This might be an odd thought, but do you think that maybe you are blaming yourself in order to protect the people who are actually responsible? I mean, what would happen if you let the responsibility fall where it belongs?

Personally I often find it easier to take the blame myself because I feel like other people wouldn't be able to tolerate the shame and guilt of realizing their own responsibility.

BLT,

it's definitely a number of things that i'm avoiding - protecting others is one, and myself from my feelings. we've gone in depth in my work about why i feel this way. i think because it is a defense mechanism may be why my Ts actions seem/feel so aggressive right now. My Ts are not working with me to re-assign the blame but rather to re-frame the blame like taking things from "bad things happen to bad people therefore i'm bad" to "bad things happen sometimes".

what i'm wondering is how does your T work with you on your blame stuff?

I completely understand. I get it. I have tons of shame. I feel at fault for everything even if I can rationalize that I don't need to feel at fault. Sometimes I just want to be understood. I wish T could understand that I need to express this sometimes without going into all the positive self talk! Good luck!

(((((CAT)))))

I do remember reading somewhere about attribution theory and that the people who cope best in life are the people who attribute ambiguous events to external causes. We see this all the time on the boards. Things happen and we don't know how to interpret T's actions and we take the blame. It must be us. We must be unloveable because T didn't call us back.

I'm actually starting also to not take the blame for things. It's hard to pinpoint exactly how my T works with me on that except that we work on me feeling entitled to my reality. And I question constantly why I feel so bad about myself because I don't love someone the way they want me to love them. Or do something for them because they want me to behave a certain way.

Right there as I wrote that last paragraph out, I can see how I give up my control if I don't feel entitled to my feelings and feel compelled to validate the others needs, then wind up feeling powerless and perhaps then take the blame for things in order to get some sense of control.

Part of it for me has been coming to terms with seeing the world as this really out of control place. And seeing people as their own individual beings with their own thoughts and their own agendas that most often have nothing to do wtih me. What rocks my world is when someone does something to control their life and I feel that shift. It feels like the rug is being pulled out from underneath me and I lose my bearings and fall. But the tether, the thing that ties me to them and why it affects me so much is taking the blame for that shift so that it gives me the illusion of control. It's just to scary to acknowledge how much control we don't have. Although, on the other hand, that in and of itself is so freeing and empowering because then we stop trying to control things we can't and we put our energy into controlling things we can.

My T and I have been working at digging out all those really bad thoughts I have about myself and seeing where they come from. And talking about it over and over again until we get out the very last one. In all honesty, I was willing to take all that stuff on in order to prop other people up. Just a role I took on in life. And now, when I look at what I have done to myself, it makes me cringe to see that's what I have been doing. But there is a lot of fear there too. Even though it hurts to blame ourselves, it's all we know. We don't know what's on the other side of the coin. It's not familiar. So, it's scary. But maybe that's part of it too. We had our parents with us or at least it felt like it when we took blame for everything. When we stop taking the blame and get them out of our heads, we can form a new partnership with our T's who can walk alongside us while we move forward. In theory, that sounds great to me but I still find it scary because I'm having to confront all kinds of things I've been afraid of for a long time.

I always took blame for when relationships ended because that's what my Dad told me when I was a kid. That I always created issues, that I had to learn to get a long with people. That might have all been true but it's also true that other people create issues too and perhaps I was just responding. But that's how I saw the world. And now when I go back and look at all the things I took responsibility for and why, it all looks just so ridiculous now and I can see how I bought into my Dad's thinking because that's what suited HIM. He didn't want to rock the boat. He couldn't be assertive.

For some reason, for me, saying I'm afraid, I need help is so much harder than saying, I'm a failure, I can't do this. It must be all my fault.

I can't sleep and I know I'm just rambling on. Don't know if I addressed what you were asking or not. Just think we have to keep digging and digging and getting at those feelings and building a new psychic structure for ourselves, a new foundation that does NOT include self-blame. And it's just going to take time and more therapy. LOL!!!

Taking it all out and looking at it over and over again until we come to truly know and believe how irrational all these things we tell ourselves really are.

HUGS,

Liese

As a kid, growing up in a chaotic household with an alcoholic father and not having anyone explain to me why certain things happened or that everything was going to be ok, led me to create stuff in my mind that everything was my fault. Now as a young adult, I still feel like I can rationalize why everything is still my fault. The way my T works with me is she just kind of talks me through all the situations again and I realize, holy crap it's really not my fault. Sometime last semester I had this crazy emotional meltdown and I ended up creating this elaborate story in my mind that T didn't really care for me at all and I was just another client blah blah blah the whole 10. When I realized I didn't want to leave T and that I made a huge mistake, I went running back to her (didn't give a hoot that I didn't have an appt. either tee hee) and cried and clung to her and said through tears and all how sorry I was and that it was my fault for trying to mess up something that was fine etc. I remember very distinctly, my T looking me straight in the eye and saying that I had absolutely nothing to be sorry for and that it wasn't my fault. Hearing that made my heart flutter and it was something I so very much needed to hear.

I still do blame myself a lot for things (2nd nature I guess) but T is always really good to walk me through whatever situation I'm blaming myself for and helping me to realize that it's not my fault, which is always a very liberating feeling.

I guess in my case it's a bit different. I don't usually truly, deeply believe things are my fault, but I'm willing to act like they or believe they are a little bit, because I think people will react better to me if I try to take the blame.

I think I used to believe on some deep, unconscious level that it was my fault when people rejected or abandoned me, but during the time right before I left my old T, apparently I spontaneously regressed right back to the feelings from my original abandonment experiences (that was like the most painful experience ever! it sucked!) but I came out of it with the realization that it wasn't my fault. But my T wasn't even there at the time so yeah...

Good thread, thanks!

I've really struggled with some aspects of this. I dunno if I can describe my process so well... (gonna try anyhow... pls bear with me...)

My T once asked, what is the purpose of finding fault? Mine, hers, anyone’s… It shifted the conversation a bit. Instead of talking about who was at fault, we were talking about why to find anyone at fault or responsible (and it is good to do that – at least with the stuff we were talking about)

“has anyone seen the other side of an issue they were blaming themselves for?” Yes, I have. I spent many many years blaming myself for something that happened in my family. It was a little complex of a situation, but there was one element of it all that I completely blamed myself for. Then a child in my family, in my neighborhood, dealt with the same situation. Suddenly, there was no way I could blame myself, unless I also blamed the child, and it was clearly not the child’s fault what happened… and it really was actually really hard…

It was one of the most painful things in my life to see so blantantly that is wasn’t my fault. It threw my world upside down… to see the blame suddenly so clearly on people other than me. The pain and loss of control I felt in the moment, facing that reality, helped me also realize why I blamed myself for so long. I wanted my world to make sense and be something that was in control, prefferably my control. Not in a bad way, but in a protective way. But it wasn’t. It isn’t. Not only was it painful to let go of the blame, but it was painful to grieve what I lost too my blaming myself. I had to grieve the loss of control, and the loss of all the years I blamed myself. It was really hard.

One of my T’s really believes that trying to take away my self blame, can really trigger me. I think she is right. She is just as careful as re-directing my self blame as she is about things like talking about past trauma or keeping the door open or closed (which sometimes can be triggering for me). It's not quite like praise has been traumatic like things behind closed doors has been, but that praising me, re-directing self blame that I have, it can be just as anxiety producing as reminder of trauma... And I think that the anxiety around it gets combined with a sense of a need for control, for action, and somehow it trasnlate into stress and distance and frustration with my T. It used to be that if my T re-directed my self blame too much, or really much at all, I'd get slightly numbed out - and that's why I think she sees it that way for me. I don't get numbed out anymore, but I still sometimes have reactions in other ways, and she sees them as other ways to protect myself.

If she compliments me too much, or tries to argue down the self blame too much, or tries to re-direct too much of my self hate, it makes connecting with her much harder – I start to not just push away the compliments, but her. I get tense, angry even. It’s hard to describe what happens for me. But as I write this, I realize that praise is dangerous to my connection with her. It is almost like I feel safer to be closer with her if I hate myself. It’s totally mixed up for me. My T and I have been working on it not by always challenging the self blame, but sometimes actually listening to my self blame. Not agreeing with the self blame, but also not disagreeing with it, but just listening. Trying to figure out what the self blame is trying to do for me. Like listening to a child in a way… saying ok, I know you are there… for a reason… and somehow, my self blame and anger seems to rest a bit and I end up closer to my T in a slower, but more steady way, when I do that… and sometimes I seem to get to the other side of letting go of a little more of a self blame that way.

When I am really in a self hating place, like really bad, if my T tries to take away the self blame, it’s like I then hate myself with a vengence. It is a coping mechaism for me, and it almost feels like a T trying to take away my coping skills, and if I don’t have it… then what do I have? Chaos. Danger. Or at least that it what it feels like on some level. Intellectually, I can see it all differently. But it’s just not that easy for me.
If I talk to my T’s about something I am blaming myself for, if they then shoft to something positive, it feels invalidating somehow. Dangerously invalidating… I dunno what exactly I think feels dangerous about it, but it feels that way in the moment. I think it’s because I was blaming myself for a reason, and if I can’t balme myself for it, then whatever reasona I was blaming myself for – that reason, that “need” never gets met – not even in a healthy way.

I recently told my T about how much less my self hate is, but that there is still the hate, and it seems like now that it’s less directed at me, it’s like… well… what then do I do with the anger that seems to be still there? And frankly, my T is someone I’m so vulnerable too, at the most risk with sometimes, that it’s like… I dunno… I think I bring the frustration and anger into the relationship with her… It comes up for me the most around perception of being at fault or not at fault for things… Now my T and I are working on how to handle anger at others in healthy ways, it feels safer to feel anger, and somehow, I feel less angry too, and less angry at myself, less blaming of myself.

eh, I dunno how to explain my process with shifting self blame very well. I can tell you that it’s messy. Really messy. And it surprises me how messy it is for me.

((((cat))))) I hope it gets easier for you too and that you can figure it out with your Ts

quote:

i think not feeling self-hate or fault for the things in my life is going to take a lot of time (implicit learning) but sometimes i just don't feel heard my Ts will validate that i'm hurting, validate why i feel how i do but never let it end there.

Part of me wants to maybe suggest asking your Ts not try to re-direct the self blame, and yet at the same time... I have this friend who blames herslef for things that are so clearly not her fault, and it's really hard to resist the urge all the time to remind her it's not her fault. It's like... I dunno.... i mean she really is to the point of saying things like how she got hit because she was in the way, not that she got hit because the person who hit her is a jerk. I do remind her sometimes, "it is not true! it is not your fault!" but then, on some level I also know that she "needs" to blame herself, until she is ready to face the pain of blaming him... yet... I can't be authentic with what I feel if I don't say to her
"hey, there is no way that was your fault..." this might be a really bad example of a human pull to re-direct, but all the same, maybe you need some time of where your Ts would not re-direct it all the time - and of course not join you, but to listen and really hear you... especially before you can hear them? I dunno.

eh, I say stupid stuff all the time, so please ignore if none of this comes across well...

hugs to you,
~ jane

Ugh I wrote the longest response out and my internet kicked off and restarted my reply session so I lost it all. I just want to cry.

I'll be back later but wanted to let you all know I wasn't ignoring the thread. I have an update and... things to say when I have the patience to say them AGAIN.

UUUUGGGGHHHH! I hate that!