CHALLENGING THE BLAME FRAME
As a therapist learning about transformative or healing justice, and thinking about barriers to it, I can’t help but connect what I hear to self-acceptance and the things that get in the way of that. I know that when it comes to self-acceptance, the reliance on punitive or coercive strategies – on "blame and shame" – to control the self can be really baked in. The idea of letting go of those strategies can feel terrifying, and the urge to hold on to them really strong.
I remember when I first learned about Gilbert’s Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) approach, I felt challenged by his claim that “much of what goes on in our minds is not our fault” (Gilbert). He maintains that:
It is not our fault because our capacities for powerful desires (like love, sex, status and belonging) and our emotions (such as anger, revenge, anxiety and depression) were built by evolution over millions of years. We didn't choose to build them like this! (Gilbert)
He argues that, “We did not choose to have a brain like this”. Our complex brains emerged out of millions of years of evolution. Gilbert also argues that experiences we did not choose, within our family and cultural context, lead to us learn certain ways of responding to situations we experience as threatening:
We call these protective or safety behaviours and strategies. They are very understandable and often rapidly activated. They are the way the body has learnt to try to protect itself. That is absolutely not our fault because usually they just developed in us without much thought on our part. However, they have a huge disadvantage – they can have unforeseen and undesired consequences. For example, they may stop us learning new ways of dealing with difficult situations. This is because safety learning tends to use the same strategies in a variety of situations. As a result, because of our tendencies to be submissive, self-blaming or aggressive, we cut ourselves off from possible sources of good things. (Gilbert)
We are complex brains in complex bodies, evolved over millions of years, and shaped by the in-itself complex, familial and cultural context within which we find ourselves. That all makes sense, and yet somehow the conclusion – that the way our mind works is not our fault, and we should not blame ourselves is hard to sit with.
Part of me feels like without blame, we can’t take responsibility and can’t have control. But CFT sees things differently. Gilbert argues that we can let go of blame and still take control:
We can learn to step back from our first reactions and learn to think about them in different ways. We can develop the habit of learning to stop before acting on first reactions. Learning to stop and really notice and attend to what is going through our minds is a first step to having more control. Learning how to be compassionate to our feelings, rather than fighting with them or trying to avoid them, is the next step. (Gilbert)
He is not trying to throw responsibility out the window, but instead raise the possibility of responsibility without blame:
[A] key issue is how we can learn to stop blaming ourselves for what we feel or how we’re reacting, become aware that this is the working of a brain that’s been designed for us, but that we can take more responsibility for our minds so that we don’t just end up in that canoe being rushed along on rivers of desires, disappointments, passions or emotions. (Gilbert)
I found this idea challenging because some part of me couldn’t help but feel that responsibility without self-blame is responsibility-lite. Blame feels serious. Responsibility without blame feels wishy-washy – a cop out somehow.
I had to ask myself: “Why am I resistant to the idea of responsibility without blame?”. Talking to a friend involved in the transformative justice movement, we thought about how an attachment to blaming ourselves and others can manifest in so many different ways – even as we try to find less punitive, and more healing, trauma-informed, dialogue-based and resourcing-focused strategies to build safe and just communities to live in. My friend remarked: “Some of us are not ready to give up blame because it’s all we have”. Blame can be a way we’ve learned to meet our very real emotional, motivational, moral, political, and social needs.
I invite you, if you are someone who feels a need to blame yourself or others, to extend some acceptance, compassion, and gentle curiosity to the part of you that feels that need.
UNDERSTANDING THE ROLE BLAME PLAYS IN OUR OWN LIFE
If you took a minute to fill in these blanks with as little self-censorship as possible what would you write?
I need to blame myself because …
I need to blame others because …
I need blame because …
These are some sentences that emerged out of discussions with people around me. Do any of them resonate with you?
I need to blame myself…
I need to blame myself to motivate myself to be better.
I need to blame myself because in order to take responsibility.
I need to blame myself because people who don’t end up doing terrible things.
I need to blame myself because otherwise I’ll feel as if I have no control, and that's a scary feeling.
I need to blame myself because if I blame others it will damage my relationship to them.
I need to blame myself to show others that I take responsibility and that I care.
I need to blame myself to pre-empt blame from others.
I need to blame others…
I need to blame others to give myself permission to feel the anger and pain I’m experiencing.
I need to blame others because otherwise they will do it again.
I need to blame others to honour the pain of the people they have hurt.
I need to blame others because I want them to face consequences.
I need to blame others to reclaim my power and control.
I need to blame others because I want to see others suffer for what they’ve done to me.
I need to blame others because I want them to understand what they’ve done and blame themselves.
I need to blame others to stand up for people who have been hurt.
I need to blame others in order to not feel complicit.
I need blame…
I need blame as a way to make room for and talk about my anger and hurt.
I need blame because moral authority helps you have an impact and influence others.
I need blame as a way to control others who might hurt me or let me down.
I need blame to communicate my values and what I stand for.
I need blame to connect to others who feel similarly.
I need blame to feel validated - because being right feels like the only legitimate way to get my response validated, and in order to be right, the person I’m in conflict with needs to be wrong.
I need blame to seek sympathy - because being wronged is the only way to seek collective sympathy in a society where sympathy feels so rationed.
I need blame to navigate conflict - because talking about blame feels safer, less exposed, less personal and more authoritative than talking about feelings, needs, boundaries or values. It’s not me and you in conflict, my needs versus yours, or even my values versus yours - it’s good versus bad.
I need blame when I don’t have access to other strategies for seeking justice or structural change. It can feel like the only thing I have at my disposal to seek redress, keep people and myself safe, or realize my values.
I need blame because blame is powerful.
THE POWER OF BLAME
This isn’t an anti-blame piece. I'm not asking you to delete blame. Reflecting on these discussions I’m struck by how powerful blame is - how much impact and influence it can have; and why we are drawn to it. I’m struck by how many different values and needs we try to pursue through blame:
Responsibility. Commitment. Consistency.
Motivation. Control. Achievement.
Change. Safety. Validation.
Justice. Accountability. Redress.
Belonging. Security. Cohesion.
I’m left wondering what it would look like to try to pursue those values and needs, and try to bring about the changes in ourselves and our world that we want, without blame. What would be necessary for that to be possible? What would need to shift? What might we gain?
REIMAGINING RESPONSIBILITY WITHOUT BLAME
Our society ties blame and responsibility so tightly together that it can be hard to disentangle them. But responsibility seems to be about recognition and action; and blame doesn't seem like it has to be an inherent part of that. I wonder whether blame is an attitude or energy we have just got used to bundling responsibility up with - the fuel we have learnt to use to drive and power it - rather than an inherent part of it.
Even so, untangling them in our mind and being aware of how they can operate separately in our lives feels like an ongoing practice, rather than the work of the moment. I try to imagine what committing to that practice would look like, and this is what emerges for me:
I want to try to understand and acknowledge, as well as I realistically and sustainably can, both how I am effected by others and our world, and how I affect others and our world.
I want to try to recognise the impact of my actions, and the implications of my choices.
I want to look for different ways of doing things, within the limits that I have and the situation I am in, that prevent harm and reflect my values.
I want to learn and grow from my mistakes.
I want to acknowledge, and when possible, prevent harm.
I want to try to work if I can to repair what is possible to repair.
I want to make room for grief and remorse, and honour pains that feel irrepararable.
I want to set boundaries, make commitments, seek validation and support, prioritise safeguarding, critique oppressive systems, and advocate for change in ways that are effective and sustainable - with as little reliance on “blame and shame” as possible.
I want to find words for anger that do not centre blame.
That list feels quite weighty to carry. Writing it I sit with feelings of self-blame connected to memories of all the times I haven't done that, and those memories fuel doubts and fears about my capacity to engage in the practice the list envisions. But the list also reminds me that there are ways to take responsibility for those actions that are not built on blame. Bringing that practice into this moment I recognise that I can take a step in this practice right now by taking responsibility for how I wield blame without blaming and shaming blame itself, or the part of me that has held onto and does hold onto blame. I want that blaming part of me to feel safe to be seen, so that it is not tempted to disguise or obscure itself. I want to welcome it to awareness, and explore what it can tell me, so we can find a way forward together.
I’ve linked some free resources on Compassion-Focused Therapy below, if you are curious to find out more about CFT. Most of the quotes above are from the top link.
https://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/docs/GILBERT-COMPASSION-HANDOUT.pdf
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.692.1746&rep=rep1&type=pdf
https://self-compassion.org/wp-content/uploads/publications/GilbertCFT.pdf