• Blame-shifting: ‘blame someone else day.’

IBlame You. Bart Evison. 1996. Flickr.

Did you know that there is an annual ‘blame someone else day?’ It falls on the first Friday 13th of the year, is regarded as playful, tongue-in-cheek, and is thought to have originated in America, when a woman called Anne Moelle’s alarm clock did not go off, leading to a day of disasters and blaming others. Whilst this might be regarded as ‘a bit of fun,’ some people make everyday a ‘blame someone else day.’ This is not ‘fun’ for anyone. It is toxic behaviour. For the blamed person, it is confusing, stigmatising and very painful to be falsely accused and shunned, and the person doing the blaming does not gain any relief in the long term.

“A bad mood is often the reason for blaming others; but very often blaming others causes bad feelings in us: the more we blame others, the worse we feel.”

 Leo Tolstoy

Why do we ultimately feel worse when we blame others? One reason is that people do not react well to being blamed and we will likely become unpopular ourselves. Blame ruins our relationships. Another reason is that, if we blame others, then we will never have to face ourselves… and our need to change.

“The only person who cannot be helped is that person who blames others.”

Carl Rogers

If we are in therapy and merely sit there attributing blame to others, we are wasting our time, for we cannot change anyone but ourselves. We will be stuck in a murky quagmire of our own making, and unable to do anything about it, as it is never our ‘fault’ or responsibility.

“When you blame others, you give up your power to change.”

Robert Anthony

We are in denial, projecting our own misplaced fallibility and responsibility onto someone else, constantly passing the buck. The problems are ours, but we aim and focus them at another person, who is really not the actual target of such treatment. When we accuse others of making us angry, making us late, or making us fail, we are concealing our need to be seen as perfect, avoiding our own vulnerabilities. In a perverse way, this is like hiding behind someone else, using another as a psychological human shield. It is taking the easy way out to wantonly blame others in the short term; however, in the long-term, the act of blaming others will most often backfire and our unresolved issues will return to haunt us.

• Why do we blame-shift?

2015_03_280017 – blame someone else. Gwydion M. Williams. Flickr.

Blaming someone, or something, else, is a way of dodging our own responsibility. So whom, or what, do we tend to blame when things go wrong? Apart from other people, we can blame the devil, social media, the weather, the dog, etc.,etc.,etc. At the root of blame-shifting is a need to control, to make the world less uncertain and random. It may also be about feeling jealous of another person, and trying to spoil things for them as a result.

Jealousy – Edvard Munch. 1895. Wikioo

“I’m just a deeply jealous person. And I want blame everybody else for what I don’t have.”

Karen Kilgariff

Blame-shifting utilises the defence mechanism of projection, which involves attributing our responsibility to another person. It is about not facing reality or truth, but functions as an attempt to protect oneself and one’s fragile ego.

“People who are angry at themselves sometimes blame others.”

Jeanne Phillips

Often, blame-shifting emanates out of a hidden fear of being ineffectual or of feeling alone and overwhelmed with the weight of one’s own life-burdens.

“To the extent that one is responsible for one’s life, one is alone.”

 Irvin D. Yalom, Existential Psychotherapy

It is a hard fact, but nevertheless it is a truth, that we are all alone on this earth in many ways, and especially in terms of responsibility. The implications here are massive, both in relation to life in general and in therapy. We all need to take responsibility for our own lives and for ourselves; always blaming others when things go wrong for us could be seen as avoidance. We will not learn from our mistakes if we always see the fault as residing with others. We will not change or grow if we locate responsibility outside ourselves.

Somebody Has To Pay. Original painting by: Bill Rogers, giveawayboy. Flickr.

“One of the ways that people avoid taking responsibility for their role in their own pain is what I call the BPs – blame and projection.”

Iyanla Vanzant

• Some stultifying effects of blame culture: no risks, no breakthroughs…

“If someone is always to blame, if every time something goes wrong someone has to be punished, people quickly stop taking risks. Without risks, there can’t be breakthroughs.”

Peter Diamandis

In a work setting, a blame culture will adversely affect innovation and the production of fresh ideas. If people are constantly afraid of being blamed when something goes wrong, then they will, inevitably, play it safe and stick to the same old, worn-out formulae and ways of thinking. There will be nothing new, original or creative. Fear stunts imagination and inventiveness and makes people wary of taking any risks at all.

“It’s easy to blame other people for your own ineptitude.”

Jason Watkins

Blaming other people is counterproductive and achieves nothing. It creates defensiveness and bad feelings in others, worsening conflicts and misunderstandings. It makes life harder.

“There’s enough grief in this world without always getting into whose fault it is.”  

Lisa Samson

• Blaming the victim

Child figure study – Ovidio Murguía De Castro.1886. Wikioo

“Of all the horrid ramifications of child abuse, the self-beliefs formed by the child reap the greatest destruction. Abuse is the most penetrating and permanent communication possible, and it always conveys to the child one or more of several messages: ‘I caused it to happen. It’s my fault because I am bad. I don’t deserve any better.”

Heyward Bruce Ewart III, Am I Bad? Recovering from Abuse

When someone has been abused in childhood or adulthood, it is important for them, when and where appropriate, to be gently reminded that the blame and the responsibility lies with the perpetrator. So often, the perpetrator, and other abusive people, will find ways of dodging the issue of responsibility by turning it onto the victim. Blaming the victim is another abuse, adding to the existing trauma. It locates the responsibility for the abuse in the person who is experiencing it, twisting the truth and causing additional shame, humiliation and disorientation. This is horrifying, especially to someone who is already confused and beside themselves with pain and fear. The perpetrator externalises their own culpability in a way that is cruel and sadistic.

“People who harm you will blame you for it. Remember, an abuser will generally always play the victim, spin a story, tell everyone and they generally call you crazy.”

Maranda Pleasant

• Witch-hunts, scapegoating and cancel culture

These three mechanisms of placing blame on others are all related, with cancel culture being the most modern version of publicly blaming and shaming a person or group of people.

“You know, anytime you take one group and you blame them for a problem, there is an issue.”

Tyrus

The Witch Hunt – Henry Ossawa Tanner. 1882. Wikioo

Witch-Hunt. Norman Catherine. 1988. Wikioo

Witch hunts are about groups of people accusing and targeting one person in an irrational and bullying manner. Cancel culture is similar; it refers to a boycotting and ‘wiping out’ of a person who is seen as being ‘bad.’ Such extreme ‘smear campaigns’ are often conducted online, and can be based only on gossip and rumour.

Jean Béraud. After the Misdeed. Between 1885 and 1890. Wikimedia Commons.

Whilst ‘outing’ a person who has genuinely been abusive or wicked can be usefully informative and can function as a warning to others, when such public exposure is based purely on hearsay and rumour, this discrediting operation can be ruthless and humiliating.

April 2011. Shame! Author: Lena from Madison, US. Wikimedia Commons.

“Condemning others as bad or sinful is away to feel righteous. Such a feeling is a powerful mood alteration and can become highly addictive.”

John Bradshaw

It is an attempt, often successful, to symbolically erase a person’s existence, a kind of deletion of their reputation and identity. Expunging someone in this way is cruel and unjustified, a way of dumping blame and shame on another person.

The Scapegoat. 1906. William Holman Hunt. Wikimedia Commons.

“The scapegoat has always had the mysterious power of unleashing man’s ferocious pleasure in torturing, corrupting, and befouling.”

Francois Mauriac

The mechanism of scapegoating involves projecting the disliked aspects of ourselves onto ‘the other.’ This enables us to temporarily rid ourselves of aspects of which we are ashamed or afraid. People who frequently feel they become scapegoats have usually been treated like this in their original family. They may have been labelled from a young age, perhaps as ‘the naughty one,’ so that, unconsciously, the others in the family can feel ‘virtuous’ in comparison. In this way, they escape looking at, or changing, their own behaviour, by pointing the finger at another. As the scapegoated child grows up, they may find themselves in similar roles, feeling that people are projecting their ‘bad’ aspects onto them, rendering them isolated and like an outsider. This is a painful position to be in, bringing much anguish to them as the victim of unfair criticism and blame. Such abusive behaviour often utilises gaslighting; an aspect of this is blaming other people. For example, if the gaslighter loses their temper, or is dangerous in their actions, it is never their responsibility; rather, they will say “You provoked me, you made me do it.” Their version of reality will be a lie, either consciously or unconsciously; they automatically manipulate and alter reality in order to drive the other person mad.

• Ending blame-shifting: developing empathy and compassion for self and other

Error on green – Paul Klee. 1939. Wikioo

“In life, you can blame a lot of people and you can wallow in self-pity, or you can pick yourself up and say, ‘Listen, I have to be responsible for myself.'”

Howard Schultz

Empathy neutralises blame; instead of blaming someone else, if we can accept our own-and others’- shortcomings, then we will not have the need to disown them and dump them on others. We will be able to face our feelings rather than having to dodge them through attributing them to another person. Being responsible and accountable for oneself can result in unexpected rewards; even though problems may feel considerable, discovering that we do have some power to change things can be an enormous relief.

“When you think everything is someone else’s fault, you suffer a lot. When you realize everything springs only from yourself, you will learn both peace and joy.”

Dalai Lama

“Great tranquility of heart is his who cares for neither praise nor blame.”

Thomas a Kempis

There are many examples of people throughout history who have managed, through developing self-confidence and clarity, to rise above unfair blaming and finger-pointing. One of those is Maya Angelou; it is fitting to end this post with an extract from her wonderful poem ‘Still I Rise…’

Erasing, 1993 – Paul Klee.Wikioo

“You may write me down in history With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

…………….

Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries?”

“You may shoot me with your words, You may cut me with your eyes, You may kill me with your hatefulness, But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

Maya Angelou, “Still I Rise” from And Still I Rise: A Book of Poems

© Linda Berman