The Blame Game

The Blame Game — blaming situations or others is a great way to live a small and meaningless life. Things change when we accept responsibility for our lives, and then do something different.

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My anal­o­gy of choice these days is this: 

In the past, I’d describe this to clients, I invite them to drop the mal­let and stop hurt­ing themselves. 

This would elic­it a smile, a rue­ful nod of the head, and then out would come a sto­ry or expla­na­tion that demon­strat­ed they were still swing­ing the mallet.

Blaming

We blame because it’s easier. 

A feel­ing of dis­com­fort aris­es in us (usu­al­ly in the chest or bel­ly.) Rather than explore our self-cre­at­ed feel­ing, we look for an external.

Since we are sur­round­ed with “stuff and oth­ers,” there’s always something.

And the mallet swinging commences

We either pick a fight, or run away. (Clas­sic fight or flight.) In either case, all we are doing is caus­ing our­selves pain by keep­ing our­selves caught in the imag­i­nary dra­ma we our­selves cre­at­ed!

Here’s a rule for you: all internal discomfort is self-created.

From Shamb­ha­la Sun’s Heart Advice comes this quote from Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Dif­fi­cult Times 

There’s a slo­gan in the mahayana teach­ings that says, “Dri­ve all blames into one­self.” The essence of this slo­gan is, “When it hurts so bad, it’s because I am hang­ing on so tight.” It’s not say­ing that we should beat our­selves up. It’s not advo­cat­ing mar­tyr­dom. What it implies is that pain comes from hold­ing so tight­ly to hav­ing it our own way and that one of the main exits we take when we find our­selves uncom­fort­able, when we find our­selves in an unwant­ed sit­u­a­tion or an unwant­ed place, is to blame.

This slo­gan is a help­ful and inter­est­ing sug­ges­tion that we could begin to shift that deep-seat­ed, ancient, habit­u­al ten­den­cy to hang on to hav­ing every­thing on our own terms. The way to start would be, first, when we feel the ten­den­cy to blame, to try to get in touch with what it feels like to be hold­ing on to our­selves so tightly.

A client said she want­ed to “make a con­tri­bu­tion,” but when­ev­er she got a new oppor­tu­ni­ty to stretch her wings, she ran home and hid under her bed. Rather than con­front her desire to “mal­let beat” her­self, she repeat­ed a litany of sto­ries designed to keep her stuck under the bed.

Anoth­er client told me that his wife left him because of: 

• the Wom­en’s Movement, 
• her hav­ing too many choices, 
• her hat­ing where they lived, and 
• her “lack of fam­i­ly values.”

I sug­gest­ed that we talk about his part in the breakup, and said that per­haps he sucked at relationships. 

He did­n’t dis­agree, but imme­di­ate­ly went back to his list. I then point­ed out that his list con­tained no items he could do any­thing about, so he was real­ly set­ting up a sys­tem to be alone. 

He spent the rest of the ses­sion sigh­ing and telling me, colour­ful­ly, that I’d missed the point.

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And then there’s me…

A while ago I got a call, and the caller asked me to do some­thing I’d rather not do.

Not some­thing awful, more of a stomp your foot, “I don’t want to!’ kind of thing.

I told Dar­bel­la about the request, and asked her what I should do. Dar just smiled and hand­ed the ball back to me.

Now, Dar has done this for 44 years… handed my responsibilities back to me. And often, l begin to anger myself.

Pret­ty soon, I was get­ting “intense,” and Dar­bel­la was get­ting qui­et. And at that point, I had a choice.

OK, every­thing I did was my choice, and I ini­tial­ly picked try­ing to pass the buck. (The Loonie, actu­al­ly, but it does­n’t sound as good…)

The choice? To blame Dar, or to have a breath, express my frustration (without blaming the caller either), and decide what to do.

All of this was me set­ting me off, because I did­n’t choose to say “no” direct­ly. And, anoth­er part of me want­ed to do it, because the peo­ple involved were friends.

Poor me, eh?

So, up comes the mal­let. My ini­tial reac­tion is: I’d rather be stuck, in pain, whack­ing myself. And I’ll also try to get Dar to pick up her mal­let and play along.

For­tu­nate­ly, after decades of observ­ing my games, I can see myself… and my games… and choose to stop myself. So I had a breath, and stopped. Dar­bel­la and I then had a con­ver­sa­tion about the request.

In that instant, I felt the weight lift off my chest.

In each of these examples, the hammer swinging is being done by the hammer holder.

There is only one time when this is not the case, and that’s in terms of phys­i­cal vio­lence. If some­one else is lit­er­al­ly wield­ing “a ham­mer,” then the oth­er per­son caus­es the wound. 

In every oth­er sit­u­a­tion, in every oth­er rela­tion­ship, in every oth­er case, the ham­mer is being swung by the same per­son that is being hit.

Thus, “Virtually All Wounds are Self-Inflicted.”

A lot of this goes back to child­hood, when we had an expec­ta­tion that our hap­pi­ness and well-being was in the hands of oth­ers — we were “right” to the extent that we were kept alive by oth­ers. The jury is out as to the hap­pi­ness and well-being part.

Despite the fact we’re no longer chil­dren, we often want to be looked after, amused, made hap­py, and giv­en a guar­an­tee that “Every­thing is going to work out just the way I want it to!”

Peo­ple tell me that’s why they are in rela­tion­ship. It’s fun­ny, though, how once the nov­el­ty wears off, “He makes me so hap­py,” becomes, “He makes me so angry. He’s changed!”

A friend was bemoan­ing her fate the oth­er day, describ­ing her hus­band thus­ly: “He hates his job, is good with the kids, but fights with my son, and nev­er wants to do any­thing. He’s real­ly quite boring.”

The interesting piece, to me, was that I’d asked her how she was doing.

I asked her again, and she reluc­tant­ly described her own quite bor­ing life.

This is not to say that her hus­band might not be bor­ing. It’s to say that her bore­dom is not caused by or about him. She’s bor­ing her­self, and blam­ing him for not mak­ing it “more fun.” 

Which, when you think about it, is the per­fect game. When she’s hap­py, she can say “I had a great time!” When life sucks, its, “You’re so boring!”

Often, the power struggles that appear to be about who is right are actually about who is responsible.

Each per­son blames the oth­er for the prob­lem. “If only you’d get it!” (Like my first client sto­ry: he wants me to “get” how pow­er­less he is, and also how pow­er­less “every­one” is. But it begs the ques­tion: why would I want to be pow­er­less in regard to my own life?) 

As we play the blame game, we let our­selves com­plete­ly off the hook for the pain we are feel­ing.

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Blame. Excuses. “I can’t!” “I’m scared!”

We need to learn to have a breath, to grow up, and to take respon­si­bil­i­ty. The life you have, right now, is sole­ly what you cre­at­ed. Solely. 

You don’t like it? Change some­thing! No whin­ing about how hard it is, no, “But what if it does­n’t work out?” Noth­ing changes until you do.

It’s time to notice and admit to the games you’re play­ing. Time to let go of the tight­ness and lack of flu­id­i­ty that comes from blaming.

No one is doing stuff to you. No one is mak­ing you mis­er­able. No one is try­ing to hurt you. All that stuff you’re stuff­ing, all those emo­tions, are yours. They’re yours to deal with, let go of and move past.

No one owes you dif­fer­ent behav­iour. You owe you the abil­i­ty to claim and own your behaviour.

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