Why You Blame Yourself for Everything

In this video you'll learn why you  might blame yourself for everything, how this can be a trauma response from  your childhood, and how to stop doing it. And we're going to use Batman as an example.  I'm Batman.

But first, have you ever taken a shortcut even though you weren't really supposed  to? I mean, it seems like way too much effort to walk around this, so of course I'm going to take  the shortcut too. No big deal.

Here's the thing: your brain does this all the time. It takes these  little shortcuts to save on time and energy. And while cutting across the grass causes a little bit  of harm, there are some types of brain shortcuts that can cause a lot of harm, especially in the  way you process trauma.

So let me give you an example. Let's say you're a little kid. You spill  the milk.

Your dad blows up at you and yells, "What's the matter with you? Why'd you do that? "  Which one's easier for a kid to think?

Hmm, my parent doesn't seem safe. I wonder about the  difficulties of being an adult and the nuances of simultaneously being a good person while also  making a bunch of mistakes, or thinking, "Ah, it's all my fault. " It's clear to see how  taking the mental shortcut of "it's all my fault" is actually a much easier route than the  emotional gymnastics of figuring out why people do bad things.

But if we keep blaming ourselves,  over time we can end up feeling guilty, ashamed, depressed, or angry. So in this video we'll  explore this common cognitive distortion of self-blame, and we'll look at some practical  ways to replace it with more helpful thinking. Our brains are constantly trying to make  sense of what's happening in the world, but the brain's interpretation is not always  correct.

It takes these cognitive shortcuts that aren't completely accurate. These are called  automatic thoughts. And we don't usually notice them.

But we can learn to be more aware of them.  One type of automatic thought is to assume the worst. So does this sound familiar?

"If I get  a bad grade I'm going to fail and never get a good job. " Or we might see things in extremes.  "Nothing good ever happens to me.

" The first one is called catastrophizing, and the second one  is called overgeneralizing. Blaming ourselves for things that aren't our fault is another  common automatic thought. It might look like, "If I hadn't made him mad, he wouldn't have hit  me.

" So will a bad grade mean you'll never get a good job? No. Does nothing good ever happen  to you?

No. Good stuff happens every day; we just have to notice it. And do you have  control over the physical actions of another person?

Was was it your fault that you were hit?  No. But we believe these thoughts all the time.

And self- blame is one of the most common  forms of cognitive distortions. Aaron Beck, one of the first scientists to describe cognitive  distortions, tells the story of a depressed woman who blamed herself when their picnic was ruined  by a thunderstorm. Obviously no one controls the weather, right, but a person in the mental  rout of self-blaming will take on guilt over things that went wrong, even when those things  were out of her control.

There are three common ways people blame themselves. Number one: they  take full responsibility for every situation, as in, "It's my fault my parents got divorced"  or "It's my fault my brother died. " Number two: they believe that they should have seen it coming. 

"I should have known that it would rain on my wedding day. " Or three: they make it about their  own personal deficiencies. "I'm just so [fill in the blank] lazy, stupid, inconsiderate, idiotic,  clumsy," right?

It can be surprisingly easy to fill in that blank. Do you see how often and  how easily we can slip into self-blame? Now, thankfully, just because you think something  doesn't mean it's true.

So if we take an honest look at ourselves, we only repeat behaviors  that are somehow rewarding in some way. So why the heck would we like to blame ourselves?  Let's dive deeper into how our brains work, especially when we have a trauma response.

In  Batman Begins, young Bruce Wayne got scared and asked his parents to leave the theater,  but then they were killed in the alleyway. Recognizing young Bruce's trauma is not difficult.  He witnessed the murder of both of his parents, and this led to brooding over what could have been  done to prevent their deaths.

This 10-year-old's brain needed to make some explanation for why  his parents died, and so Bruce did what is so common in real life: he blamed himself. And he  held on to that wrong story long into adulthood. Alfred.

Yes, Master Bruce. It was my fault,  Alfred. I made them leave the theater.

No, no, no. How does trauma lead to self-blame? Trauma is  essentially when a situation overwhelms our capacity to manage it.

Because trauma floods  our emotional centers with fear or anger, we don't have the capacity to make nuanced  assignments of accountability. So this is where the brain takes that easy shortcut to  self-blame. We are much more likely to blame ourselves when the stress is high or our resources  are diminished.

When you're feeling fresh and energetic you might take the longer sidewalk, but  when you're exhausted or carrying a huge backpack, you'll be more likely to take the grassy shortcut.  Same thing with trauma. Instead of learning about the various villains who killed his family, Bruce  Wayne took the shortcut and blamed himself.

He was just a little kid. He was all alone. He didn't  have the contextual awareness to understand the complicated causes behind crime and violence. 

Victims often resort first to self-blame, and then they hang on to that thinking, even in the  case of crime, victimization, or accidents. And so blaming ourselves is a shortcut to make sense of  the world when we're overwhelmed or traumatized. There's a few more reasons why self-blame can  feel rewarding in the short term, even though it hurts us in the long run.

Self-blame can give  us a sense of control. It might be scary to think that our own choices can't fully protect us  from bad things happening, so by believing that things would have been better if we'd done  something different, we try to gain a sense of power over an unwanted outcome, and that can make  us feel secure. One woman described it this way: "I used to get harassed on dating apps,  which I now realize I had no control over, but at the time I would just fret about what tiny  adjustments I could make to my dating profile so that the disturbing comments would stop.

" Do you  see how instead of holding others accountable, she created a false sense of control by blaming  herself? Here's another one: taking blame can protect the peace in relationships that we're  dependent upon. So just think about a time when you were a kid coming home late from curfew. 

Maybe your your friends were being irresponsible. You arrive home, and your mom's angry. She  waited up for you.

If you said, "I'm sorry, Mom, it's all my fault that we were late," that  probably helped your mom calm down. You took the blame to keep the peace. Now, at an extreme level,  putting blame on ourselves might feel safer or be safer than blaming a dangerous person.

So if  you're in an abusive relationship, your survival response, the fawn response, might override  logic and take the blame in order to prevent retaliation. When we're young we simply don't  have the capacity to see the flaws and wounds of our caregivers, so we make sense of things by  blaming ourselves. This also maintains our sense of security by believing that our parents are  capable of protecting us.

But too often we carry that idea of "It must be my fault" with us into  adulthood. And this can show up as beliefs like, "I'm never good enough. " Blaming ourselves  is also easier than taking action to address someone else's wrongdoing.

So for example,  if the government is not doing its job, then I would need to go protest or call my  senator or take some other energy-sucking action. And lastly, sometimes blaming ourselves  is just a habit that we learned, whether it's from our victim-blaming society  or our family of origin. But the king is dead, and if it weren't for you, he'd still  be alive.

It's my fault. It's my fault. The good news is, if we learned it, we  can unlearn it.

Hey, everyone if you are looking for a comprehensive therapeutic  training to help you manage tough emotions, check out my membership. It includes access to  all of my courses, bonus videos and content, plus a live monthly Q&A where you can ask me your  questions directly. If a membership isn't for you, you can also purchase each of my courses  individually with a one-time payment.

But if self-blame is something you're dealing with,  I'd recommend the How to Process Your Emotions course. In it we tackle issues like self-blame  by identifying distorted thoughts and building healthier coping strategies. This course is  included in the membership, but it's also available as a one-time purchase.

And I've had so  many students call this course lifechanging. One of them even said that she started singing again  and dancing and smiling after years of struggle. Now, I have lots of free content here on YouTube,  but again, if you're looking for something more structured and actionable with steps in a  workbook, this might be worth considering.

Okay. Check it out. Link's in the description.

And  um back to the video. Okay. So blaming ourselves is a mental shortcut that our brain takes  when we're overwhelmed.

It's super common, but it also hurts us. So what do we do instead?  We've got to get out of autopilot and manually choose to process through trauma in a more honest  and helpful way.

So we're going to identify our distorted thinking, we're going to question it,  and we're going to replace it with something more helpful. Okay. So number one: let's recognize  our distorted thinking.

Okay. So just because we think something doesn't mean it's true. The  easiest way to recognize distortions is to ask yourself, "Would I treat a friend this way?

Would  I blame them for what happened? " If the answer is no, you're using emotional reasoning, an illogical  approach that's unfair to yourself. So let's try to catch ourselves in these thoughts.

Here's six  signs that you're blaming yourself. Number one: feeling guilty, helpless, or worthless. Number  two: thinking or saying "It's all my fault.

" Notice that "all. " That's exaggerated. Number  three: you apologize too much.

Number four: you downplay other people's responsibility. Number  five: you believe that you're irreparably flawed, like "Oh, I'm just never good enough. " Or number  six: you think that you should be able to see the future.

When you catch yourself doing these  things, say out loud, "I'm self- blaming again. " And this is called decentering or cognitive  defusion. It's stepping outside your thoughts and noticing your thinking, and that can allow  you to kind of detach from that belief.

We don't want to get caught in a struggle of like arguing  with our thoughts, like "Is it my fault? It's not my fault. Yes, it is my fault.

No, it's not my fault,"  right? That distracts us from our life purpose, our values, our goals in life. Instead, we just want to  separate from them, notice them - "Oh, hello, thought.

There is that blaming thought again" - and then  redirect our attention to the kind of life we want to live. Okay. So that's number one - noticing  our thoughts, noticing our self-blaming thoughts.

Number two: the next thing we can do is get clear  on taking responsibility. There are plenty of times we mess up, and we can learn to do better next  time by taking responsibility for our actions. The key is to know what we're actually responsible  for - that is, what was actually in our control.

So to get clear on this I would recommend asking  yourself, what are all the factors that led to this event happening? And we're going to write them  down and assign responsibility with a pie chart. So when you get this all out on paper, you can see  that Bruce couldn't have prevented his parents' deaths because the man who was responsible was  the man who pulled the trigger.

There were also societal factors that were pretty overpowering.  You didn't. It was him and him alone.

If Simba were to do a pie chart at the end of Lion King, he could  honestly say that it was Scar's fault. I killed Mufasa. So if you tend to blame yourself too much,  I challenge you to do this pie chart exercise.

I would love to see in the comments what percentage  you are realistically responsible for. Okay. Number three: you might be asking, but how can I tell if it  was my fault?

And I would say that's a question to stop asking. Um here's the thing with blame: blame  just isn't helpful. You you can blame yourself for something bad you did, or you can blame someone  else, but blame doesn't solve anything.

It doesn't change what happened. If you did make a mistake,  then the better question to ask is, is there a practical step I can take now to make repairs  or to learn from the experience, to prevent it from happening in the future? Blame is like  a rocking chair.

It's the endless rumination. It's like rocking and rocking, but it does not  get you anywhere. So blame is simply just not helpful.

Responsibility is like walking. It's hard  work, but you actually get somewhere. So in the end we have to ask ourselves: does blaming myself help  me to live the kind of life that I value?

Does it make my life rich and meaningful? Does it help me  take action to be the person I want to be? I think sometimes we mistakenly believe or especially  like emotionally feel that blaming ourselves will keep us from making the same mistake in  the future, but it can be helpful to look at the costs.

Self-blame makes you feel bad, guilty,  and worthless. It actually demotivates you. It's not honest.

So we're going to shift our attention  from blame to value-based actions. So that's what step three is: it's choosing helpful, value-based  action. What kind of person do you want to be?

What actions would you take today to move one inch  closer to that? I mean, Batman could still fight crime, but he doesn't have to do it from a place  of like beating himself up, right? If you believe in being kind, helpful, confident, courageous,  these are things you can act on today.

Um if you don't know how to clarify your values, you can  download my free my free download on my website. Um it's a values clarification exercise. I'll  try and remember to link it in the description.

So what what this all really comes down to is  this: can you see past the emotional reasoning and lies that come with the mental shortcut of  self-blaming? Uh can you look at the big picture, and can you allow others to be responsible for  their part? Can you take an honest look at your responsibility, and can you allow some things to  be out of your control?

Good, honest boundaries are healing. If it's my responsibility, it's mine,  and if it's not, then it's not. When we get more truthful about our responsibilities we can take  back our sense of self and our own personal power.

When you let go of self-blame you can feel  empowered to accept the things you cannot change and have the courage to change the things  you can. Okay. Thanks for being here.

Take care.