S2 EP194 – The Relationship Blame Game

Transcription:

Hi everyone. Dr. Margaret Paul here with the Inner Bonding Podcast. I don’t know about you, but the role modeling I received growing up was my parents and extended family blaming each other, blaming me and my cousins, and blaming anyone else they could for their feelings. I never once saw anyone taking responsibility for their own feelings, so of course I grew up believing that others were responsible for my feelings. Even with all the therapy I had, and being trained as a psychotherapist, I had no idea I was responsible for my feelings, nor did I have any idea how to take this responsibility. I had no clue about any of this until spirit brought Inner Bonding to me and Dr. Erika.

It’s not just blaming others that I learned. I also learned to blame myself, so I want to talk about both the relationship blame game and the relationship self-blaming game.

Have you ever had the experience of trying to resolve a conflict and running up against your partner’s self-blame in a way that stops any exploration or possibility of a resolution?

This is the situation with Renee, who asked me the following question:

“My partner and I fall into conflict quite often. I am always the one trying to resolve things and move towards reconnection. Most often in our communication he goes off on ‘Fine, so just blame me then, it’s my fault again, I am the one to blame then aren’t I’ and on and on about blame with no resolution until days later, if at all…I truly do not feel like I am blaming him, I express to him that it is not at all about blame, but trying to understand where and why we fell into disconnect. It doesn’t work, he gets more defended, I get more angry, and he goes off into his self-protection bubble, leaving me feel feeling abandoned and unheard. The self-blame game seems to be one of his default modes. What do you suggest?”

As always, there is a circular system going on, with both people in their wounded selves.

While Renee believes she is open to learning, the fact that she explains and then gets angry, and then feels abandoned and unheard indicates that she is likely making her partner responsible for her feelings – which may be why he feels blamed.

If Renee were open, then when her partner did his self-blame game, she would be really curious about why he feels blamed by her, rather than trying to talk him out of it. She would say, with genuine curiosity, something like, “Please tell me what I’m doing that is making you feel blamed.” She would be coming from a belief that there might actually be something she is doing that is blaming, rather than telling him that it’s not about blame. She would be open to hearing that maybe there was something in her energy that felt blaming to him.

Renee then gets angry, which always indicates that she was, in some way, trying to control something rather than be open to learning. If she were truly open to learning and to taking responsibility for her own feelings, and if her partner wouldn’t open to even telling her why he felt blamed by her, then she would lovingly disengage, accepting her helplessness over his lack of openness. But instead, she gets angry to try to control him into resolving with her.

Then, the fact that she feels abandoned and unheard indicates that she is abandoning herself and not hearing herself, and then making him responsible for her feelings. If she were truly open and taking responsibility for her own feelings, she would not feel abandoned and unheard by him, because she would not be making him responsible for being the one to hear her.

What Renee needs to do before trying to resolve a conflict with her partner is do her own Inner Bonding work, exploring her part of the conflict and taking loving care of her own feelings. Then she could go to her partner and share her own learning with him, rather than trying to get him to deal with his end of the conflict. She is very aware of his using the self-blame game, but very unaware of the fact that she is likely in some way blaming him and making him responsible for her feelings.

There is always a system between two people, and the more we explore our own end of the system, the better things get.

What do you generally do when someone blames you for his or her feelings? Do you find yourself taking it personally and blaming yourself? This is what Melinda struggles with, and here is what she asked me:

“How do I take loving care of myself when my partner is acting out with jealousy that he is not acknowledging? I feel blamed and shamed. It somehow feels like there’s something wrong with me, or something I’m doing even though there isn’t. What do I do with the shame? How do I love myself through it? His reaction can last a few hours or even a few days.”

What I said to Melinda is, “Your partner’s blaming and shaming of you are his ways of avoiding responsibility for his own feelings. But the real question is, why are you taking on the blame and shame? Why are you taking his behavior personally?

“You might want to ask yourself what you would be feeling if you weren’t taking his behavior personally and buying into the false belief that there is something wrong with you. I would imagine that if you weren’t taking on his blame and shame, you would feel lonely around him when he blames and shames you, and you would feel heartbroken that he is treating you so badly, and you would feel helpless over his feelings and behavior.

“Taking his behavior personally is a way to cover over the true core pain of his unloving behavior toward you. Shame is what you are using to not accept the fact of your helplessness over him.  

“You asked, ‘What do I do with the shame?’ Shame is not what you would be feeling if you weren’t trying to have control over him and over your own core painful feelings. The shame is a result of your intent to control him and your own deeper feelings.

“Just as he is not acknowledging his jealousy, you are not acknowledging your loneliness, heartbreak, and helplessness over him when he is unloving toward you.

Melinda also asked, “How do I love myself through it?”

“Loving yourself through it means that you first need to be willing to feel your deeper painful feelings. Once you become willing to feel them, then you need to name them. Naming a feeling such as loneliness, heartbreak, or helplessness over others, helps you to understand what is really happening for you.

“Next, you need to be very kind and compassionate toward yourself for these feelings. These are hard feelings to bear, and they need your kindness. Try putting your hands on your heart and inviting kindness and gentleness into your heart, bringing that kindness to wherever you feel your painful feelings. Your inner child is your feeling self, so imagine that you are bringing kindness and comfort to a child who is hurting.

“Say to your inner child, ‘I’m here with you. You are not alone. Our higher self is with us – we are not alone. Our partner’s behavior has nothing to do with you, so we are not going to take it personally.’ Stay with the feelings until you feel they are ready to move through you, and then consciously release them to spirit.

“Then, move into an intent to learn about what these feelings are telling you about your partner. Certainly, they are telling you that he is being unloving to himself and to you. Ask your higher self, ‘What would be loving to me in the face of his unloving behavior?’

“Perhaps you need to visit with a friend or do something that is fun for you to do. What you don’t need to do is try to fix him. That is his responsibility. His shame, blame and withdrawal are his attempts to control you rather than take loving care of himself, and it’s best to leave him alone to deal with it unless he asks for your help. By taking responsibility for your own feelings, you take yourself out of the blame game. The relationship blame game is perpetuated only when both of you continue it. It’s vital for you to recognize that you taking his behavior personally and feeling like you’ve done something wrong is your end of the system that perpetuates the blame game.

“Hopefully, if you take loving care of your own feelings, then by the time he lets go of his upset, you will be open and ready to re-connect with him. If each time he blames you, you take loving care of yourself, he might eventually get that his blaming and shaming behavior is no longer going to work for him to control you.”

Anytime someone blames you or you blame another person, you are in your wounded self, avoiding responsibility for your own feelings. To the wounded self, it seems so much easier to blame someone else for your feelings, and the wounded self thinks this is a powerful way to be, but the opposite is true. Blaming another puts you into a victim position, and there is no personal power in being a victim. You might want to start to notice that anytime you participate in any way in the blame game, you are in your wounded self, abandoning yourself. Self-abandonment is the opposite of operating from your loving adult connected with your higher guidance, which is the true place of personal power.

It takes strength, the strength of the loving adult, to manage the very hard feelings of loneliness, grief, heartbreak, and helplessness concerning others when others are blaming you. The feelings of loneliness and helplessness concerning others can unconsciously trigger infant feelings of being left alone, crying and no one coming. If no one had come when you were an infant, you would have died, so the feelings of loneliness and helplessness are often associated with the fear of death. As infants, we were totally helpless over others as well as over ourselves. If our cry didn’t bring the help or the love we needed, there was nothing else we could do. Sometimes, even if help arrived, there was no love with it, creating an overwhelmingly lonely and confusing experience for the infant. As a result, both of these feelings – loneliness and helplessness – can trigger intense anxiety.

As adults, if you open to these feelings as a strong loving adult, as well as to grief and heartbreak, with deep compassion, you can learn to acknowledge them, accept them, nurture them, and release them. Because you could not handle them as a child, you might automatically continue to avoid them with blaming the other person or blaming yourself, perpetuating the blame game. The problem is that because anything you do to avoid them as an adult is an abandonment of self, you end up not only with these deeper painful feelings of life, but also with the shame of taking the other’s behavior personally.

Most people realize that addictions to food, drugs, alcohol, gambling, TV, work, spending and so on are ways to avoid pain. What many people don’t realize is that blame and shame are also addictive ways of avoiding the pain of life.

My client Abigail often finds herself in self-judgment – self-blame. When she feels rejected or ignored in some way by her husband Michael, she often tells herself that “I’m not good enough.” This brings about a feeling of shame. When she is not judging and blaming herself, she is likely judging and blaming Michael, blaming him for her feelings with her anger or irritation.

The reason Abigail does this is that her wounded self believes it’s easier for her to be angry and blaming or to judge herself and feel the shame of self-blame, than to feel the loneliness she feels when Michael is angry or distant, and to feel her helplessness over his feelings and behavior. As uncomfortable as anger and shame feel, they actually feel better to the wounded self than loneliness and helplessness, due to the extreme anxiety still attached to these feelings, which, as I said, originated in infancy.

The anxiety around the feelings of loneliness and helplessness will not go away until Abigail learns to embrace these feelings as a loving adult, rather than abandon them with addictive behavior. Once Abigail learns to welcome and embrace loneliness and helplessness with deep compassion, she will learn that they are no longer about death, because she is no longer helpless over herself as she was as an infant. They are just painful feelings that, as an adult, can now be compassionately managed.
 
These feelings have much information for us. They tell us a lot about what we need to know to take loving care of ourselves. If we are lonely because we don’t have anyone with whom to share love, the feeling is telling us that we need to reach out to others. If we are lonely with another person, the feeling may be telling us that either we are closed, or the other person is closed, or both of us are closed. In any case, having this information can open the door to loving actions. If we look within and discover we are not open, we can choose to open our heart to sharing love. If we are open and the other person is not, we can choose to move into the intent to learn with that person, or we can leave the interaction and so something else that would meet our needs.

However, if you are not aware of your feelings of loneliness and helplessness, you will automatically behave addictively, thereby abandoning yourself. For Abigail, this meant shaming herself or blaming her husband.

Abandoning yourself with your various addictions is what eventually creates feelings of despair. Leaving your inner child alone with the feelings of loneliness and helplessness, as well as grief and heartbreak, is overwhelming and leads to a spiral of addictive behavior.

You will not die or go crazy if you open with compassion to your deeper existential feelings of life. In fact, you will discover an incredible freedom from addiction when you learn to acknowledge and have compassion for these feelings, rather than avoid them.

Sometimes, couples go into the blame game as a form of connection. If they don’t know how to connect as loving adults, sharing their love with each other, then they might start a fight as a way to connect, and they might keep it up rather than lovingly disengaging because connecting through the blame game feels better to them than the loneliness of their disconnection. Some couples even find themselves sexually attracted to each other after fighting and have sex as another way to reconnect. All of this is from their wounded self rather than genuinely connecting as caring and compassionate loving adults. The wounded self only knows how to connect through what is called “Woundology.” The wounded self connects not only through the blame game, but also through gossip, complaining to each other about other people, judging others, and so on. When you have not done your Inner Bonding work to develop your spiritually connected loving adult, then you don’t know how to connect with a partner or others in a loving way. When you are disconnected from yourself and your guidance, it becomes very difficult to authentically connect with others. When you learn to connect with your soul self – your feeling inner child, and with your higher guidance, then connecting with your partner or others becomes a much more flowing, natural, enlivening, and authentic experience.       

Growing up, most of us had numerous experiences of being blamed. I was frequently blamed for things that I was too young to understand, or for things that I didn’t do ‘right’, or for things I didn’t do, or for things that, to me, didn’t seem worthy of blame.

Being blamed feels awful, and I learned to feel guilty even when I hadn’t actually done anything wrong. Looking back, I now understand that blaming and judging myself, which caused me to feel guilty, felt better and more empowering than feeling the depth of helplessness over being so unseen, unheard, and misunderstood.

Today, I work with many clients who are very reactive to being blamed. They often get angry or defensive, rather than feeling the helplessness and heartbreak of being unseen, unheard, and misunderstood. Of course, this creates problems in relationships since their partner then also feels unseen and unheard at the other end of the anger and defensiveness.

One of the underlying issues is that there is often confusion between responsibility and blame.

What would happen in conflicts if partners and families accepted that everyone is responsible for their own behavior and choices, but that no one is actually to blame? What if we each chose to open to learning about our own responsibility in any conflict situation, without blaming ourselves or each other?

Loving yourself when being blamed means that you stop blaming yourself – stop judging yourself – and stop blaming another, and instead open to compassion for the pain of not being seen and understood. If you stop blaming and judging yourself and others, then you have a better chance of staying open to taking responsibility for your own choices. It’s so much easier to not get angry and defensive when you can accept responsibility without blaming. Loving yourself means remembering that everyone is responsible, but no one is to blame.

Remembering this is also what creates relationship and family healing.

Of course, none of us has control over whether or not anyone else lets go of blaming you or themselves and accepts responsibility. But even if it’s just you, you can affect a change in your relationships. Just imagine how much easier it would be to stay compassionate with yourself and open to learning, during conflict, if you weren’t reactive to being blamed, because you were no longer getting triggered into anger, blame, or defensiveness.

Since I’ve let go of the whole concept of blame, I find it easy to accept responsibility. For me, taking responsibility goes along with learning about myself and about what choices have been loving to myself and others, and which haven’t. When the blame game is out of the picture, it’s easy for my love of learning to take over. I love the excitement of learning new things about myself and new things about what’s loving!

You will find that when others blame you, it will still hurt your heart – because others’ unloving behavior always hurts our heart when we are fully open to our feelings – but it’s easier to not take the blame personally when you are no longer blaming and judging yourself. It becomes less difficult as you practice either opening to learning with the other person, or lovingly disengaging when someone is blaming you, and being very compassionate with your heartache and helplessness over others’ unloving behavior.

The challenge is that the wounded self loves to blame. It loves the blame game. Blaming makes our ego wounded self feel superior and in control, but it’s also the wounded self that is self-blaming and then feels inferior. When you embrace the understanding that everyone is responsible, but no one is to blame, you take the power away from your wounded self and put your loving adult in charge.

I hope you embrace the responsibility and let go of the blame. You will find yourself feeling truly empowered when you are able to do this. This means taking responsibility for all your feelings, which means exploring how you are treating yourself that is creating the wounded feelings of anxiety, depression, guilt, shame, anger, aloneness, emptiness, jealousy, and so on, and also compassionately attending to the deeper pain of the loneliness, heartbreak, and helplessness when others are unloving. Trying to get someone else to take responsibility for their blaming, unloving behavior disempowers you. Taking responsibility for learning from and managing all your feelings, even those caused by others and events, is the road to personal power and inner peace.

I invite you to heal your relationships with my 30-Day online video relationship course: Wildly, Deeply, Joyously in Love.

And you can learn so much about loving yourself and creating loving relationships from my recent books:

• Diet for Divine Connection: Beyond Junk Foods and Junk Thoughts to At-Will Spiritual Connection

• The Inner Bonding Workbook: Six Steps to Healing Yourself and Connecting With Your Divine Guidance

• 6 Steps to Total Self-Healing: The Inner Bonding Process

• And, How to Become Strong Enough to Love: Creating Loving Relationships Through the Six-Step Pathway of Inner Bonding

And we have so much to offer you at our website at https://www.innerbonding.com.

And, if you enjoyed this podcast, I would really appreciate it if you tell your friends about it, and if you give it a review wherever you heard it.

I’m sending you my love and my blessings.