared to be about that and how willing I am prepared to be to change it.
Thank you Andrew. I get this. The more understanding, respectful and open to learning I am with myself, the richer and more honouring are all my interactions with others.
Me also Andrew, when I am in appreciation of myself it doesn’t matter what others say but if not it’s a sure recipe for taking things personally.
I have noticed whenever I go into blame or defended I am avoiding responsibility.
Blaming anyone is so disempowering.
I feel you’ve hit the nail on the head here, Michelle, in that we as adults are no where near mastering taking responsibility for the part we play in all interactions. As such, it feels an impossible task to teach our children what we have not taken responsibility for first as not taking responsibility is all that we have been role modelling for our children. Once we start changing our movements to ones of taking responsibility in our every interaction this will then be reflected to our children from day one and they will be free to emanate responsibility back to us rather than being forced to shut it down because we can’t handle our own lack of responsibility being exposed.
What is blame? The convienient refusal to accept the power and responsibility of the light we are. We are so invested in not taking responsibility that we have a whole world of excuses for it, all stories that sound so good and yet are lies.
Brilliantly said. I know for me it’s often a willingness to drop the arrogance and come back to harmony, valuing that more than any story or selfgain i think I’m obtaining by being irresponsible.
It is only recently that I have started to get that whenever I react to something, that in itself is a clue that there is something that I could go deeper with and it is now in my face for me to look at. Blaming someone is definitely one of those instances in my books, with the clever twist that by making someone else responsible for what I am feeling, I end up in effect side-stepping the opportunity that has been presented to me to deepen my own understanding and responsibility.
I know that side-stepping two step well, Golnaz. Funny thing is, while we were prancing around the dance floor side-stepping every bit of responsibility that came our way, the dancing shoes we were born with were turning in to steel toe work boots that reduced our flowing, grace-full movements into diminished, robotic versions of our former glorious ones depriving us of the space to stay with our own inner rhythm without going in to reaction and blame. There before us is the dance partner we’ve asked for, inviting us to dance the two step to deepen our connection but we’re so caught up in the side-step we can’t see the opportunity that is on offer.
The culture of blame that we have developed and continue to perpetuate is one of the most damaging constructs in society. It allows us to carry on through life pointing fingers and abdicating responsibility.
Withdrawing from a situation just means we indulge in thoughts and emotions that are by their very nature designed to take us further away from love, the love inside us and the love of others. I have learnt over the years that choosing to remain committed and engaged is the fastest way to deal with our hurts and ultimately empowers us to see how we have initiated, allowed or enjoined certain behaviours that wound us. No one else is responsible for how we feel.
And we are not responsible for others feelings either. Trying to take care of another persons feelings makes them feel less and takes away their own self responsibility.
What a waste of our lives it is blaming others, when there is so much to gain from taking responsibilty and getting on with claiming back our power and responsibility in our own lives.
Blaming anyone for our ills is a renunciation of responsibility. To step away from such actions brings more love and wisdom in the body.
Why is it that we can stubbornly hang onto a way of being that feels awful, but we feel unable to drop it; as if owned by it. It just goes to show that we can’t just grow up out of our hurts and that we carry them around with us until we die unless that is we clear the sadness and let it go.
Blame is an excuse that we create to get in the way of living true purpose. There is never any justification or reason to blame another for the situation we find ourselves in. Every situation is perfectly constellated to support us to grow; blame avoids or dismisses this growth or the opportunity to evolve.
Without open and truthful communications in every relationship, how can we ever evolve!
Absolute honesty is so important in all relationships stating how we feel and being open to one another.
This eliminates any blame, shame, anger or resentment arising. Love and harmony then prevails and our relationship deepens.
When we get hurt by another we so often go into justification and hold onto the hurt more deeply… I know I certainly have, rather than understanding that there are in fact two options; to either deal with the hurt or not get hurt in the first place by observing the situation and holding steady inside oneself.
The fact that we even think that another person can hurt us is part of the set up that weāve bought into. If we stayed true to who we are then nothing could truly hurt us. We have to bail first and then yes sure we can think that someone else has hurt us but itās not true. We were the ones that chose to bail from ourselves and that is incredibly painful but itās our own doing.
Being super honest and understanding with myself is freeing me from the belief that there is a right and wrong way to do everything and that my worth is based on getting things right. It is amazing to begin to feel that deeper than all this there are qualities that are me, and that these are valuable and strong and have much to offer. This is a rebuild of self-worth from a true foundation.
Throughout history, women have been a soft target for men to blame. Until we men reconnect to the natural tenderness that has always been within us can we see and feel the power women have and bring with their sacredness.
I have also used blaming in the past so I would avoid taking responsibility on my part and use that to pull away from situation I initially put myself in. Sophisticated lies and manipulations that would be little white lies to start with but would eventually become the big white elephant in the room.
‘Absolutely Michelle. Taking responsibility and knowing the consequences of ones actions are important life traits that can be taught from a young age. Having understanding ā and not judgement for our slip-ups is also important.’
I hate blame. Whether it is me putting it on another or it being put on me. I see it as a poison in relationships that has us abdicating responsibility and building resentment towards others.
Even blaming our selves is still an evasion of our responsibility to love our selves to the hilt and resume our natural authority, care and integrity, qualities that support everyone to be true to them selves.
Yes. Blaming ourselves is a disaster too. When I get into that kind of thinking with myself I am undermining myself, shutting down the opportunity to learn and contracting away from love. Mad.
Amazing to read about the changes experienced from letting go of blame. We do not realise what we hold back when we hold onto such things in our life.
So true, nobody can make somebody else happy. A simple truth so important to know and abide to for everyone . If we learned from little onwards that we are the sole creator of our own well-being we would spare ourselves much hardship, sorrow, blame and drama.
I had a conversation with a practitioner some time ago and they suggested that there is no right or wrong just a learning. I know I got so caught up in this belief as a child that there was a right and a wrong and I was seen as being in the wrong most of the time. And so I gave up and just accept this as part of life. Now I have the fascinating understanding that the life we live in is unreal and to keep us all in the unreality of this life we are held in deep illusion. And that is why to me there is no right or wrong we are offered a choice to learn and if we can understand why we made the choices then we can chip away at the veil of illusion we live in and eventually we will come to understand just how deceived we have been all along. Until then we are held in this deep illusion so much so that people will say Iām mad for saying such things. And so the circle is complete as this was what I was told as a child. When people donāt want to hear the truth they make up things about you that arenāt true to try and put you off what you know to be true.
Blame is so easy when we are not brought up to admit and learn from our mistakes, blame only happens when we are not willing to take responsibility.
‘…my beautiful relationship was like a war every now and then, seeing my partner as the enemy when I chose to go into this blame pattern again.’ We can do this with anyone… just yesterday a friend and I were talking about a couple of issues we have around each other. There was a subtlety of the blame game on both sides and a defensiveness in expressing. We both picked up on it… and the challenge was there to get super honest, take responsibility for our own hurts and not put them on the other person.
The moment we give our own power away to please another we separate from the very place that nourishes and sustains us. That does not mean that we do not care and do things for others but if at our own expense it is undermining.
To clear deep seated resentments and hurt from our body, is to begin life anew accepting ourselves and others fully and with love, not judgement.
Yes, it starts with us first, after which we start to see that what we thought was a big issue was not!
When blame is used as a stick to beat others with it holds us prisoner. With inner reflection and willingness to take responsibility for our part we can heal and ourselves and move on.
Blame validates us in not taking responsibility.
Blaming anyone else for our ills is the same as putting ourselves in a prison and throwing away the key.
Pointing the finger and blaming another (or even self) is simply a way out of taking true responsibility and allowing the growth on offer from the situation at hand.
The deepest healing is when, with honesty we see ourselves, patterns, and so called issues clearly for the first time and own them. To say yes this is me, this is how I’ve lived and why my life is as it is – a major breakthrough.
Even though it is very common, it does not make sense to hold a whole gender or even every other human being we meet in our lives to ransom for the unloving act of one person from our past.
Blame-free and responsibility-full, the world will be a very different place.
So many of us will benefit from this level of honesty and willingness to take responsibility and explore the root causes of our behaviour. And yes the feeling of being freed from something is very remarkable every time something is revealed, learned and changed.
This is so inspirational, thank you so much for sharing how you came to recognise the pattern and to understand why it was there. I can feel there were and I guess always will be the potential for that to be working through me any moment I choose to blame another rather than take responsibility.
Reading this makes me realise how as men we can blame women and as women we can blame men for things and how unhelpful and disconnecting this is.
To some extent many of us feel that we are a ‘wolf in sheep’s clothing’ when we live in a cloak of protection as it is not our true and loving nature. We can move around seeking love and validation without the openness necessary as we protect our previous hurts and rejections.
Blaming anyone for our ills is a dead end road. There’s no where to go and nothing to learn. Take responsibility and the Universe is there to show us what we need to learn to be all of who we are.
Trying to make someone happy is the same as a lie, once you go down that path, you must continue supporting it until it collapses like a house of cards.
It is interesting how we blame others for the outcome of things, and yet we rarely stop to think what our responsibility is and what we have contributed to a situation. It takes a while to look at life in this way, but it does take the reaction out of life and eventually stops triggering those hurts.
Yes, Julie observing children on the playground is a great reflection of how we as adults operate. When having an argument and a problem almost always, the children blame the other and stereotypically the comment, “s/he started it first” is very common. To get children to unpick their part in the issue and take greater responsibility takes a lot of time, but considering, as adults, we don’t role model this it’s no wonder they find it a challenge…. as we do too!
And whilst it may be awkward at first, actually starting with the part we play in things (our responsibility) makes life so simple because gone are all the convoluted scripts in our heads about what was or wasn’t done to us. The taking responsibility for our part keeps things super practical, real and grounded.
Love is our essence and foundation. Our responsibility as an adult is to become aware of everything that does not arise from this quality within us and release it, so that what we carry forward in life will only ever support, nurture and deeply respect everyone in our lives, including our selves.
Real relationships support each other to grow and discard old habits that don’t belong in an adult world, so allowing us to truly blossom into the wise, loving and joyful beings we really are.
You make a really good point here about helping each other to grow and discard old habits because all too often we miss the opportunity as we grow up.
‘This blame was so normal for me that I did not even see that it had been running my life for so long.’ I can relate. Today I realised I’d a layer of blame I was unaware of, but also aware of, around stress at work. No-one dictates how we respond or react to life but us. How we react may be understandable and the usual reaction to have but there is another way, that of observation of situations but also of ourselves.
William, thank you for such a clear and precise definition of blame. It is a big delayer of coming to terms with our hurts and rejections.
It certainly is Jenny and blame is crippling as well as feeding a cycle of misery, pain and more hurts.
“… nobody can make somebody else āhappy.ā” A very empowering lesson to learn and an important one to embody. We are the ones responsible for our own joy and wellbeing, no one can do that for us, however much we want to believe it. When we really take absolute command of it, we innately know how to nurture and support each other and bring true love to every relationship.
Amazing how pretty much all of our life we may be behaving in a particular way and never able or willing to see it, and then one day bang there it is we see it, and in fact it seems we can’t see anything but that behaviour since it is in every aspect of our life.
Recently when I had a couple of such a situations, I was fortunate enough to have friends who reminded me that it is okay, that I have not all of a sudden regressed, but that I have become more sensitive to seeing the particular issues because I am now ready to do something about them. This was so very supportive.
Beautifully shared Golnaz, the support to feel our hurts is wonderful. It is easy as a first reaction for many of us to go into self blame or self flagellation when we realise what we have done that has been of disservice to others – but that is exactly just another reaction to avoid the real responsibility of feeling the hurt and truly dealing with it. I am a master at self blame as a means to delay further taking responsibility but the more I feel supported and I understand this as a pattern the more I can see that this too is an opportunity to embrace and hence heal and blossom too.
It’s so easy to see how we can get stuck in this blame game for the whole of our lifetime and not even realise there is another way to look at these things.
Yes. It is the way society is set up. I remember once listening to a conversation in which the then prime minister was blamed for the outcome of a football match. And we call ourselves intelligent?!
Many still live the hurt even when the person they feel hurt by has passed over. Powerful to know we can cut the chords of hurt and blame at anytime, by taking responsibility for our part in whatever happened. It really is that simple.
When we are willing to see and accept truth there is space created for expansion in our relationships.
and within ourselves but I guess our relationships cannot expand if at first we have not allowed this within in ourselves. I find myself asking what have I not been willing to accept .. and of course this can be something positive rather than negative.
“This blame was so normal for me that I did not even see that it had been running my life for so long.” Such an incredible thing to become aware of, as so often we see these behaviours as who we are, not something we are choosing to hold on to that smother the love we have inside us. Quite an awesome healing to identify the veil that has been covering up the gem of a person you really are.
It is very true that we can live in blame without one jot of realising it. Giving energy towards blame and we fall victim to circumstances. The circumstances or situations we find ourselves in are offered to us for growth and evolution; they are not offered for us to distract ourselves, avoid responsibility and blame.
Our best friends are the ones who are not afraid to point out our ugly bits, in the knowing that we are so much greater, lovelier and wiser than the behaviour we got hooked into.
Yes Rowena, a gem of wisdom and one I recognise well. Sometimes the harder it is to hear truth, the greater the healing when we finally do.
Blame is one of those things that is there as a defence, so the end goal is not to get rid of the blame, but look at what is sought to absolve responsibility over.
I love the way you have expressed that Michael… we do need to go deeper the moment we feel resentful about a situation or person, so that blame isn’t the end point but a point of learning can be seen and deeper responsibility is owned.
Taking full responsibility for anything, when genuinely at fault, tends to take the sting out of the situation. It provides space for learning, reflection and understanding. From there all can heal.
Being attached to our created protections is what hurts us most.
“Hardness out ā love in. ” The simplicity and profoundness of this sentence summarizes in its content the path we all will walk one day, by letting go our shell whilst embracing self-responibility and love.
Playing the blame game never leads to any positive and lasting advancement, just keeps us circling around in the same old issues, feeling miserable, defensive and irritated with one another and our selves. What is so remarkable here is how much love you felt flood out of your body just by taking a moment to stop, listen and admit that what you are experiencing you are responsible for. A mega shift in awareness that opens the door for us all to experiment so that we too can learn how to let go of everything that prevents us from truly feeling our inner joy and love.
It doesn’t take long for our undealt-with emotions to become our normal … hence the wise choice to be honest with whatever we are feeling. However as children this is not encouraged but as adults we all have a choice to bring honesty to our relationship with ourselves.
Being honest with what our bodies are feeling is the key to truly healing.
It makes you wonder how many relationships have an undercurrent of resentment towards women due to the many times the young men did not speak up to their mothers.
A superb example of how we can trace many of our disruptive behaviours back to childhood, but rather than dwelling on them, see them for what they truly are, survival tactics that are no longer needed or appropriate as an adult. It is quite amazing what can occur when we empower our selves to nominate the pattern and hence release it from our bodies.
Such a a great and honest account of what we can all feel so often. When anger surfaces we can often blame another but not stop to take into account that we push an expectation of how we want another to be or the ideals of how we should be treated.
This is super beautiful to read. I can see how hurts can be buried deep and today I realised a few of mine and how I am with men, how I give my power away and how disgusting that feels. I’ve been so angry when I’ve been given crumbs but actually the hurt is my accepting these crumbs because I was waiting on a man to tell me I am good enough and not allowing myself to be and express as a woman.
It just goes to show how things like blame affect our body, so interesting to hear how things changed for you when you looked at this more to even your eyes changing. There should be studies on this.
Weāre all in cahoots with each other when it comes to the blame game, we love nothing better than to join in when another points the finger. And we find it nye on impossible to suggest to someone who is in the activity of blaming that they look a little closer to home first.
In exactly the same way that some men blame women for the short comings in their relationship, there are an awful lot of women who blame men for all and any problems in their relationships. It doesnāt matter which gender is blaming the other, blame creates an impasse.
Blame closes the door on ourselves, others and God. Responsibility opens the doors to ourselves, others and God.
Blame also is used as a very convenient excuse to not take full responsibility for our own behaviour and expression of our hurts.
Yes to be able to listen and respond, not defend, when someone shares that we are less than loving – a great learning, as is not taking things personally – a lesson in progress for me.
On reflection what came to me after reading this was how many incidences are there currently in the world where this goes the other way … unhealed hurts and reactions breaking up relationships, families and lives. So how awesome is it that your partner did not take this personally but instead could take a few steps back, see the bigger picture and share this in a way with you that you could understand and eventually feel this for yourself in order to heal. Like that is SOOOOOO Awesome and you have one very cool partner. So that means Awareness is key, for if we are not aware then how can we heal?
We can blame anybody and everybody for our behaviours, feelings and thoughts. But that is just a cowards way out, we see it everywhere – in the media, in our workplace and all around us. Many of us live our whole lives blaming our parents for mistakes they made during our childhood, we blame our first boyfriend for the way he treated us and leaving a mark of untrust towards future partners, and our siblings for being rude and disrespectful, perhaps leading to a lack of confidence in ourselves. But, we always have to remember that for another person to affect us, we have to let them. We have to back down and give up on what we feel is true, before anything can come and “take it away”.
Blame is an insidious and debilitating way to live as it creates a sense of comfort as we are in denial of the consequences of our actions and excuses us from responsibility. By doing so, however, we disempower ourselves and become victims to the world
What a blessing it is, although we may not like it at the time, when someone points out something we have been choosing to have a blind spot about.
‘This stems from a fundamental psychological law: the relationship you have with your mother is the model you use to relate with other women.’ This is really interesting and makes me ponder on the relationship I have with my parents and how this effects the relationships I now have with men and women in my life. It also helps me be understanding of others.
It’s interesting that we can say that we love our parents and yet still hold resentment and blame towards them.
“Hardness out ā love in.” This is the call for us all
Being honest with our hurts is a great way of developing our relationships with everyone. I don’t think we are fully aware just how much our buried hurts play out in every interaction.
I agree Rachel, do we allow ourselves to really go there and hold or are held in a space that allows us to do this?
Yes it is so easy to jump into the blame game but if we do we do not heal what is being shown to us in that moment.
We can use nice to cover up all manner of frustrations and anger and malice. Beware the nice!
āNiceā is an equal poison to the body as āfrustration, anger and maliceā. They are all false ways of being that harm us and others. āNicenessā has an oily quality to it that is particularly distasteful.
It’s true, whenever I catch myself blaming someone else I know I’m avoiding a lesson for myself.
So often our knee jerk reaction when someone brings up something that we don’t like is to either blame them immediately or to say ‘yeah well, you, blah, blah, blah………….” And then what happens is a rapid fire back and forth that gets neither person anywhere other than in a strop.
ha ha I so agree and feel ashamed to say I have done that way too often but I love that you have offered a perspective that is more observational than self-bashing.
To share the transformation that you have lived with such honesty, openness and rawness is absolutely beautiful.
It’s interesting how we look at our parents’ relationship and judge them and blame one more than the other. I know I struggled with my parents’ relationship and chose to leave home at seventeen. Now I have more of an understanding of how they became the people they did and why they stayed together.
Great observation Vicky – how many decades get wasted on our journey through life, and so how important is it that not only do we live everything we know to be true, but reflect that back to others that it is possible to change and let go of our past hurts.
As a result we can totally justify our own behaviours, whilst being completely blinded to anyone else. Collusion is the right word.
I find it interesting too how we call upon others to justify our actions. I am aware that I carry out this behaviour by giving examples of others to give me the comfort I am seeking when I feel hurt. I am also aware of seeing this game being played out in others. Boom – bullying is created but whether we play the victim or perpetrator we always have a part we have chosen to play in the game til we master what it is that is being asked of us.
Blame is so commonplace in our society that we donāt actually recognise it. We habitually blame people in our families, at work, in our friendship groups, in the local council, in government, in positions of power worldwide etc. So much of our conversation consists of blame and so little of it is about us taking responsibility for anything at all. We seem to be literally unable to consider the fact that any mess that weāre involved in has something to do with us.
I have found that when we are willing to be “honest, open and transparent”, although in the first instance we may feel very exposed and uncomfortable, it is so worth it when we see and feel the magic that begins to unfold within us, and around us.
‘When we want to hang onto a behaviour, do not want to let go, and if we are not honest, we will seek the support of the exactly those people that support the very behaviour we donāt want to let go of’ This is so true . I have noticed this in my own life occasionally when there have been big decisions to be made – it’s a game we play that serves no one.
This beautifully and simply exposes the devastating imprint that blame has on our body –
“Hardness out ā love in”.
Awesome honesty and sharing of the unravelling of the ‘blame game’ and its insidious harm to all.
Yes energy is very scientific and precise when you think about it.
It is very liberating when I look at and feel my hurts rather than playing the victim and trying to soothe and comfort myself. Comfort doesn’t let those hurts heal, they get worse.
You have truly grown into the gentle giant that has always resided within you.
Most beautifully said Steve.
Blame clouds our understanding of the energy that is driving us.
We are always going to blame another if we choose to hang onto hurts from our childhood. The relationship we have with our mother and father is a wonderful reflection of how we are in every relationship. When we heal what is there to be healed throughout childhood no matter our age it no doubt has a profound impact on our relationship with every man and woman we are in relationship with and not just those closest to us.
If we choose our parents to; be supported by them, or to support them and we give in to outside forces and call them hurts, we will always have the choice to heal the hurts we carry.
Amazing ā what a transformation after letting go of the shackles of victimhood and the ingrained from childhood pattern of blaming all and sundry for a lack of responsibility that is only ever our own.