The Blame Game

It's easy to look for a reason outside yourself when things go wrong. This is especially the case when:

a.) you realise the mess is predominantly your own fault
b.) you're in denial that the mess is predominantly your own fault
c.) you're too proud to admit that the mess is predominantly your own fault
d.) you're oblivious to the fact that the mess is your own fault (predominantly or otherwise)

Playing the blame game is destructive because:

a.) it prevents you from accepting responsibility for your actions
b.) it focuses you on others' faults and distracts you from your own
c.) it stops you from identifying your weaknesses and working on them
d.) it hinders and prevents your ability to change
e.) it stops you from developing and improving as a person
f.) it means your negative patterns of behaviour remain unidentified and/or unaltered
g.) it impedes your emotional maturation, keeping you in the immature mindset of "he/she started it!"

I am currently saddened and infuriated by a friend's predicament, in which a person close to her is wilfully (in all senses of the word) oblivious to their own negative part to play in the situation. Instead, they are seemingly wholly determined to lay all blame at her door, despite much evidence to the contrary. Their dishonesty and denial about their own negative contributions to the mess seem to extend even to themselves, so that by extension even their immediate family are taken in by their inaccurate version of events. Worse than this, their manipulation of the truth (maliciously or otherwise) has even started to convince my friend that she is to blame, despite there being many cogent arguments to counteract this idea.

It's not easy to admit fault. I know this all too well, having a rather stubborn streak of my own. But I recognise that doing so is a necessary component for emotional growth. You can let the stubborn streak win and stay in denial. With trivial offences, you will likely infuriate other people, but you will mostly just harm yourself. But when your refusal to accept blame in matters of significance extends to the following misdemeanours:

- attributing sole responsibility on another person for all your ills;
- purposeful infliction of guilt on that person for said ills;
- manipulation of:
a.) that person so that they even start to consider accepting the blame, and
b.) other people, so that they start to take your word as truth and also blame that person,
- a "woe is me" attitude, by which you try to elicit sympathy from the other parties,

you are just WRONG. End of.