Are You A Blamer?
Yes, I am talking to you. Are you a blamer? What is your first reaction when something’s gone in a different direction from your anticipation? Will your first question be “Whose fault is this?”
I have been a big blamer for all my life. And most of the time, the first one to blame is also myself. Sometimes, my process of self-blaming starts the moment I wake up. “It’s too late, damn you, why didn’t you get to bed early” or “What have you done all day? You’re a fucking useless, lazy ass”.
Of course, after all these strict self-criticisms, nothing ever changed and the circle repeated. I was also the biggest nagger among all the people around me, even my own mother had to tell me to tone down a notch whenever I talked to my little brother. And with my brother, our conversation always started with “You must…” and “Don’t do this or you want to become a big piece of garbage”.
I was not aware how this type of behavior affected me. I always thought that all of my acts came purely out of love, because that I care for my closed ones and desperately wanted them to be better so that even if they felt uneasy around me, they will thank me later some days.
No one ever thanked me, and no one ever would.
Unsurprisingly, people felt exhausted and irritated around me. My brother has stopped talking to me for a year now and it hurts me a lot, since we had been close all our childhood.
Only then, i started questioning myself and realized that all these blame worked out for nothing but my ego-self. I created an illusive set of standard around me and my surrounding, and when I blamed, I felt like I regained the control of these standard and avoided the bad feeling of consequences. In fact, blaming was only my process of discharging all the discomfort and pain.
For so long, I thought blaming is a step of the learning process. Like when you find out whose fault this is, you feel that it’s that person’s responsibility and accountability for fixing it. However, in fact, blame is the reverse of accountability. When being blamed, we automatically create a self-defense shield to alleviate the guilt of being wrong.
The more you are criticized, the stronger the self-defense shied becomes until when you don’t think you’re the one who’s responsible for these wrongdoing anymore. Eventually, you end the process by blaming it on another matter or people. That’s why blaming only satisfies our self-ego but prevent us from being empathy.
Hence, next time when you’re about to blame or criticize, hold on for a few seconds, take a deep breath and ask yourself this question ” How is this going to work?” and try to answer it. It would help you to ease any negative feeling of anger. Then, when you actually talk to someone, don’t start with “It’s because of this and that”, just simply tell them “There is something happens and I don’t feel alright about it…” When you say something out of pure concerns, not criticize or find whose fault this is, people will lower their sense of self-defense and listen to you with empathy.
