Let me say first that in some situations blaming is helpful and healthy, and not always a dysfunctional reaction. Assigning blame where it is appropriate can help empower and protect you, to stop harm in its tracks.  But the kind of blaming that I am addressing here is the unhealthy and chronic kind, the habitual and reactive sort that blocks personal growth, damages relationships and gets in the way of your own wellbeing.

To find out if you are a blamer, take the following test:

Blamer’s Test

1. Would it be normal for you to respond to someone with a problem by telling him why he is to blame for his problem?
2. In relationship with friends and family, do you often find yourself pointing the finger, telling others how and why they are wrong, using phrases like you did it, it’s your fault!
3. When confronted with life’s difficulties or inconveniences, is it common for you to identify and ruminate over who or what is to blame?
4. When you are upset or in a difficult situation, do you frequently blame someone for making you feel the way you do?

If you answered yes to one of these questions, you are a blamer.  If you answered yes to two or more questions, your blaming behavior is most probably compromising your relationships, wellbeing and personal evolution.  That said, keep reading; blaming is a habit and awareness is the first step towards breaking it.

First, I want to congratulate you on the willingness to look honestly at your blaming behavior, and address what is not working in your life.  It’s hard to investigate the parts of yourself that need improvement; awareness takes courage.  In addition, I congratulate you on the aspiration to grow and improve, which comes from your highest self.   The intention to evolve is already evolved.  That said, just by continuing to read, you are doing something remarkable.

Your blaming, when it began, was probably an innocent defense mechanism designed to protect you from harm.  If your sister was to blame for eating the cookies then she would be punished—not you.  But sometimes blaming takes a turn toward the dysfunctional, when blaming becomes your default reaction to life, which then causes harm to you and others.

Blaming, when dysfunctional, is a way to avoid and deny feeling what you are feeling.  While it may not be conscious, blaming is something you do to get away from the feelings you do not want to feel.  But I feel lots of things when I blame, you might argue.  And it is true that you do feel when immersed in blaming, but you feel something other than what you would if you could not blame.  In this way, blaming conceals and distorts your real truth; you replace your feelings about what you are experiencing with feelings about who caused it.   At its core, blaming is a form of self-abandonment and self-betrayal.

Case In Point

Jon (not his real name) is driving his teenage daughter to a gymnastics meet.  Traffic is dreadful and they are going to be late for this important event in her life.  Jon goes to his default response, blame, accusing his daughter of dilly-dallying before getting in the car and other such crimes.  He spends the entire trip angry; berating her, explaining why it’s her fault that she is not going to make her meet on time.  Later, as I unpacked the event with Jon, it became evident that underneath the blame, there were in fact many emotions happening inside him.  He felt sad and guilty about not being able to get her there on time, and powerless that as her dad, he couldn’t take care of her, which is what he really wanted to do.  He felt anxious because he thought there might be a better route to take, but he couldn’t figure out what it was.  He felt heartbroken because he knew what the meet meant to her, and how hard she had worked for it.

Under all of the blame was actually love and pride for his daughter.  As Jon and I re-scripted the event, re-lived it in a new way; we replaced Jon’s blaming script with an acknowledgment and expression of all the juicy feelings that had not been allowed a seat at the table with his daughter or even in Jon’s awareness.  Together, we invited in Jon’s actual truth, and re-framed the traffic jam as an opportunity not to determine blame or rightness, but rather to connect, create intimacy and empathy, and meet the truth of the moment.  With the need to assign blame set aside, there was an opportunity for Jon to touch into his actual experience and feel the depth of his vulnerability and love, which thankfully, he was later able to share with his daughter.

Furthermore, blaming is a way to uphold your self-image and protect your self-esteem.  Your partner is the cause of your relationship problems, your boss is why you are not successful, the government is to blame for your lot in life, and on it goes.  Someone/something else is to blame, which then allows you to avoid having to look at your own participation, and potentially, aspects of yourself that conflict with your self-image.  Blaming keeps you safe from having to look at the gap between who you believe yourself to be and who you are.  But in so doing, blaming also prevents you from being able to grow and change.  Pointing the finger is a way to avoid responsibility, which ultimately keeps you stuck at the place from which you point.

Blaming is also a strategy (albeit usually unconscious) to keep from having to make changes or address your actual reality.  As long as the problem is someone else’s fault, you can stay busy and focused on trying to correct the blame, that is, fix that person or situation that is at fault.  Your attention is poured into what you have determined to be the source of that fault.   As a result, you turn your back not only on your actual experience of the situation, but what you might need to do—given that the situation is the way it is.

Case in Point

Maggie (not her name) had been in a relationship with Phil for a dozen years and for ten of those years she had been talking about how and why he was to blame for what was not working in the marriage. Her attention was perpetually focused outward, on changing him; he was to blame so he needed be fixed (which was her job).  When he was fixed, then she would be happy in the marriage.  She believed that blaming and fixing would set her free but in fact, it was paralyzing her and keeping her stuck, with her life balanced on a potential future that didn’t exist.

After much suffering, Maggie became aware of how the blaming was prohibiting her not only from directly experiencing her unhappiness, but from honestly addressing what needed to happen because of it.   If this was the state of the marriage, what then?  Thankfully, when she was finally willing to stop the cycle of blame, turn her attention away from Phil and his faults, and focus it back on her own heart, she was able to see and take the next right step.

Recovery: how to break the blaming habit?

Step 1: Set an intention (make a decision) to stop your blaming behavior.  Identify what it is you want and hope to experience as a result of moving out of blaming (better relationships, more peace, freedom from anger, less time ruminating etc.).  Write down (or tell a friend) about this decision.    If possible, begin a journal dedicated to your evolution from blaming.

Step 2: Start paying attention!  Make a conscious effort to become more mindful of your blaming behavior.  When you are able to catch the impulse to blame (before it happens), create a pause, be silent and take 2 deep breaths.  Then, make a different choice.

Remember however, breaking the blaming habit is a process that takes time.  You will not be able to catch yourself before you blame on every occasion; it may be quite a while before you can catch yourself at all.  That’s ok.  It is a huge step just to notice your habitual reaction to blame, even if it is after the fact.  But the more you practice, the more you will be able to interrupt the process before it happens (and blessedly) respond in a new way and from a different place.

Step 3: At whatever stage you notice your blaming impulse (before or after), ask yourself the following questions (and journal on what you uncover):

1. If I couldn’t blame in this situation, what would I have to feel?
2. What about that feeling is hard to feel?

Step 4: Honor yourself for making the commitment and doing the work that emotionally and spiritually evolving requires.

A last note: be gentle with yourself.  This is not an opportunity to blame yourself for not getting yet another thing right.  Practice these steps and when you forget to practice them, remember and start again.  Practicing is the path to change.  If you commit to making this effort, you will grow in ways you can’t yet know, and so will your relationships and your life!

To read more on the topic, visit my Psychology Today Blog:

• What to DO About the People that Blame You for Everything
• When You’re in Relationship with a Blamer
• The #1 Most Important Relationship Skill and How to Learn It
• How to Heal Defensiveness in Close Relationships
• “And” Not “But”: The Secret to Healthy Relationships

Copyright 2016 Nancy Colier

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The questions I raised included:

• How do we proceed when someone that matters to us assigns us negative intentions that are not ours?
• How much energy do we put into trying to correct their ideas so as to be seen and known correctly?
• How do we stay open, non-defensive, and emotionally intact when someone uses us as a place to unload their anger, guilt, and shame, and to successfully split off from their own negative feelings?
• How can we avoid internalizing their negativity and experiencing ourselves as the bad object that they need us to be—so that their internal system can function smoothly, their identity can remain intact?

The first thing to do when someone we care about blames or criticizes us is to examine our own behavior. Is there truth in what they are telling us about ourselves? What was your intention in this situation? If we find that there is validity in what they are telling us, we can take a good look at what they are pointing to, and try to use their words as a lesson and opportunity to grow.

To honestly investigate our own behavior takes courage. To acknowledge that we could have acted with more awareness in a situation, or could have done better, is not the same as blaming or judging ourselves. We are all works in progress and all in the process of becoming more aware.

But when we are in relationship with a chronic blamer, most of us have already done this kind of self-examination. We have found that the blamer frequently accuses us of intentions and actions that do not belong to us, and often belong to themselves. Part of what makes being in a relationship with a blamer so challenging is that our intentions and behavior seem unrelated to how they view and treat us. We may show the blamer who we are, and painstakingly explain, again and again, our truth—that we are not what they have decided. But the blamer needs us to remain the bad one, and needs us to see what he or she sees. However, if we pay attention and take some distance from the accusations, we realize that we have been assigned a role in the other’s internal narrative and are playing a (negative) character for them in their storyline—all of which is about them and not us. Even when our behavior demonstrates a different reality than what the blamer claims, the blamer is likely to remain more committed to keeping his or her narrative intact than to seeing the truth.

The great danger that projection presents when it comes from those close to us is it makes us feel like the bad person that the other person is relating to. Particularly when someone projects onto and blames us from a young age, we tend to take on the core-belief that we are bad—in whatever form our blamer framed it (I am the selfish one, I am the angry one, etc.). When we are young, we experience ourselves through the eyes of those close to us. We have not yet developed a private experience of ourselves that can refute the character they need us to be. We don’t yet have the capacity to separate who we are, in our own heart and gut, from the guilty person they see. Their delight or disapproval teaches us who we are. Until we understand and heal from projection, and discover a different experience of ourselves, we believe and/or fear ourselves to be their story of us.

The most critical practice to undertake when in a relationship with a blamer is to get irrefutably clear on who we are in our own heart—which only we can know. What is my truth?: This is the question in which we must marinate. The core of protecting ourselves from a blamer is establishing and continually supporting an impenetrable boundary between what we know about ourselves and what this other person needs to believe about us. This boundary requires that we be willing to dive deeply into our own heart, to discover our real truths—without distortion—with a fierce and unwavering intention to meet ourselves as we actually are. Our practice is to create a tether into our heart, and build a place inside ourselves where the blamer’s words cannot reach—where we know (and know we know) who we are. Rather than harming us, then, the other’s blame can then be used as a red flag, to remind us to return to our heart to discover what is actually so for us—separate from the other and their story. Their blame becomes the catalyst to direct our energy away from their narrative and toward our own inarguable truth.

It is heartbreaking when someone we love sees us in a way that doesn’t feel true or positive, but just because another person (no matter how much we love them) relates to us as bad or guilty does not mean that we are those things. We can mourn this person not knowing us, or not seeing us correctly—without having to become the object of their blame. Further, we do not need to convince the other of who we are to be who we are. We need not convince them of our innocence to be innocent. We can simply choose to reject their projections, to return them to sender, if you will. Their projections belong to them; we can let them pass through us. While we feel and grieve the gap between who we are and who they see, it is not a gap that must be, or in some cases, can be bridged.

While we can’t control what another person thinks about us or how they may distort our truth, we can most definitely control what we do with their thoughts. We can’t control whether another person will listen to or be interested in our truth, but we can control for how long and with how much energy we will attempt to correct their version of our truth. We can also control how and if we want to continue in a relationship with someone who chooses not to relate to who we actually are.

In relating with a blamer, some important questions to contemplate are:

1. When I search my own heart, is my intention in line with what the blamer is accusing me of? (Am I responsible in some way for what they are claiming and can I look at that part of myself?)
2. What is my heart’s intention in this relationship?
3. Have I tried to express my experience or my truth to this person?
4. Do I experience this person as interested in or open to my truth?
5. Am I allowing myself to experience the feelings that arise as a result of being unfairly blamed and/or not heard?
6. Can I honor and grieve the gap between who they are relating to and who I am?
7. Can I know myself as who I am even in the face of their need to relate to me as someone else?
8. Can I allow their negative projections to remain with them, and not take them in as my own?
9. Can I let myself be who I am and know myself as who I am, even with this person believing that I am responsible for how they feel?
10. Can I honor myself as innocent even in the face of the guilt they are assigning me?
11. Do I want to remain in relationship with someone who sees me in a way that is out of alignment with who I know myself to be? If so, why?

A longing for others to see and know us as we know ourselves—and, of course, regard us positively—is integral to being human. And yet, we can’t always change the way another person relates to us, or who they need us to be for them. Fortunately, we can always change the way we relate to ourselves. No matter the narrative tsunami we face, we can always be that kind and curious presence—for ourselves—which wants to know what is actually true inside our heart, and thus to know us as we really are.

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The problem is that anyone with a brain who knew anything about Manhattan would also know that the street the GPS was telling us to cross was a terrible option and the last street on earth one would want to choose in good conditions, much less the conditions on that particular day.  A human brain with intelligence and life experience, that could factor in the context of rush hour, pouring rain, construction, and a bridge set at the east end of exactly that street, would know that any other path would be a better option to get to where I was going.  But alas, technology told us to go that way—and so we did.

After sitting in entirely stopped traffic for ten minutes and then crawling bumper to bumper for another ten, just to travel half a city block, I asked the driver if he could get off this particular street and take a different route, to which he replied, “But the GPS tells me that this is my path,” “But what happens if we know better than what it tells you to do?” I asked.  While I don’t remember his exact words, the message was that regardless of what we in the car know to be true, he has to follow the directions of the computer.  If the computer chirps it, we do it.

The fact that this path might be the shortest physical distance between the two points was irrelevant at this time of day, with this particular weather, and with the reality of urban planning.  Nonetheless, we honored the computer’s determinant, geographical distance, as if it were the only important element in making this decision.

Five minutes later, still moving an inch at a time, I asked the driver if would be possible for him to text the company and tell them that unforeseen (by the computer) conditions had rendered its usual genius inaccurate, and to inquire whether we humans could override its intelligence and take another route.  He told me at this point, 25 minutes into the street crossing, that only the passenger could text the office to tell them that real life dictated a route other than what the computer indicated. But he certainly couldn’t do that.  When I then asked him why he had not suggested that I text the company earlier, when we were talking about the traffic, he looked confused and reiterated that he had to do what the computer told him to do.

I didn’t say anything after that, but I did get out of the van and walk in the pouring rain the rest of the way.  What I knew about traffic and my city didn’t matter, but what I knew about myself did matter, and that was that I needed to be out of that black Suburban as soon as possible.

Have we gone mad as a species?  Are we so anxious to surrender our authority, to not have to think, not be in charge, that we will follow any computer that tells us what to do—even when we know better?  Do we really want to be passive lab rats?  What has happened to our respect for and trust in our own intelligence, and our ability to figure things out for ourselves?

While algorithms can decide a lot of things, they cannot substitute for human intelligence, which can factor in the wisdom of experience, context, circumstance, psychology and a whole lot of other factors too, all at once.  To make wise decisions we need a lot more than just facts, and yet, we are behaving as if data is the central key to a good life.

In truth, the expression on my driver’s face when I asked him if he could take another route, was the spookiest thing I encountered, and what made me feel most hopeless.  This grown man, who I am sure has lived a life filled with experience, and who probably has a tremendous amount of wisdom, looked like someone who had been vacuumed of his own life force, his basic humanness.  He looked, dare I say it, like a robot.

How can we regain authority in our own lives?’ This is the question that is not just interesting, but existentially urgent.  How can we stop ourselves from becoming robots, handing over our intelligence and life force to the computer?  How far are we from a time when the computer chirps us a message that is not just inconvenient, but actually destructive?

The human brain has the capacity not just to gather, store, and link data, but also to bring to that data an intelligence and wisdom of experience that is not just profoundly important, but also changes that data into something else.  We need more than information to live a good life, we need the ability to process and to make meaning, which (still) only humans can provide.

In the meanwhile, use the computer to text the head office and tell them that the human on board knows better.  Grab the reins back in your own life.  And remember, we humans, at least for now, are still the ones in charge—if we decide to be.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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Boiled down, the conflict between my friend and me is about how we define “right” and “wrong,” and our attachment to our personal “rights” and “wrongs.” We all run into this conflict, frequently. Whether it’s a friend who holds a radically different political belief than us, or one who believes in a moral choice that we consider inhuman, or even something small, when their “best book ever written” is one that we think is utterly infantile. Whatever the current contents of “right” and “wrong,” we are continually having to figure out how to navigate relationships that contain intense dissonance, disagreement, and even disrespect.

What is to be done when our intimate friend or partner holds a belief that we cannot find a place for in our head or heart?

The first thing I decided to do was to convince my friend that he was wrong and that I was right… and I was certain I could do it. After all, sense was on my side. So I gave it the college try, the graduate school try, the saintly try, or whatever try you imagine is most admirable — I gave it that. I was sure that he would come around to sanity, and then I would be able to resolve my conflict with both loving my friend and also (what I consider) his unreasonable belief. But, as is usually the case with this approach — changing the other — it failed. My friend’s belief remains intact, and if anything, strengthened by all my explaining, arguing, and proving.

My next approach was to try and change my own belief so that I could agree with my friend — close the gap between our views, and settle my anxiety about seeing “right” and “wrong” so differently. I tried on his belief from every vantage point: compassion, reason, logic, historical precedent, and everything else I could think of; I really tried to make it make sense to me. But, as is usually the case with this approach — forcing a truth in order to eliminate cognitive dissonance — it failed. I simply could not get myself to believe or even respect my friend’s belief.

For Plan C, I went with the “let it go” approach. In essence, to accept that my friend believes this to be truth, and that it makes no sense to me, and it makes me angry and hurt… and then drop all of it, drop my experience of the situation and move on. Focus on what works in the relationship and let the rest go. But, as is usually the case with this approach — to decide (intellectually) to feel differently than I feel — it failed. Every time I saw my friend (and even when I didn’t) the fact that he thought that I was wrong and he was right made me feel unfairly judged and deeply resentful. And I couldn’t find a way to love and respect him — if he believed this. No matter what I told myself to do, my body felt tight and uncomfortable in his presence, and my heart felt closed. In “letting it go,” I was trying to eradicate the conflict, to create a ‘now’ that didn’t include all of these uncomfortable parts, but that ultimately didn’t exist. Truth was, I didn’t know how to make myself let go of or will away what felt like my actual experience of the situation.

And then I stumbled on an approach that offered some genuine relief. For the first time, I found a space that felt better, and one from which our friendship might be able to continue, even with the discord that it now included. I would call this approach the “letting it be” way. While “letting it be” sounds similar to “letting it go,” it is in fact profoundly different. “Letting it go” is an attempt to change reality while “letting it be” is literally, a letting be of reality the way it is. In this case, accepting that my friend believes what he believes — that this is so, and not something that must or is going to change. When I can let it be, I stop trying to change his belief, change my belief, push his belief out of my consciousness, or push my experience out of my consciousness. I can then allow myself to be present in the relationship and stop demanding that it become something else. While all the same factors are present as before — he still believes something to be right that I think is mad, he still believes that I am doing something fundamentally wrong — and yet, I have stopped fighting the is-ness of it. While theoretically it may feel counter-intuitive to surrender the fight against a ‘now’ that we don’t want, in practice it is in fact a great relief to the body, heart and mind, to literally, let reality be.

So perhaps you are somewhere in this process with a friend or partner, of trying to change, integrate, or find a way to live with an aspect of their belief system, their idea of right and wrong, that you fundamentally reject. And it is not easy process, when we feel so at odds with another’s values — particularly another that we care about deeply. And yet, if we can truly learn to surrender to who the other is, what the other believes — not who we want them to be or what we want them to believe — meet the other as he/she is in reality, and accept the differences between us, then, with that acceptance, that surrender — something in us profoundly relaxes.

From that surrender, that relaxation, the relationship can (sometimes) grow into something more intimate, but always into something more real. And perhaps even more importantly, the practice of “letting it be,” no matter what or whom we apply it to, is really an invitation and permission slip to ourselves — to drop into and be in this very moment, with what it actually contains, and to stop having to reject ‘now’ in the hopes of a different ‘now.’ This is the true gift of “letting it be.”

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These people are not isolated examples or peculiar in any way. Many people hold grudges, deep ones, that can last a lifetime. Many are unable to let go of the anger they feel towards those who “wronged” them in the past, even though they may have a strong desire and put in a concerted effort to do so.

Often we hold onto our grudges unwillingly, while wishing we could drop them and live freshly in the present, without the injustices of the past occupying so much psychic space.

Why do we hold grudges when they are in fact quite painful to maintain, and often seem to work against what we really want? Why do we keep wounds open and active, living in past experiences of pain which prevent new experiences from being able to happen? What keeps us stuck when we want to move on and let go? Most important, how can we let go?

To begin with, grudges come with an identity. With our grudge intact, we know who we are—a person who was “wronged.”  As much as we don’t like it, there also exists a kind of rightness and strength in this identity. We have something that defines us—our anger and victimhood—which gives us a sense of solidness and purpose. We have definition and a grievance that carries weight. To let go of our grudge, we have to be willing to let go of our identity as the “wronged” one, and whatever strength, solidity, or possible sympathy and understanding we receive through that “wronged” identity. We have to be willing to drop the “I” who was mistreated and step into a new version of ourselves, one we don’t know yet, that allows the present moment to determine who we are, not past injustice.

But what are we really trying to get at, get to, or just get by holding onto a grudge and strengthening our identity as the one who was “wronged”? In truth, our grudge, and the identity that accompanies it, is an attempt to get the comfort and compassion we didn’t get in the past, the empathy for what happened to us at the hands of this “other,” the experience that our suffering matters  As a somebody who was victimized, we are announcing that we are deserving of extra kindness and special treatment. Our indignation and anger is a cry to be cared about and treated differently—because of what we have endured.

The problem with grudges, besides the fact that they are a drag to carry around (like a bag of sedimentized toxic waste that keeps us stuck in anger) is that they don’t serve the purpose that they are there to serve. They don’t make us feel better or heal our hurt. At the end of the day, we end up as proud owners of our grudges but still without the experience of comfort that we ultimately crave, that we have craved since the original wounding. We turn our grudge into an object and hold it out at arm’s length—proof of what we have suffered, a badge of honor, a way to remind others and ourselves of our pain and deserving-ness. But in fact our grudge is disconnected from our own heart; while born out of our pain, it becomes a construction of the mind, a story of what happened to us. Our grudge morphs into a boulder that blocks the light of kindness from reaching our heart, and thus is an obstacle to true healing. Sadly, in its effort to garner us empathy, our grudge ends up depriving us of the very empathy that we need to release it.

The path to freedom from a grudge is not so much through forgiveness of the “other” (although this can be helpful), but rather through loving our own self. To bring our own loving presence to the suffering that crystallized into the grudge, the pain that was caused by this “other,” is what ultimately heals the suffering and allows the grudge to melt. If it feels like too much to go directly into the pain of a grudge, we can move toward it with the help of someone we trust, or bring a loving presence to our wound, but from a safe place inside. The idea is not to re-traumatize ourselves by diving into the original pain but rather to attend to it with the compassion that we didn’t receive, that our grudge is screaming for, and bring it directly into the center of the storm. Our heart contains both our pain and the elixir for our pain.

To let go of a grudge we need to move the focus off of the one who “wronged” us, off of the story of our suffering, and into the felt experience of what we actually lived. When we move our attention inside, into our heart, our pain shifts from being a “something” that happened to us, another part of our narrative, to a sensation that we know intimately, a felt sense that we are one with from the inside.

In re-focusing our attention, we find the soothing kindness and compassion that the grudge itself desires. In addition, we take responsibility for caring about our own suffering, and for knowing that our suffering matters, which can never be achieved through our grudge, no matter how fiercely we believe in it. We can then let go of the identity of the one who was “wronged,” because it no longer serves us and because our own presence is now righting that wrong. Without the need for our grudge, it often simply drops away without our knowing how. What becomes clear is that we are where we need to be, in our own heart’s company.

Copyright 2015 Nancy Colier

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