Facing the Dragon
"He lives in a cave with a dragon, the dragon is called BLAME"
It seems we are becoming more interested in working out who's to blame for the various things that go wrong in our world- maybe this is a normal human reaction and can be helpful in doing something positive to put things right or avoid the bad thing happening again. Whose fault is it that hospitals and doctors sometimes make mistakes that have terrible consequences?
However there is often something very unhelpful about seeking or avoiding blame especially in our relationships with the people in our lives. The fear of being blamed for things can be linked with problems with how we really feel about ourselves and difficult events or feelings we may have experienced. This can sometimes be unconscious and seem quite irrational, eg someone whose parent or parents left them when they were young may feel that this was somehow their fault, there must be something wrong with them, and this can lead to issues around blame and guilt.
Sometimes our desire to avoid being blamed and the imagined consequences leads to us being more comfortable finding fault with others- it seems that the further away from being blamed ourselves the safer we feel, and what better than having it safely laid at another door? This can also make it hard to say sorry as this is associated with an admission of guilt which will make people think less of us or even hate us. There seems to be a lot of people in the public eye experiencing difficulties with shame, whether this is TV presenters or cricketers, social media and the internet mean that the potential "audience" for our transgressions and "mistakes" is now global,which probably doesn't help!
In fact although taking the blame for really bad or illegal acts does obviously have consequences, it seems that in our day to day lives people respond quite well to an apology and the effect on how they see you might be surprising! Of course there are times when we need to stick to our principles and not be a jellyfish!
Battle
East Sussex