My mother had been in a car accident. The second one that year, and this time, the car was totaled. Rushing to the emergency room, I was ushered back to one of the bays where she dressed to go home. She had suffered only a few cuts and bruises. I couldn’t say the same for the car. Her eyes—filled with that wild, hunted look stared at me in accusation. No matter how terrifying she was to be around, especially at a time like this, I still showed up.
Driving her home, I listened to her diatribe. The accident was not her fault. Despite our many warnings about her erratic behavior and dangerous driving habits, we were wrong, and she was right. It wasn’t her fault nobody cared about her and how she hated every single one of us. Her words were filled with one accusation after another.
Stopping at a light, I glanced over at my mother. She was a stranger to me. Though every line on her face was written across the memory of my heart, I could not reach her. I couldn’t reach her as a child, and as an adult, she was further away than ever. My mind flitted to the carnage my mother had left in her wake. The light changed, and we headed toward home. For the first time, it began to dawn on me that my mother’s life was not my fault. When I stepped away from the whirlwind, I began to see that the facts led to one place—the choices she had made. And those choices were completely out of my control.
Self-blame is a pattern cultivated by abusers that grows into a trauma survivor’s natural default setting. Later in life, it becomes an unconscious, automatic response to any threat or stress. The desire to create safety is the engine that drives self-blame because it gives us the illusion of control.
The problem comes when we are hit with the reality that we are not in control and can never be in control of other people or circumstances. Though we may not be able to control the behavior of our abusers, we do get to decide what our response to their betrayal and abuse will be.
Will it be to do further damage to our inner child? Or will it be to heal?
Will it be to become exactly like our abusers and continue to do to ourselves the same things they did? Or will it be to make a powerful choice to change?
Steps to Healing Self-Blame
1. Paradigm shift. There must be a paradigm shift. A paradigm is a standard, perspective, or set of ideas. Self-blame comes from a warped perspective of the past, and that perspective must change.
A)Self Empowerment: You must believe you have the power to choose a different path. As long as you believe and/or agree with the gaslighting and subjugation, you will continue to blame yourself.
B) Control: Self-blame gives the false impression that you are in control. It becomes not only a habit but a comfort. Obtaining inner peace requires that you go against decades of indoctrination and surrender the illusion of control over other people and circumstances.
C) Realize That Self-Blame Does Not Release You: Self-blame comes from a need to be loved, and this need keeps us in bondage to abusive family systems. We think that if we figure out what we’re doing wrong, we will finally find the love we so crave. “If I pay enough, I will be released.” But the release never comes because the cost never ends.
Place the Blame Where It Belongs
Many articles I’ve read encourage survivors of childhood trauma to forgive themselves. While I understand this is an attempt to get survivors to let go of self-blame, to suggest we forgive ourselves seems to me to be wrong-headed. It implies there is something we have done that needs to be forgiven when the exact opposite is true.
Activity to Heal Self-Blame
Slowly read through the following list of the ways self-blame cements itself in childhood trauma. Pay special attention to the statements that refute each reason.
Why Self-Blame Cements Itself in Childhood Trauma
1. Children believe their abuser (Our abusers were liars)
2. The abuser is seen as “normal” or a pillar of the community by others (Our abusers pretended to be something they were not)
3. When children try to tell, the abuse is either downplayed or not believed at all. Sometimes, there is no one children can tell. (I did not have power as a child, but now I do. I was isolated as a child, but now, I do not have to be
4. Abuse is all the child knows. (Now that I am grown up, I know that abuse is not right)
5. When a child tries to stand up for themselves, the abuser uses it as justification for more abuse (My abusers were more powerful than me, then. They are not now.)
6. Self-blame is often the only way a child can control an unbearable and uncontrollable situation. (I am not living in that situation anymore. I have the ability to choose a different life for my self.)
7. Self-blame is a survival technique (I do not need to use self-blame to survive anymore)
8. The loss of the relationship is so threatening blaming yourself feels safer than admitting the truth (I am strong enough to let toxic people go)
9. The abuser has trained you (brainwashed you) to blame yourself (I am not under my abuser’s control anymore)
10. Chronic feelings of guilt, anxiety, and shame are temporarily relieved by blaming yourself. (I will find other, more positive ways to manage unmanageable feelings)
Healing from self-blame is a process that requires thought and action. What steps can you take today that will release you from the traumatic cycle of self-blame and set you on the pathway to healing? Defy trauma, embrace joy.
You can contact Rebekah at her website, defy trauma embrace joy.com or email her at [email protected]
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Rebekah Brown, a native of the south, now resides in the Great American West. Surviving a complicated and abusive family system makes her unique writing style insightful as well as uplifting. Rebekah is the proud mother of two and grandmother of four.
