By Megan Newton, MA, LPC, LPCC, NCC
If you are a client of mine or any practitioner here at Evolve In Nature, you are probably familiar with the Drama Triangle and a process of healing that includes taking responsibility for yourself—shifting from the victim, villain, or hero into empowerment. But this can be a really tough concept to embrace when you’ve been in relationships filled with blame, a dearth of self-accountability, or the absence of a caring attachment figure.
Most folks seek therapy for past or present-day issues that are typically relational in nature. This usually means you initially come to therapy from the perspective that either no one else is to blame (I’m not good enough, my parents were perfect, I’m a burden, etc.) or everyone else is to blame (he hurt me, she’s controlling, they are selfish, etc.). You might also hope that your therapist will agree with you. Of course! The quickest way out of discomfort is to find someone who will shore up your perspective. While that may relieve you of the immediate discomfort, in the long term, it does nothing for you because your nervous system remains perpetually in threat response, defending you from the world with shame or blame, entrenched in a cycle of victimhood.
How you feel is no one else’s fault or responsibility.
Untangling The Threads of Responsibility and Blame
Taking healthy responsibility can be confusing and difficult if you grew up experiencing abuse, neglect, criticism, dismissiveness, or co-dependency in your relationship with your caregivers. When caregivers cannot provide consistently healthy relationships for their children, a child believes this is happening because of me, it’s my fault, or I’m not good enough. This kind of self-centric thinking is all that is possible for a developing brain—cognitively, you do not have another choice but to think this way as a child. When caregivers are unable to attune to their children’s self-blaming thinking, the adult either explicitly blames the child for their feelings or behaviors (e.x. “If you hadn’t acted like that, I wouldn’t be angry.”) or implicitly blames the child by ignoring, withholding, or treating the child with kindness and affection when the child apologizes or takes care of the parent’s need. It is a powerless experience as a child, and, again, entrenches in the child's mind that they are ultimately at fault and, therefore, responsible for fixing the problem somehow.
If these experiences happened to you, you must recognize what did not belong to you. Let me repeat it: your parents' behaviors, the way they treated you, and their suffering or unhappiness do not belong to you. It did not belong to you then, and it does not belong to you now. The role of the parent is not the same as the role of the child. Sure, bad things likely would have happened if you didn’t do the caretaking or self-shaming when you were a kid, but bad things happening doesn’t make it your responsibility to prevent the ‘bad things’.
Perhaps one of the most difficult things about untangling responsibility from blame as it relates to your childhood is that by understanding your parent’s shortcomings, suffering, substance use, or emotional chaos/immaturity weren’t your fault, that means you also did not possess the power to fix it. This may sound like a small thing in writing, but for many folks, this is the crux of healing. ‘Fixing it’ can take many forms. In your childhood, it might have looked like this:
You do not possess the superpower of fixing, healing, or rescuing.
Making yourself feel bad/responsible for quelling the parental outburst
Apologizing
Physically, practically, or emotionally taking care of your parent’s needs
Taking care of your siblings’ needs
Learning the adult responsibilities in order to take care of your own needs
Accepting that you do not possess the superpower of fixing, healing, or rescuing initiates a deep grieving process. As a child, you were allowed to believe you had such powers—it felt good to have a way to belong. Giving up this perceived role or power is a tremendous loss in self-identity that must be reckoned with to experience your authentic self.
To experience your authentic self, you must let go of the idea that you can “fix” others.
What is Responsibility?
Healthy responsibility means recognizing what belongs to whom without declaring you or someone else bad or wrong. Notice that I didn’t say, for example, “because you believe you’re not good enough, your parents are bad, messed up people.” That is blame, and blaming your parents will not help you heal in any way whatsoever. They did the best they could and are imperfect people too. But understanding what does not belong to you in your relationship with them will allow you to heal. Why? How? By distinguishing what isn’t yours, you can begin to thaw the perpetual state of fear (anxiety) in your body and instead feel the authentic emotions of sadness or anger that fear has been protecting you from; in other words, you can have your authentic Self.
Responsibility in Adulthood
What does belong to you, however, is how you feel, what you think, and how you behave. This is what you are responsible for. Past, present, and future. You can’t change the past, but you are responsible for how you respond to it now. Instead of blaming your parents for the past, taking responsibility today includes:
Recognizing your feelings accurately. If you’re not sure how to do that, check out this blog post on emotions for support.
Effectively processing those feelings. Finding a somatic-based or emotionally-focused therapist can be especially helpful in this process.
Understanding the beliefs you developed in childhood about self and others
Identifying your present triggers. Not what triggers you, but what is getting triggered in you when X happens—what are those deep, down core beliefs that send you into anger, defense, sadness, or shutdown?
Resolving the underlying trigger.
Identifying your own needs or wants. Not identifying other people’s behavior that you want them to change.
Meeting your own needs and wants. No one is responsible for taking care of you but you. You are an adult now.
Taking responsibility for your own unhealthy reactions, beliefs, or projections.
Learning how to respond to your triggers and conflict with healthy responses.
Identifying and maintaining your personal boundaries.
Communicating how you feel (emotions), what you think, and what you need as it pertains to you, not the other person.
These same things apply to your current partnership, friendships, co-working relationships, or with your kids. It is no one else’s fault or responsibility for how you feel. No one makes you feel anything. No one. Subconsciously, your brain and body respond to external stimuli in a particular way based on your lived experiences. Resolving conflict with your partner or friends is not identifying what they do that triggers you and requiring them to change that so you don’t feel a certain way. Nope. Not their job. It’s your job now to work out the root of the trigger so that you can become a less defensive or shutdown person, even when the other person’s behavior remains the same.
Blaming is easy.
It is hard work to take responsibility.
Sure, you get to have boundaries and make requests. Hopefully, your family and friends can be there to support you in your growth, but requiring others to change their behavior so you don’t get triggered doesn’t help you heal. You’ve just asked people to walk around your landmines and made them responsible for any blow-ups. I imagine that request starts to sound or feel reminiscent of your childhood. Of course, you get to have boundaries, but boundaries are not about controlling other people’s behaviors. Boundaries are for you to uphold. You alone are responsible for maintaining your boundaries.
As for requests, yes, you get to communicate your needs and ask others if they would be willing to be conscientious of x,y, and z while you work out the core issue(s) or if they would be willing to make new agreements with you. If they say no, however, you can still meet your needs. Regardless, you are responsible for identifying what is yours and communicating what you need support with. It is no one else’s job to guess what you feel or what you need, and it is no one else’s responsibility to take care of you in adulthood but your own.
Responsibility, Not Blame, Leads to Authentic, Empowered Selfhood
Blaming is easy. This is hard work to take responsibility! If you grew up in a household where you were often criticized or abused, or your caregivers were not accountable for their own feelings and behaviors in relationship with you, you might feel defensive toward what you have been reading so far. You might be criticizing the very words on this page, thinking how what I am saying is wrong, maybe even that I am stupid. Or, you might be mentally running to prove how someone in your life is at fault. Hmmm…just notice that. If you want to take a further look into yourself, there’s information for you in that triggered response about something deeper that does not belong to this blog post. It might be important for you to know that taking responsibility for yourself does not mean you are bad or wrong.
Without internal reflection and emotional self-growth work, generational trauma and patterns of dysfunction continue.
If you grew up in a household where you were often dismissed or neglected, suffered the loss of a parent, or your caregivers were not accountable for their own feelings and behaviors in relationship with you, you might be feeling anxious or starting to shut down in response to what you have just read. Maybe you’re mentally running to your parent or partner’s defense, or maybe you are having thoughts that are akin to something is wrong with me, I can’t, or it’s all my fault; in other words, you’re on a quest to prove that nothing belongs to anyone else, you’ll own it all in order to fix the situation, and because it all belongs to you it’s really bad for you. Hmm….just notice that.
If you want to take a further look into yourself, there’s information for you in that triggered response about something deeper that does not belong to this blog post. It might be important for you to know that taking responsibility for only that which belongs to you does not make the other person bad or wrong, and it does not make you bad or wrong when they have big feelings or blame you for not taking on all of the load.
Breaking patterns of blame empowers your authentic self.
Without internal reflection and emotional self-growth work, the voice of the parent becomes the self in adulthood. This is how generational trauma and patterns of dysfunction continue, and these patterns rob you of a life lived by your authentic self.
If you would like to support in untangling blame from responsibility in your life, exploring your patterns of response in greater depth, or learning how to live from your authentic self more easily and more often, the therapists at Evolve In Nature are well-educated and trained to assist you. Reach out to us to schedule a free 15-minute consultation.