Self-blame is the strategy we use when we fear that others won’t understand us (“Maybe I’m being overly dramatic”), when we believe others won’t be emotionally available to us (“They probably have other things to worry about”), or because our early caregivers didn’t take responsibility for their own feelings and implied blame onto us (“If you weren’t so selfish all the time, I wouldn’t feel this frustration”).

What hurts us now, began as an adaptive strategy to an untenable situation. Self-blame also functions as a way to thwart a sense of threat from another person, not so dissimilar to fawning (the nervous system response that mobilizes a caretaking response toward a person that feels potentially frightening or threatening).

I remember listening to a lecture and the speaker told us a story about a man who was studying gorillas in the wild. One day he came across the alpha gorilla and instinctively he lowered his eyes and looked a way, a sign of showing deference to the gorilla and communicating that he was not a threat.  It saved his life! When I think of self-blame, I often think of that example.

Another way to conceptualize self-blame is to see it as a byproduct (or function) of shame. When we’re in shame, we believe we are all bad, not worthy of being seen by others and we use self-blame as a way to communicate disarm the other so that we won’t get hurt by their judgments of us.

The problem is that most often self-blame doesn’t offer us a solution to anything. It’s akin to self-flagellation; it’s just punishment. And self-blame is not the same thing as taking accountability for our actions. That’s coming from a very different place. Taking accountability requires that we are in a state of high self-worth to be able to own our mistakes and make repairs for them. Self-blame has a low self-worth quality to it and it doesn’t do anything for ourselves or for anyone else.

I believe when we use self-blame to manage our emotions or the emotions of others, we are telling our brains that the only way to handle these feelings is to try to get back into control by putting the onus on ourselves. In a way, there’s a kind of logic to self-blame, right? If you set a boundary with someone and they don’t receive it well, self-blame says, “your actions caused this person to feel bad, so you should feel blame yourself for their feelings”. That doesn’t really work though, right? How does blaming yourself do anything for the other person? (It doesn’t!).

Taking the example above, if someone feels sad about your boundary, that really is okay and we should respect the other person enough to allow them to have their feelings. We don’t have to go into rescue mode every single time. Self-blame is a maladaptive way of trying to take care of other people, but you end up paying a huge price in the end (depression, anxiety, toxic guilt/shame). Self-blame was your old strategy, but does not have to be the one you use every time.

The way I look at self-blaming is through the lens of what its function is. I believe the self-blamer doesn’t have a very sustainable way of mindfully being with the emotions of others and this leaves them scrambling for some way to work through their discomfort. Everything we do or don’t do has a function, whether we’re aware of it or not. The function of self-blame helps us to avoid something we don’t want to feel or look at.

Ask yourself, “if I wasn’t self-blaming, what would I be feeling?” and then consider, “is there a different way of being with this feeling that is more flexible and honorable toward myself?”. You might be surprised at what you find.   

*This post is for educational purposes only and should not replace medical or professional advice.