Take a moment to think about who you blame for your feelings of hurt, anger, aloneness, emptiness, loneliness, helplessness, inadequacy, shame, depression, anxiety, fear, and so on.
Many people have a strong belief that other people are the cause of their feelings - that they are victims of others' choices - so they have a right to blame others. The belief that others cause your feelings generally starts early in childhood when parents blamed each other, or you, for their feelings. Most people do not see people learning from their feelings. Instead, they see people avoiding their feelings in various ways, such as using addictions to numb them out, or using blame to dump them onto others.
What is really going on inside when you blame someone else for your feelings?
If you have a deep belief that others cause your feelings, then it seems only right to blame them for causing your pain or not making you happy. When you come from this belief, the only way you can move out of feeling like a victim is to try to control the other person into not doing the thing that you think is causing your pain, or to do the thing that you think will make you happy.
Blame is always a form of control that originates in the wounded part of oneself that hates to feel helpless. Rather than accept your powerlessness over others' choices, you convince yourself that if you blame the other person, you can get the other to behave the way you want.
The tipping point is really about our perspective. Rather than maintaining ourselves in a place where we are exercising an evolved sense of "me-and-you", we can get stuck in "it's all about me" -- especially when confronted with the strong emotions of another person, or an emotionally charged situation. That sort of thinking is both the root of self-blame, and a barrier to recognizing relative responsibility.
When someone becomes angry, rather than respond with, "Oh, that person is angry.", we are more likely to respond with, "Oh, that person is angry at/with me." Just so, rather than responding with "Oh, that person is angry, and I should hold space for that.", we are more likely to respond with, "Oh, that person is angry, and it must be me doing something wrong."
The problem is that the belief that others cause your feelings is not true. Blaming another is always a way to avoid responsibility for what you are telling yourself and how you are treating yourself that is causing your feelings.
By learning to stay in a place of "me-and-you", and keeping a balanced eye on who plays what part in any given interaction or situation, we are better able to emerge from a state of self-blame and also better able to keep the trap of the ego at bay.
Many people have a strong belief that other people are the cause of their feelings - that they are victims of others' choices - so they have a right to blame others. The belief that others cause your feelings generally starts early in childhood when parents blamed each other, or you, for their feelings. Most people do not see people learning from their feelings. Instead, they see people avoiding their feelings in various ways, such as using addictions to numb them out, or using blame to dump them onto others.
What is really going on inside when you blame someone else for your feelings?
If you have a deep belief that others cause your feelings, then it seems only right to blame them for causing your pain or not making you happy. When you come from this belief, the only way you can move out of feeling like a victim is to try to control the other person into not doing the thing that you think is causing your pain, or to do the thing that you think will make you happy.
Blame is always a form of control that originates in the wounded part of oneself that hates to feel helpless. Rather than accept your powerlessness over others' choices, you convince yourself that if you blame the other person, you can get the other to behave the way you want.
The tipping point is really about our perspective. Rather than maintaining ourselves in a place where we are exercising an evolved sense of "me-and-you", we can get stuck in "it's all about me" -- especially when confronted with the strong emotions of another person, or an emotionally charged situation. That sort of thinking is both the root of self-blame, and a barrier to recognizing relative responsibility.
When someone becomes angry, rather than respond with, "Oh, that person is angry.", we are more likely to respond with, "Oh, that person is angry at/with me." Just so, rather than responding with "Oh, that person is angry, and I should hold space for that.", we are more likely to respond with, "Oh, that person is angry, and it must be me doing something wrong."
The problem is that the belief that others cause your feelings is not true. Blaming another is always a way to avoid responsibility for what you are telling yourself and how you are treating yourself that is causing your feelings.
By learning to stay in a place of "me-and-you", and keeping a balanced eye on who plays what part in any given interaction or situation, we are better able to emerge from a state of self-blame and also better able to keep the trap of the ego at bay.
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