Flourishing Life Society
  • Flourishing Life Society
    • Flourishing Favorites
    • Articles by Year Published
    • Privacy Policy
    • About Us
  • Psychology Definitions
  • Psychology of Wellness
    • Psychology of Emotions >
      • Emotional Data Base
    • Psychology Article Archive
  • Personal Development
    • Health and Fitness
    • Personal Development >
      • Personal Development Archive N-Z
  • Flourishing Relationships
Home | Personal Development | Blaming

Blaming

Taking Responsibility for Disappointment

BY: T. Franklin Murphy  | January 2016 (edited March 28, 2022)
Lady angry and pointing. A Flourishing Life Society article on blaming others.
Adobe Stock Images
We soothe guilt by blaming others, providing immediate relief and long term damage.
We willingly surrender freedom, delivering our futures to unseen forces. We blindly participate in our own misery. We grimace and roll our eyes, crudely accusing others, pointing our finger for any disappointments. Our expressions scream innocent victimhood while self-righteously condemning others of evilness. Many of us—all of us some of the time, some of us all of the time—thoughtlessly claim entitlement to an undisturbed life. When life opposes, we react, exploding inside, seeking cause for the horribleness that unfairly befell us. 

We all judge. We gather information, assess intentions, recall the past, and make a judgment. This occasionally includes identifying hurtful acts of others. Wisdom from learning protects us from repeated violations of disloyalty and injury. Judgments serve a purpose. But judgments flawed and infused with bias self-serve.

​We don’t exist independently. Our story—where we are the main character—is commingling with the billions of other stories that simultaneously exist, playing out concurrent dramas. Others also have self-serving biases expressed in their judgments. On the stage of collective existence, conflict and cooperation play out. 

Key Definition:

Blaming is assigning responsibility to a single cause or person for an event or misfortune. Blaming typically ignores the complex and vast contributing factors leading to the event.

Avoiding Responsibility by Blaming Others

Disappointments are an inherent part of life. Many pieces of experience combine culminating in the moment. Certainly, other contribute. However, focusing blame on others significantly limits our ability to gain wisdom from the heart-wrenching disappointments. We subject ourselves to repeats. Taking responsibility for our role has great power. Understanding how we played into the final outcome, enlightens paths for change.
"The best years of your life are the ones in which you decide your problems are your own. You do not blame them on your mother, the ecology, or the president. You realize that you control your own destiny."  ~Albert Ellis

Selfish  Expectations and Blame

​If our needs define life, we neglect the complexity that includes others. We narrow our vision and unfairly condemn intruders that fail to yield to our self-serving purposes. We blame them for interruption of dreams. We blame them for failures. Yet, the blaming is unwarranted. We expect others to act as unimportant pawns in our game of life.

Key Concept:

The psychological benefit of placing blame on a single cause or person is that it protects from the personal discomfort of considering our contributing role in an event, or the sense of helplessness from living in an unpredictable, complex world.

Realistic Expectations  and Personal Enlightenment

When open to reality, through connection with others and awareness of differing goals, our knowledge lessens the emotional upheavals from the misguided entitlements of  a singular existence. A wider perspective—which includes visions of others’ needs and goals—enhances our experience, transforming selfish emotional reactions to constructive approaches; which may invite closer examination of our selves for contributing causes.
"Blame is just a lazy person's way of making sense of chaos."
Douglas Coupland

​​When we realistically exam disappointments, the honest openness ushers enlightening insights, growing wisdom and improving futures. The honest examination of self involvement in disappointments develops wisdom to escape future injuries while promoting the growth of character. We don’t master this process. Pain still hurts; disappointments still sting. We just get better at working through them. Wisdom enlarges self-understanding. We learn our limits, cautiously approaching the edges, seeking assistance where needed before floods of emotions overwhelm and destroy.
"​A wider perspective—which includes visions of others’ needs and goals—enhances our experience, transforming selfish emotional reactions to more constructive approaches."

Books on the Psychology of Blaming

Setting the ego aside, we accept vulnerabilities of imperfection and individual needs for connectedness. We acknowledge the presence of blemishes both on our selves and others. When difficulties appear, instead of wasting precious energy blaming, we seek constructive answers. But we approach these assessments cautiously, recognizing the perniciousness of judgmental emotions that protect the ego, and divert blame to something more easily digested.

​By ignoring personal connectedness to the happenings in our life, we lose power to change; for a mere morsel of relief, we invite continued failings. Happenings occur from complex inputs; others often share in the blame. They may unintentionally—or intentionally—disrupt our plans. When this happens, we must dig a deeper, seeking how we became entangled with the disruptive forces. The answers may stun our senses but knowledge also releases the demons damning our futures.
Please support Flourishing Life Society with a social media share or by visiting a link:
Twitter Reddit LinkedIn Email
T. Franklin Murphy
T. Franklin Murphy
Wellness. Writer. Researcher.
​T. Franklin Murphy has a degree in psychology. He tirelessly researches scientific findings that contribute to wellness. In 2010, he began publishing his findings.

Index:

Flourishing in Life
  • Personal Development
  • Addiction Recovery
  • Wellness 
Psychology of Wellness
  • Emotions​
  • Personality
  • Defense Mechanisms
Flourishing Relationships
  • Intimate
  • Parent/Child
  • Society
Health and Fitness
Key Word Archives
Research
About Flourishing Life
External Links:
External Link. Why Some People Find It Harder to Be Happy
External Link: a feedback loop effect between attachment anxiety and manipulative mate retention behaviors
External Link. To what extent are we ruled by unconscious forces?
External Link: how exercise unlocks human longevity
External Link: Self-transformation and its importance in personal growth, professional development and education
Flourishing Life Society Link. Emotional Fitness
Human Flourishing. Flourishing Life Society article link

Articles on the Psychology of Blaming:


7 Consequences of Blaming Others for How We Manage Anger
5 Psychological Reasons For Blaming Others (+ How To Stop It)
8 Psychological Reasons for Blaming Others
How To Break The Blame Cycle With Empathy
The Psychology of Victim Blaming

​Other Flourishing Life Society articles of interest on this topic:

Projection. A Defense Mechanism. A Flourishing Life Society article
A Flourishing Life Society article link. Gentleness
A Flourishing Life Article link. A Quiet Life of Desperation
Reciprocal Determinism. A Flourishing Life Society article link
Immature Defenses. A Flourishing Life Society article
Flourishing Life Society article Link: Accepting Imperfections
Emotional Hijacking. A Flourishing Life Society article link
A Flourishing Life Society article link. Legacy of Love
We confront the overwhelming experiences of life through a variety of escapes. A healthy adults adaptation mature as they grow, allowing for contact with reality; others, however, build deeper deviations from reality and squander the richness of living.
Victim Mentality. A Flourishing Life Society article link
Accelerated Experiential-Dynamic Psychotherapy. A Flourishing Life Society article link
FLS Link: Hope Theory: Motivation to Succeed. Hope is more than an optimistic reliance on unseen forces. Hope, according to Hope Theory, is a combination of three elements: realistic goals, energetic determination, and intelligent pursuit.
Seizing the day is a joyful acceptance and a timeless honoring of the preciousness of life. Seizing the day creates a joyful connection to living.
We unwittingly promote unhealthy defense mechanisms on line. There are plenty pf social media participants willing to support life limiting adaptations.
We struggle to objectively evaluate ourselves. We subjectively change the facts to fit our self-supporting reality.
A Flourishing Life Society article link. Blaming
Picture
Flourishing Life Society
  • Human Flourishing
  • Psychology of Wellness
  • Flourishing Relationships
  • Psychology Definitions​
  • Privacy Policy
​Other Links
  • About US
  • Companion Site​
  • Most Popular Articles
  • Psychology Topics A-z
Articles:
  • New Articles​
  • Last year's Publications​
  • External Psychology Links​
​Favorite Topics:
  • Mental Illness Archive
  • Personality Archive
  • Personal Development
  • Psychology of Emotions
News Letter

    New Article Updates

Subscribe to Newsletter
  • Flourishing Life Society
    • Flourishing Favorites
    • Articles by Year Published
    • Privacy Policy
    • About Us
  • Psychology Definitions
  • Psychology of Wellness
    • Psychology of Emotions >
      • Emotional Data Base
    • Psychology Article Archive
  • Personal Development
    • Health and Fitness
    • Personal Development >
      • Personal Development Archive N-Z
  • Flourishing Relationships