Blame is one of those things that has been blacklisted in self-development, psychology and spiritual circles. Blame has become a dirty word. As a result, almost no one holds an accurate and healthy perspective on blame.
To have this conversation, we need to strip away the concept of blame from the human emotional baggage that we have attached to it. We also have to look at some semantics.
First, let’s define blame. To blame someone is to attribute the cause of a negative outcome to them. Usually to something they said or did/failed to say or do. So, let’s stop right here. It is a simple reality that because one of the laws that this universe operates according to is cause and effect, we as people cause effects. And so, something we said or did or failed to say or do can be to blame for a negative outcome. To be able to recognize and clearly identify causation is an important part of awareness. Attributing causation is essential for being able to see reality and with that to respond in an effective way. It is essential even if seeing that reality is painful. And there are very strong emotions that come with this on all sides.
When we are looking at blame as attributing the cause of a negative outcome to something a person said or did, blame actually helps you to trace human behavior (including your own) back to its true causes, such as experiences, environments, motivations, fears, needs etc. By seeing causation clearly, you can respond to the underlying cause. For example, it is important to be able to see that you have an anxious attachment as an adult because your mother was constantly stressed, fearful, or dysregulated and as a result, was super inconsistent in terms of her availability to you. This helps you to understand yourself. It acknowledges your pain. It helps you to make sense of what is happening in your relationships. It sets you on a path of finding genuine solutions, including reminding yourself that the way you are feeling is because of attachment trauma, not necessarily a reflection of what is occurring now. It makes it so you do things like look for effective tools to increase relationship security rather than doing things like standard breathing techniques to reduce basic anxiety. And if you go further to establish the root causation of your mother’s behaviors, you see even more of reality. It can even naturally give rise to the experience of empathy.
To give you another example, it is important to be able to trace you withdrawing from a relationship to overhearing your partner saying that they miss their ex. Whether withdrawing was the ‘best response’ or not, is something that we could consciously question and explore. But without this awareness of what the cause is, there can be no hope of addressing the actual issue. If the partner then says “I said that because you have been so passive that I feel I am carrying things on my own” what has happened is that we have identified two causations. Both of which can be directly addressed. There is a potential that multiple people play some role in the problem at hand. I did not say that everyone in a situation is equally to blame. I said more than one person may have a role. When this is the case, both people being accountable for their role is what will bring about a genuine resolution. Without attributing causation, we cannot accurately identify who has the responsibility and in many cases, who holds the power to bring about resolution.
You cannot fix what you do not understand. Root cause analysis and a diagnostic phase is just as important when it comes to people as it is with anything else, such as an engineering failure for example. It empowers you to make conscious decisions, anticipate future outcomes, and effectively solve problems.
Let’s go one step further. Some definitions of blame go on to say that to blame is to hold someone responsible for a negative outcome (ie: to expect them to answer for the outcomes of their words, choices or actions). The first question I want you to ask yourself is: What is wrong with this? Really take time to think about it. You probably don’t think there is anything wrong with holding someone responsible for a positive outcome. This is what giving credit and acknowledgement is all about. Doing so usually leads to praise and positive things. Thinking that holding someone responsible applies only to negative outcomes fundamentally misrepresents what responsibility means. But guess what? You cannot believe that one is good and right without believing in the other is good and right. They are both sides of the same coin.
You need to attribute causation as well as accountability in order to understand problems enough to come up with solutions that are actually effective. This is where I disagree with other relationship experts. If you do not properly identify causation and properly assess accountability in a relationship, conflicts do not actually resolve. You will hear the common expression “drop blame and focus on solutions”. This is actually a bypass. It bypasses the critical process of finding the root causes. Without understanding who and what caused what problem and why, your solutions will fail. It also destroys accountability. It also breeds incredible levels of resentment. You cannot force a positive pivot on someone who has suffered a negative consequence. Trust erodes when positivity and ‘fixing problems’ becomes more important than honesty or acknowledgement of and caretaking of impact. And something that is true for a great many situations is that only the person who stands in that position of causation, the one who is accountable, is the one that has the power to create resolve. This doesn’t mean a person will take responsibility and accountability so as to create resolve. It doesn’t mean you can control a person so that they will do so. It also doesn’t mean that if a person doesn’t do so, you are powerless to create any improvement. But, especially in relationships, accountability matters!
If you are unwilling to identify causation, you can say goodbye to accountability within society. If the person who stands in the position of causation does not take accountability and if we do not put the pressure on them to do so, the other person (perhaps even the collective community at large) is forced to absorb all the costs. Removing the step of identifying causation can also create a false equivalence. When a negative outcome occurs, it is often a logical fallacy to present what two different people do as being equally the cause of that negative outcome. It is to ignore massive differences in context, severity, or scale. This is especially the case with philosophies like the “take 100 percent responsibility philosophy” or the “50/50 relationship rule”. When we do not hold people (including ourselves) accountable, we create a culture of systemic failure, trust erosion, underperformance, the spread of toxic habits, unfairness and resentment.
Blame is also often a necessary part of the healing process. It validates the reality of pain. Attempting to bypass this part of healing causes anger and negativity to turn inward, rotting a person from within. Forcing a positive, prematurely empowered outlook suppresses the reality of impact. As well as genuine, messy human emotions like hatred, anger, heartbrokenness, hurt, frustration, terror, anxiety, sadness, shame, guilt, resentment and grief. Blame functions as an official acknowledgment that a real negative impact has occurred. You cannot heal a wound that you are actively pretending does not exist or does not matter.
So, if this I the case, why has blame become such a dirty word? Why has it been blacklisted? The answer is, because of what we do with blame. The things we ADD to it. Here is a list of detrimental things that commonly get added to blame. Detrimental things we commonly do with it:
- In our society, to be blamed is to be seen as bad. It is to be disparaged. It is to be shamed. it is often to be punished. To see just how closely blame is linked to wrongness and badness (the two biggest threats to social closeness, which we need to survive) just look at the common phrase “I don’t blame you for (fill in the blank)”. What this really means is: I don’t think you are wrong/bad for (fill in the blank). For example, “I don’t blame you for skipping school because school sucks” means I don’t think you are wrong/bad for skipping school because school sucks. And guess what? If we see ourselves as the cause of an unwanted outcome, we tend to see ourselves as bad, slip into shame, disparage ourselves and punish ourselves. In fact, most people’s definition of blame involves this thing we in fact add to true blame. Most people’s personal unconscious definition of blame is about this, not the objective definition of blame.
- When we identify that something a person said or did was the cause of a negative outcome, we automatically add meaning to what they said or did or failed to say and do. We tell stories about what they did and why they did it. We tell stories about their character. These meanings we add and stories we tell are not necessarily accurate. For example, say that a partner fails to close a safety gate and as a result, our baby falls down the stairs, we may immediately tell ourselves the reason they failed to do it is because of their lack of care for the child, which then causes us to react in a specific way, but based on a false narrative. And it identifies the wrong root issue. If we try to solve the issue of forgetting to do critical things from the angle of trying to get them to care more, when this isn’t the actual reality of what is going on, there will be no actual improvement.
- When we blame someone, we may then slip into powerlessness. By identifying someone else as the cause of our suffering, we may go on to then inadvertently strip ourselves of our own personal agency and what power we do have, leading us to feel (or to be) permanently stuck and powerless. In this modern world, we are very attached to personal empowerment. The fact that people can slip into a lack of personal empowerment when they blame others is what tends to cause people in the fields of personal growth, psychology and spirituality to throw the baby out with the bathwater and swing the pendulum by going against identifying causation and accountability all together. It is really painful when someone does not take responsibility and does not hold themselves accountable for the negative outcomes they bring about. But it is important to not limit your own progression by making it totally dependent on something you cannot control.
- Blame can be used as a part of victim control dynamics. When this happens, blame is used as a weapon of control. It is manipulative victimization. The person looking to control covertly shifts the power dynamic by automatically claiming the moral high ground, framing themselves as the good, aggrieved, persecuted, or helpless victim, which forces the other person into the role of the wrongdoer who must compensate or appease them. Essentially, “do what I want in order to not be the bad guy”. The person looking to control enrolls others in this narrative so they can isolate the person they are looking to control; neutralize any potential defense they may have and use other people against them. Outsiders are tricked into defending the manipulator.
- We can use blame as a way to protect our own ego. When we do this, we use blame of someone else to deflect accountability. And we do this specifically so we do not see ourselves in a negative light. As such, we can protect ourselves from uncomfortable emotions like shame, guilt, inadequacy and failure. If someone else is to blame, we do not have to feel bad about ourselves. Blame allows you to separate yourself from the negative outcome and remain "good" in your own eyes. It can be a self-esteem defense mechanism. This completely prevents self-awareness and personal growth.
- If a negative outcome occurs, we can fall into the shadow of believing that someone must be blamed. Even if the reality is that no one person can be blamed in a specific situation. This is often the case if the causation involved multiple systemic factors and unforeseeable variables. It may be the case that no person can be blamed even if a specific person was responsible for overseeing that a positive outcome came about. For example, a captain is often expected to answer for a ship sinking due to an unpredictable rogue wave. But to say that the captain is to blame for the rogue wave is factually and logically incorrect. They may be responsible for failing to monitor meteorological reports to avoid unnecessary navigation through high-risk, violent sea conditions. But they may have done everything in their power and role correctly and therefore play no role at that level in the causation of the disaster.
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When it comes to blame, we can fail to see the bigger picture of causation. We become near sighted. For example, it is true that if someone shoots someone else, they are the one to blame for them being hurt or dying. And yet, the story of causation goes further. No child sits on the floor of their kindergarten class and says “I want to grow up to shoot someone.” Maybe what we find is that this person was raised in financial desperation and was neglected because their dad left and their mother was a mess, which drove them towards a gang, in which gun use is part of the game. If this is the case, their father and mother was to blame. But what if lack of access to societal support, quality education, employment opportunities, and youth programs leave individuals in their community with fewer viable pathways to upward mobility and therefore cause people to end up like their mother and father did? Then who is to blame? The government? Often, blame is a story that can go back and back and back and back until you can no longer trace the origin of causation anymore. When we blame, we can focus nearsightedly and entirely on an individual and what they did or didn’t do; which can cause us to miss the bigger, far more complex story of causation. Including larger, systemic flaws that contribute to the negative outcome happening in the first place.
Part of this failure to see the bigger picture of causation involves the failure to see how more than one person can play a role in causation. This is especially true in relationships. For example, say a partnership is breaking down, one partner becomes confrontational and aggressive, while the other pulls away to avoid conflict. The pursuer's intensity drives the withdrawer further away, and the withdrawer's silence and pull way fuels the pursuer's anxiety. They both play a role in the breakdown of the relationship. We especially tend to slip into blindness when blame makes us start to see one person is the villain, therefore as a bad person and anyone who suffered from the negative consequences, as the good person. This black and white thinking strips away nuance, causing us to fail to recognize the reality of complex interpersonal realities. - We can also use self-blame to gain empowerment in toxic ways. We can use it as a way to avoid feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. When we blame ourselves, we believe that we are the one who can do something about the unwanted outcome. We are trying to gain power over things. But we run the risk of trying to gain power over things that are ultimately outside of our control. And doing this can seriously prevent us from being in a state of alignment. It can also prevent us from going through the full process of healing. Self-blame can keep us in seriously toxic dynamics as well. By internalizing fault, you do not see the reality of those around you, nor do you see the full picture of causation and you may unconsciously excuse someone else's misconduct, absolving them of healthy accountability. You may also fail to set much needed boundaries. Taking blame can be something we do to stay close and connected to people who harm us, meaning it is something that often feeds interpersonal dysfunction.
I could go on. But the point is that there are lots of detrimental things we can add to blame, lots of detrimental things we can do with blame. The thing is, you do not need to add detrimental things to blame or do detrimental things with it. Blame doesn’t automatically mean you are going to make yourself powerless. Blame doesn’t automatically mean that you will use it as a deflection tool and fail to recognize what you are to blame for; your role in causation. It doesn’t automatically mean you will punish someone, disparage them, shame them. It doesn’t automatically mean that you will assign false narratives and tell false stories. It doesn’t automatically mean that you will slip into victim control dynamics. It doesn’t automatically mean that you will start using self-blame in toxic ways. It doesn’t automatically mean that we will fail to recognize it when no one person can be blamed in a specific situation. It doesn’t automatically mean that you will fail to see the bigger picture of causation.
So, either we 1. Agree that it is a good thing to attribute a negative outcome to its cause (which may very well be something that we or someone else said or did). And we agree that it is good to hold ourselves and others responsible/accountable for a negative outcome. Therefore, we change our association with the word blame so that it is no longer seen as a dirty word. This implies no longer confusing blame with the detrimental things we add to blame. Or 2. We decide that blame is a word that has been so soiled by our negative associations with it, that we need to use a different word when we are talking about attributing a negative outcome to its cause and holding ourselves and others responsible/accountable for a negative outcome.
Do not get rid of the entire practice of attributing causation and accountability all together. Consciously identify causation, wherever that causation exists. And it is unrealistic and even cruel to expect people to be non-emotional when they do this. We need to take a pause at the attribution of causation phase of blame. And from there, become very conscious about what we add to it and what we do with it. We need to be very conscious about the accountability in the situation at hand. We need to remember that one element of causation is not necessarily equal to another and one element of causation does not cancel out another. Healthy accountability means acknowledging the other person’s specific part in a situation. It also means acknowledging your own specific part in a situation. With that part that any person plays in a situation, comes accountability.
One of the most effective things we can do when we consciously engage in what we call blame is to get curious. Treating the situation like a puzzle to solve, part of which is to identify who did what and why and what the impacts were. This shifts our mind from sheer judgment to learning. Curiosity uncovers root causes, context, process breakdowns, system flaws, and outside pressures that were previously unseen. It shifts conversations from one way communication to two-way communication. It disarms emotional triggers. It causes us to drop our assumptions. And you will find that when you are willing to explore the why behind people doing what they do, it actually makes people more willing to own their own mistakes, be accountable for their part on causation and take responsibility to bring about resolution.
If we let it, blame (maybe you want to call it attribution instead) can open the door for greater and greater questioning. Greater and greater levels of awareness. More and more effective positive change.
