90-Day A Better Me Series

Part I: A Journey of Awareness

What Holds Us Back: The Unstable Foundation

Day 17: Blame Conceals the Truth

“When you blame and criticize others, you are avoiding some truth about yourself.”

-Deepak Chopra

Blame conceals the truth in a multitude of ways. It’s not even as simple as not blaming others or ourselves. It goes even deeper. Our blaming of things, circumstances, and concepts, give us the same negative outcomes. Blame conceals our power to change our insides to even have a chance to change what is happening outside of us. We actually can hinder other people from getting the help they need by encouraging and supporting the blame cycle. We stay trapped and held hostage by the negative energy that we engage in. This path is dark and ominous, because we are stuck in an endless tunnel. We don’t see that our light to see the end of the tunnel comes from inside of us. We keep looking outside of ourselves and finding there is only dark, because the truth is darkness is what we are projecting out.

One of the most dangerous parts about what blame conceals is what happens to victims of trauma who get stuck focusing on the traumatic event that happened to them. This is not about P.T.S.D. This is about the deeper seed that is planted that keeps this person the victim of the person or event sometimes for their entire lives. We think we are doing victims a favor by helping them keep their finger pointed out, but energy of blame is consuming. A victim can build their entire life around being a victim because that is where their focus is. This attracts more trauma and heartbreak to the person’s life. Sometimes, it will be the rope that hangs them. Too many people have died from the everyday pressures of living in a world where they STAY a victim to the point where they become the victim of themselves. The victim punishes her/himself over and over. The trauma could have been twenty years ago or more, and if we stay focused on the blame, we will re-live it continually.

Think about the Law of Attraction that we talked about earlier in the series, can you imagine the pain and suffering this attracts? Blame takes away our power to change our lives for the better. The resentment of blame keeps us operating on a low frequency, so that is what we attract more of. Many victims will blame themselves for something or other and will take on feelings of shame. I’m sure everyone is also aware that there is plenty of victim shaming out there too. Together the shame/blame cycle can reach devastating measures.

Think of the straw exercise from yesterday (click here for link). A victim who can’t move on from the blame in order to get their own personal power back is literally stuck in that sphere of fear. No matter what they do to get out, if they stay blaming, they will never see outside of that sphere of reality. Many victims have tremendous fear over letting go of the trauma. Just like a job or any position in life, we can make it a part of our identity (dangerous in itself), a victim can think by reaching a level where they don’t blame and possibly even forgive that it means they are excusing the behavior of the other person or even event from taking responsibility for all the pain they/it caused. That is not true at all. By staying in the blame, we are taking responsibility for something we have absolutely no control over. We don’t let go for someone/something else; we let go to free ourselves of the burdens that aren’t ours to hold on to.

“When you think EVERYTHING is someone else’s fault, you will suffer a lot.”

-Dalai Lama

Another way blame conceals the truth and keeps us hostage is when we blame things like addiction, alcohol, drugs, gambling, food, weapons, cancer, pain, weather, men (as a concept), women (as a concept), teens (as a concept), traffic, store hours, fear, etc. I think you get the point. We are still dealing with that same negative energy over things we have no control over. So the blame only creates more problems.

I uncovered an amazing lesson about blame, when I caught myself blaming someone else’s addiction to drugs and alcohol. For years, I blamed the addiction for this person’s behavior. I didn’t realize I was still investing in a negative energy by doing this. After the relationship with the person ended, I intentionally set out to make sure that the next person I was with didn’t drink or do drugs. That was my only requirement. Not realizing what I was doing, I put my full focus on what I “didn’t” want. HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCES! The next man I dated didn’t drink or do drugs. He had quit, but I got to see by blaming the addiction, I wasn’t taking personal responsibility for my part. When sick behaviors on both sides of the relationship started to present themselves, I got faced with an emotional 2×4 that hit me right where it hurts and saw that I was in fact the problem for attracting the unhealthy relationships in my life. Blaming addiction was my way of avoiding dealing with the real problems: my self-concept, self-respect, self-love, and lack of any self-worth. Blaming something and someone else kept me from seeing that I was co-dependent on these unhealthy relationships. I derived my self-worth from feeling important to someone else, and when I didn’t I crashed. This is just one piece of the vicious cycle of having no self-worth. I had to stop blaming before I could start diving into fixing what needed to be fixed— ME!

We don’t have to be trapped in ANY negative and/or unhealthy way of living if we CHOOSE not to be. That is another truth that blame conceals. For everything I named above there are people who make themselves victims by blaming these things or champions/heroes by seeing these things as opportunities to grow from. We live in an age where to see either side all we have to do is type keywords into our computers, tablets, or phones. We can see inspiring or devastating stories how people have made their perception of truth work for or against them.

When we blame others/situations/events we are in engaging in fear-based living. We are saying this is on you. The truth is we have a personal responsibility for every thought, feeling, action, and reaction we have. When we blame we are concealing the truth about how we are letting the person or event have power over our lives. Many times we keep re-living situations over and over having pretend conversations of all the things we could say or do if we were given the chance. I know I’ve had full on conversations in the mirror telling people off for doing what they did to me. The only person that hurts is the person looking back at us in the mirror. Blaming keeps us from fixing the one person we are responsible for fixing—OURSELVES!

We can’t control what other people do to us or what they do to each other. We can’t control our families, friends, partners, co-workers, governments, and strangers. We can’t control traffic, accidents, store hours, delivery services, disease, etc. We can manage what goes on inside of us. We can control where we want to focus our energy. We can choose to take our lives back from all the people/events that WE have been GIVING our power to. Nobody/thing can make us do that. Nobody/thing can control what or how to feel. That is our decision, but if we choose the path of blame, it tells us we have no choice. Examples of self-defeating statements that come from blame:

• (Fill in the blank) happened to me, so of course I’m going to drink my problems away.
• (Fill in the blank) happened to my family, so of course I’m the victim of the government.
• (Fill in the blank) happened, so there is no way I can live a happy life.
• (Fill in the blank) happened, which is why I addicted to pills and miserable.
• (Fill in the blank) happened, so I can’t control my eating.
• (Fill in the blank) happened, so I can’t look at myself in the mirror.

I’m drawn to survivor stories from traumatic events. I’ve read a couple books on the Holocaust, and what I saw in them was the people who survived and thrived after the horrible circumstances found meaning in the madness. They didn’t finish their lives as victims. They finished as champions of hope, mentors, and heroes. This isn’t about how the world saw them, it’s about what they perpetuated out from the inside. They surpassed the state of victim internally. They actually found their inner purpose during their darkest times. That is what kept their light inside ignited to walk out of the tunnel. That is what attracts millions of people to read their stories.

Viktor Frankl is the the Holocaust survivor who wrote the book  MAN’S SEARCH FOR MEANING. Elie Wiesel wrote the book NIGHT. 

Blame is one of those sharp rocks in our foundation that like to poke people as they try to get too close to the truth. When we don’t like ourselves we are more likely to blame others for our feelings and actions. During my teenage years was when my mom first said to me, “I can’t make you feel anything.” I thought of course she can, and so can everyone else. They can make me sad, mad, and happy. I had no idea that by making other’s responsible for my thoughts, feelings, actions and/or reactions I was giving my power away. The one part of my life that I am 100% responsible for taking care of is within me. Just because I was introduced to this concept when I was thirteen doesn’t mean I was ready to embrace it. It did what it was supposed to do; a healthy seed was planted amongst the toxic muck.

Just for Today

Be aware of how you are living in each moment. What happens to your thoughts when you are stuck in traffic? What happens to your thoughts if you are blaming your pain for your misery? What happens to you if you are blaming your partner for not living up to your expectations of him/her? What happens to you when you are blaming your kids for not doing what they were told? Keep investigating where your mind goes and figuring out what truth that the blame is concealing.  What perception of truth is making you suffer?

Read today’s  90-Day A Better Me Letters Series: Day 17 – Seeing the Truth Behind the Blame (click on the Series to take you to the link) to help you open your mind to seeing opportunities from releasing the blame.

With Love and Gratitude,

Rachael Wolff ©2019

For those of you ready to take the next step and do the everyday work it takes to get out of these self-defeating patterns, click the link below!

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