The need to blame (ourselves or others) runs so deeply at times that it can feel like a basic necessity.\u00c2\u00a0 Part of the need arises as a defense against shame.\u00c2\u00a0 As shame encroaches, fending it off requires that someone else be proved the villain.\u00c2\u00a0 And it is not enough that we protest what they’re doing, that we have our say.\u00c2\u00a0 We have to nail them to their crimes, make them confess, make them feel bad and promise to be better.\u00c2\u00a0 Only then can we finally have the satisfaction of being free of the denunciation we direct at ourselves….<\/p>\n
Knowing oneself is integral to growing up.\u00c2\u00a0 But, to the extent that we live in a blaming system, we do not want to know the truth about who we are and, therefore, resist growing up.\u00c2\u00a0 We don’t want to know our own murderousness, selfishness, greed, envy, because all of these very human feeling states have been made a source of so much guilt and shame that they lead at once to total condemnation and self-rejection.\u00c2\u00a0 We can’t know them, and we can’t know how we came to them.\u00c2\u00a0 As a result, we miss out on the experience of self-empathy and self-care, which might be the basis for doing something new, for beginning to emerge from these things we don’t like in ourselves but which hold us prisoner.<\/p>\n
Some of what we do is bad and should be changed — the way we bully, deny, manipulate, shirk, indict…. But if we make every misdeed or character orientation into a capital crime, into evidence that our very being is worthless, we will not be able to let ourselves know the full complexity of who we are.\u00c2\u00a0 If there can be no mercy, no leniency, no understanding, no forgiveness, no simple tolerance for the magnificent complexity of being human — if we face every flaw or disliked quality as evidence that our blackened souls require rejection and banishment — we will not be captured by our own awareness and motivated to change.\u00c2\u00a0 The blaming system, therefore, puts a brake on a fundamental area of growth….<\/p>\n
Blame is very absorbent.\u00c2\u00a0 It soaks up sadness.\u00c2\u00a0 It dries the tears.\u00c2\u00a0 It provides an opportunity and a target for fury which is felt as preferable to experiencing pain or loss — whether the loss is a cat, a spouse, an aspect of physical health, a loved object, a piece of work, a good night’s sleep, an election, a colony, or a war.\u00c2\u00a0 Blaming and vindictiveness are ways of not feeling one’s sorrow or shame and, by corollary, of not caring for oneself.\u00c2\u00a0 Blame is the anti-mourn and, hence, the anti-self.<\/p>\n
— Robert Karen, PhD, The Forgiving Self, <\/em>p. 110-112<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The need to blame (ourselves or others) runs so deeply at times that it can feel like a basic necessity.\u00c2\u00a0 Part of the need arises as a defense against shame.\u00c2\u00a0 As shame encroaches, fending it off requires that someone else be proved the villain.\u00c2\u00a0 And it is not enough that we protest what they’re doing, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,35,21,19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-forgiveness","category-growth","category-healing","category-letting-go"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderquotes\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}