Blame
and Shame
“It
is tempting to view human transactions in simple cause-and-effect
terms. If we are angry, someone else caused it. Or, if we are the
target of someone else's anger, we must be to blame; or,
alternately—if we are convinced of our innocence—we may conclude
that the other person has no right to feel angry. The more our
relationships in our first family are fused (meaning the togetherness
force is so powerful that there is a loss of separate 'I's' within
the 'we'), the more we learn to take responsibility for other
people's feelings and reactions and blame them for our own.”
Harriet
G. Lerner, Ph.D. (The Dance of Anger)
We
humans spend untold energy and angst on the horns of this
dilemma—who's to blame for our hurt or anger. Who's to blame for
the mess we find ourselves in at any given moment. We blame our
significant others, we blame ourselves, we blame the conditions of
our society—there's plenty of blame to go around. The problem with
cause-and-effect thinking is that it gets us nowhere. Oh, we may
leave; we may slam the door on one aspect of life, and head out into
the world to find a better one, but until we get to the bottom of
ourselves, we will recreate the scenario again and again. This is
especially true when we grew up in a family that believed its members
had no right to be individuals—we are family, and we stick
together. We believe the same things, we don't disagree, we expect
one another to sacrifice for the good of the family, and to tow the
party line. When one member veers off the prescribed path, they
become the scapegoat for everyone's anger and blame. And the cycle
goes round and round.
These
problems of anger, blame, and shame are spiritual in nature. They are
intractable in that as children we learned to use them as our first
line of defense. They feel normal and natural to us. Remember the
playground taunt, “You started it! It's your fault!” It jumps
into our minds at the first sign of trouble and we shift to
auto-pilot—if I am hurt, if I am angry, there is someone to blame.
If I spoke angry words that hurt someone else, I should feel shame.
It's an endless loop that stops only when we wake up, and begin to
work on changing ourselves.
Always,
we have a primary role to play in our own feelings simply because
they belong to us. No one else caused them and no one else can cure
them—they are ours. They come from within us. We can spend our
whole lives in the hamster wheel of anger, blame and shame, or we can
take them on, and help ourselves change the pattern. Healing is an
inside job.
In
the words of Dr. Caroline Myss, “Call your spirit back!” Call it
back from wandering in the wilderness of anger and hurt. The Taoist
notion of: “This is simple, but very hard to do,” fits here. It
isn't easy to change the patterns of a lifetime. It takes diligence
and determination. What waits on the other side, however, is nothing
short of spiritual freedom.
In
the Spirit,
Jane
No comments:
Post a Comment