It’s All your Fault (Or Should Be)

As we mature, much of our early developmental experience has reinforced for us how important it is to preserve our innocence at all costs. We begin to think exclusively in terms absolving us of any guilt, and remaining blameless, seeking better and more complex ways of maintaining how, whatever is occurring or whatever it is we may be accused of, is in fact, the result of something way outside our ability to control. We spend our lives believing that if things are not our fault then we have no blame. So What….we still have to live with the consequences. Consequences that we have no part in determining or mitigating. We just have to hope that they are not too bad, or that whoever is in charge minimizes their impact because they buy the fact, we are innocent. Good luck with that. If you buy coffee from McDonalds’ drive thru, and you are burned as the result of spilling it while placing the disposable cup between your kegs, it is the fault of McDonalds, and they should be held liable for making their coffee too hot. If someone is shot by a person using a Smith and Wesson hand gun, then it is the fault of the gun manufacturer, and they too should be liable for making a weapon capable of lethal consequences. Even some instances where individuals, when confronted by law enforcement, make extremely poor choices and decisions open for misinterpretation by the authorities, the police are criticized and blamed for the outcomes. Everyone is a victim, suggesting that some force or entity outside themselves is what or who is truly responsible for the negative outcome they either caused or must endure. Regardless of where it is you stand on examples like the ones noted above, it is important to understand that as long as you continue to think in terms of events, circumstances, and life states being outside your area of responsibility, then you are relegating them to being the responsibility of someone or something else. In so doing, you relinquish a great deal of control over your life, which leads to feeling powerless, used, taken advantage of, and impotent. Generally speaking, the ongoing victim status which you invite, is predictive of an existence wrought with hopelessness and angst. When we believe that why we do what we do is directly and primarily the result of our past experience or our present circumstances, we reduce the degree to which we believe that we can control our behavior, our choices, and certain situational outcomes. We frequently hear phrases like: “It wasn’t my fault.” “I couldn’t help it,” I didn’t know,” ‘I tried but couldn’t,” “No one told me,” “It’s not my job,” “They hate me,” “They’re prejudiced,” “I was afraid,” “I’m unlucky, I have bad luck,” “There was nothing I could do,””Everything happens to me,” All of which suggest one common theme, which is that the individual bears no responsible role in whatever negative outcome had befallen him. While even in cases where these statements may have some validity, they serve only to reinforce how powerless you are to control outcomes n your life, and offer nothing in the way of hopefulness change, growth or confidence in the future. They serve only as lame attempts o absolve yourself of blame, ridicule or punishment, and more often than not, fall on the deaf ears of people who have already learned the lesson of taking responsibility for their actions. By absolving ourselves of responsibility, we suggest then, that someone or something else must indeed be responsible for our actions, and in so doing, we inadvertently relegate our lives to chance or the control of others whom we have charged with bring responsible. It is important to remember that our purpose in looking at the conventional ways some social services, and many people in general, view our relationship with the past, is not to ridicule their theories of the role our pasts can play in our present lives. This fact is conceded to be a given. It is however, to bring to our awareness, the fact that once we gain insight into the factors which may indeed be affecting our choice and decision making for the negative, namely those things that we put forth as the reasons we are not responsible and therefore not at fault, we can and should work very hard towards not allowing those factors, regardless of how severe or horrible they may be, to become the excuse for why we can and will always remain miserable, unhappy, and unfulfilled. When we go out of our way to prove that our unhappiness is just not our fault, the end game, even if you are successful, is to get someone else to feel or act a certain way towards you. Once your whining runs its course you are still the one stuck with and have to live with all the consequences and the misery. Instead, why not learn a way to break free of your past, and to feel hope and happiness in sport of whatever not is that is happening right here, right now. Those who resist efforts to help themselves accept ever increasing amounts of responsibility for their decisions and choices are doomed to remain at the mercy of whomever or whatever we have charged with the responsibility for our misgivings. That makes you a victim, and victims are generally sad people.