Working with clients who have suffered through domestic violence, as well as abuse from family members and friends, one thing I often notice is that they blame themselves for others’ behaviours. “What can I do differently so they won’t treat me like this?” Hearing this from many different clients of different backgrounds and circumstances, I couldn’t help but think about why - why is that the first knee-jerk reaction? Well, there’s two reasons I could come up with.
You’ve Been Trained to Blame Yourself
Unlike their victims, abusers will blame everyone but themselves. “Why do you have to make me mad?” “Why can’t you do anything right?” “I’m angry because I’m stressed and then you’re adding on to it!” When we are being told again and again that everything is our fault - we start to believe it. Once that thought takes root it’s hard to get rid of it. It can become so fundamental that we blame ourselves even for things completely outside of our control. It becomes a pattern of behaviour - something goes wrong, oh, it must be my fault.
Here’s the good news though. If we have been trained into it, we can be trained out of it. Think of it as a well worn path through the grass. We go down this path again and again, only making it more prominent and easy to go down. We have to catch ourselves going down this path and choose to go a different way, even if it takes us longer. This takes awareness - we might be halfway down the path before we realise ‘Oh, I’m blaming myself again.’ We’re so used to going down that path that it’s muscle memory, sometimes we’ve already gone through it before we notice. With practice, we can get off the path earlier and earlier until the grass begins to grow over it again and it’s not such a prominent path to take.
Part of training yourself out of blaming yourself is to reflect on the situation. After all, we don’t want to go down the other extreme where, like the abuser, we blame everyone else. It’s good to reflect on what we could do differently, but we also must acknowledge what is outside of our control, but also what is outside of our responsibility. You can’t control that the abuser had a bad day at work, but it is also not our responsibility to manage their anger - that’s theirs. Yes, other people’s actions can annoy us and anger us, but it is still up to us how we behave due to our anger.
What might hold us back from stopping blaming ourselves? I think the second reason why we blame ourselves is -
It’s Easier to Blame Ourselves
To think that it is our fault gives us some semblance of control. We can’t change our partner’s behaviour, but we can change our own. “If I was a little bit quieter, if I just did what they said, if I hadn’t talked back.” We can twist ourselves into whatever shape we want to avoid acknowledging that we cannot control their reactions and their behaviour. For it to be outside of our control is scarier.
And your abuser wants you to feel that way. They want you to twist yourselves up, to feel bad for their behaviour, meanwhile they get to behave however they want without consequence. And if you reach the point where you will not argue, where you will take all the blame onto yourself? Then they do not have to take any of it. They will get everything they want, and still have someone to take their anger out on for every minor inconvenience.
It’s hard to hold other people accountable. Especially in today’s world, where it feels as though there are no consequences for the horrific things people are doing. It’s scary to think that you have no control over what happens. So, you take that fear and anger and direct it inwards, because at least then it feels as though someone is getting punished.
But you don’t deserve that. You are trapping yourself in your blame. When you think everything is your fault, you think you deserve the abuse you are getting. You don’t. No matter what you’ve done, no one deserves that. It doesn’t matter what you do or don’t do, your abuser wants to be angry. They want to exert power and control over you.
It might feel easier or safer to blame yourself, but if you can let go of that thinking - you will feel so much freer. Something that can help get out of that way of thinking is therapy, to have someone to point out when you’re unnecessarily blaming yourself, and when things are out of your control.
Disclaimer: While I am a qualified counsellor, the content provided here is for informational purposes only. It does not act as a replacement for therapeutic support. If you are thinking about therapy - reach out! My email is gemmaq.counselling@gmail.com and you can WhatsApp me at +353 89 249 2595. You can check out my website www.gemmaquinncounselling.com for more information.
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