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Often, you will hear self-help books telling you to stop blaming other people for your problems, in order to take charge of your life. But individuals with insecure attachment often have a problem of taking too much blame on themselves. Yet, blame has an important place in the healing process.

Generally speaking, blame games evolve out of boundary confusion, which demonstrates itself in three notable ways: 

1. An inability to discern fault from responsibility: I didn’t do it, so I am not responsible for cleaning up the mess, even though I (and others) suffer for it. 
2. Emphasizing intention above impact: I didn’t mean to hurt you, so you can be mad or expect me to apologize for something I didn’t intend. 
3. Confusion around emotional influence: You are totally responsible for your feelings, and I am totally responsible for mine, and I can’t expect you to participate in my emotional experiences, and vice versa. The “right” way to be, is to realize I am alone in this.

The paradox of taking on too much blame is that it is the equal and opposite side of blaming others for your problems. 

When you blame people for making you miserable (or happy), it's because you think they have the power to make you miserable (or happy). 

And conversely, if you believe that, you are likely to believe that you have the power to make them miserable (or happy), as well. 

As a result, you become grandiose with how much power and control you think you have, or how much power and control you think your partner has over you (for “good,” or for “bad”). 

Inevitably, relationships become fraught with power dynamics, and someone is always playing the role of either victim or perpetrator.

Blame has an important place in the process of reclaiming one’s sense of self-sovereignty, which is a form of personal authority. It also plays an important role when it comes to holding accountable pathological mechanisms in the collective. 

Laying blame where it belongs (i.e. surrendering to the idea that you don’t actually have as much control as you think you do) allows helpless feelings to express themselves,  which grants permission for other repressed feelings that have been blocking you, to evolve; like anger, frustration, antagonism, motivation, desire, connection, and eventually, love and increased personal agency. 

Once you arrive at personal agency, that means the full range of emotional expression is now at your disposal. And you can stop getting stuck in the quicksand of assigning fault.

In the next few lectures, we will explore these three aspects of emotional influence a bit more in-depth.

Discerning Fault From Personal Responsibility

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(Optional) Respond to the following prompts in your journal.

1. What is your relationship to blame? How was blame handled in your family, as a child? How has it manifested in your adult relationships?
2. How do you feel about the words “personal responsibility?” What do you assume is your responsibility in a relationship?
3. Do you believe that we all should be socially responsible, as well? What would that entail, practically speaking?

Intention versus Impact

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(Optional) Respond to the following prompts in your journal.

1. Where do you draw the line between intention and impact, so as to hold offending parties accountable and assume what responsibility is necessary?
2. When is intention completely irrelevant to the impact of an offending behavior? These are likely to be your “deal breakers.”
3. When is intention an important factor, in considering the impact of offending behavior, and how you will respond to it? This is where you are open to forgiveness and compromise.

Degrees of Emotional Influence

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(Optional) Complete the following boundary statements in your journal. You can repeat these for as many boundaries as you like.

• Boundary Response: “I don’t like feeling ___________.”
• Rule: “I refuse to allow ________.”
• Expectation: “I expect ________.”
• Intention: “I intend to _________.”
• Behavior: “I will take action on this intention by_________.”

To acknowledge the gray areas when it comes to emotional influence in relationships, we are going to do an experiential activity that draws attention to the invisible but extremely powerful energetic cords that exist between you and your past, present, or future partner(s).

We are going to attend to the nature of these cords, and the way they reveal themselves to you. Through this process, we will glean some wisdom from a deep place of inner knowing, about what practical next step you might need to take, regarding these cords. 

Activity: Exploring Energetic Cords

Step 1: Listen to the guided meditation, on locating and witnessing your energetic cords. 

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Step 2: Depict your cords using a piece of paper and colored utensils.

Step 3: Engage in an “imaginal dialogue” with your drawing, using your dominant and non-dominant hand. There is a demonstration for this below.

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Be sure to watch this overview of the major takeaways for this lesson! And follow along with your workbook, where there will be a place to record your notes.