Four Reasons To Stop Needless Self-Blame And Take Charge Of Your Life

For years if someone stepped on my toes, I said I was sorry.

Taking responsibility for someone else’s actions, accidental or not, is an unhealthy coping mechanism. It’s the flip side of people who don’t take responsibility for anything, ever.

Saying we’re sorry for being alive is more than a bruised toe.

It’s sabotaging ourselves. If we won’t have our own back, who will? Lots of things can knock us out of alignment with ourselves and can make us feel like strangers in our never-good-enough skin. 

We can learn self-acceptance and we can learn to believe that we are worthy merely because we exist. But what is this weakness for taking responsibility for things that are clearly not ours to take? 

What does all that needless self-blame accomplish?

• If we take the blame, we have the illusion of being in control, even when bad things happen to us. We can fool ourselves  into thinking that we are not victims. 

• If we take the blame, we are placating and defusing any escalation of conflict. But by giving in first we never learn healthy ways to work through conflict.

• If we take the blame, then we don’t have to see the truth. What we don’t see, we can ignore and do nothing. Accepting blame is colluding with the lie. But the lie protects us from feeling the hurt and pain or from making tough or scary decisions.

• If we take the blame, then we are protecting someone else from having to take responsibility. We are infantilizing and enabling them, which doesn’t help their growth either.

We can stop apologizing for existing. More important, let’s jettison the responsibility that’s not ours.

Illustrations from the Nuremberg Chronicle, by Hartmann Schedel (1440-1514) via Wikimedia Commons