To Blame Is to Miss the Point

If I cannot blame anyone else for who I have become and how I behave, I am stuck with my Self. I am that Ever Ready Bunny who picked the wrong alley to go down. My nose is against the wall of a deadend; my brain is spinning, and I see no way out.

In that moment, I am not functioning well in human society. I am “doing it wrong” again (in my brain, that means I am “being wrong”)...and that creates shame in me…and always has in my life. I was born into shame.

Whatever I did, I was told I should “be ashamed of my Self”.

In my home I was shamed for whatever I did. I made mistakes in school, couldn’t remember what I learned, couldn’t focus. And because of that, I went through abuse in school from teachers and other students, and no one at home seemed to care.

All of this created more shame.

I created such a fear of being shamed, that I didn’t try anything anymore, knowing that I should be ashamed of my Self… regardless. Trying anything became dangerous!

By the time I was thirteen, I was consumed by fear and shame. And at thirteen I was introduced to a drink, and magic happened…I didn’t feel the shame.

It was an amazing feeling.

I had found the solution…alcohol!
Numb felt better than shame!
However, what I did “under the influence” created more shame, so of course, I had to continue to drink.

I used that method for 20 years and only stopped using it when my husband wanted to stop drinking. And as a result, my not drinking removed the shield that protected me from my shame. With no alcohol, the shame was back.

I needed a different kind of shield. And that’s when I entered an alcohol recovery program.

When we decide to enter into recovery, we learn that resenting others for our pain and failures is rather fruitless. I know…”they” could have done something awful! “They” did something awful! Then we get to hear that “they did the best they could.” Oh, well!

Still, I was unaware that I had any power to release my brain and body from this torture. Every minute of the day, my brain was spinning with images of what had been done to me, what I had done to deserve it, what I should have done instead.

In the morning, I woke up with these images, just a spinning tornado of painful and scary pictures from the past, shaping fearsome pictures for the future. And it was all swirling in a cess pool of fear and shame.

And that’s where I lived, like driftwood, floating down the river with no guidance, and no clue what to do, how to live, or behave, and no courage to “try”.

Everything bad that happened to me after I left home at sixteen, I have blamed on that upbringing and lack of parenting.

In my experience, shame was (and is still today) a body sensation. I understand that we all have different expressions for how shame feels in our bodies.

To me, shame feels like a heavy, wet wool sweater with the lingering smell of a skunk in it. I have done some work on shame…a lot of work, I may say! Still…

…I can get a heavy feeling from that sweater with a whiff of that familiar odor.

On a side note and as an introduction to a few things that still keep that whiff of the skunk circling, I need to say this:

I do not think in words or sentences. I don’t “see” words in my mind. I see pictures, short recordings of what happened, and…or…what will happen.

And when I tell you what I see, I see it all play out somewhere in front of me. These images all come with stories. So, when I tell a story, I tell it with the help of metaphors, because… again… I don’t “see” words when I tell you a story, I see images and use metaphors to paint the picture for others. Images are how I remember my life and how I explain my life to you.

It’s difficult to explain how it is to live in a world of pictures.

I recognize people, but I don’t remember their names (words… right?). You give me a street address, I’ll remember the number, but not the name of the street. Try that for a while.

When I read a book, my brain creates a movie of what I’m understanding. When I share what I read, I’ll tell you a story about what I learned, or I’ll tell you about a slogan that “rings” in my head, like, “Blame Makes You Lame”, and then I’ll have a story about the slogan.

If I’m not able to process the information I’m reading, my brain stops, it just goes blank.

It’s similar to when a coffee grinder gets plugged. You can see there is more coffee on top, but it’s just not coming through. It’s just not "processing", not grinding through. I see the words; they just don’t make sense. I cannot make a picture out of them. I can feel it in my brain. I see the last image I understood, and then it’s blank.

And that’s when I feel the heaviness of the sweater weighing me down. In that moment, I stop functioning.

Why am I telling you all this?... because living with the way my brain works has been (and still is) one of the most embarrassing and shameful social situations I experience. And one of the main reasons why I have resented my past and the people in it.

I felt shame and guilt from the past. I lived a life of emotional pain, fear, and resentments. Legitimate pain from childhood trauma, lots of imaginary fears, and loads of resentments.

I have blamed people, so I didn’t have to “own” my behaviors and feel that shame.

I did it because… and then I had a good excuse. I had resentments about what people had done to me, and that’s why I did what I did. That’s why I was what I was… or had been …a drunk!

In recovery, I had to write out my resentments and examine my past, take ownership of my part, and make amends.

And, even worse…

I had to forgive. That was the hard part.

They told me that I needed to forgive to be free, that resentments were something that would make me drink again.

But I liked resentments. They tasted like a good piece of candy. I could curl up on the couch and just self-righteously resent someone. It sure felt better than having to forgive them.

If I could not blame who I had become on what people had done to me in my past, I could not find an excuse for my behaviors now. If I could not blame my behaviors on what other people did to me now… I looked really bad, Self-ish and mean.

I have, in the past, truly believed my excuses. I had to… or I would have felt that shame again… about what I had done… right? So, I had to divert the blame for my behavior onto someone else. I was a good person. I cared…about my children, my husband, sometimes even other people.

Even far into recovery, I still tried to blame others for my behaviors.

Well, it’s because of mom, my step-father, my biological father, my uncle, my boyfriends, my husband…well, if he hadn’t done thus and so, I wouldn’t have done whatever I did… and on and on, until…

…it didn’t work anymore. And here is where Roger Crawford’s words “Blame Makes You Lame” started to enter my consciousness.

Ewwwe, I don’t want to be called “lame”.

That’s embarrassing, even more embarrassing than having been a drunk with a “bad past”.

And then I heard that when I blame, I give up my power. I allow others to affect how I feel about my Self, and that affects how I behave. I lose my agency. I had worked hard on getting agency! I was not going to give it up that easily.

But, that meant I had to own my behaviors, all of them, even the ones I blamed dead people for.

That hurt.

And then I heard someone say,

“If I stop blaming, I gain more agency.” So, in my mind, I see it this way: With more agency, I can find more Self-acceptance, more Self-love. With more Self-acceptance, I feel less shame. With less shame, I feel less reason to blame.

And… with less urge to blame, I feel less resentment! So… if I take full responsibility for who I have become, and blame no one, and resent no one… I don’t have to forgive!

Problem solved! In my world that is now the answer.

Oops! That means that I now have to live in my world of pictures and own my awkwardness without having anyone else to blame. That’s a scary thought. I don’t process words, directions, or even simple socially appropriate conversations the way other people do.

Without a picture, I don’t “see” what you’re saying and cannot process it! It’s a challenge to be socially appropriate when you don’t relate to the verbal cues…there are no pictures.

Remember the coffee grinder? If the words get stuck in my grinder of a brain, I see no picture of what you’re trying to explain.

This can be so frustrating for people that they would rather stay away than engage with me. And that makes me “look stupid”, which, of course, pushes the shame button, and I can “feel that old sweater”.

And here is where Somatic Awareness is a wonderful tool:

After having learned to process Somatic body sensations, I am not experiencing the “sweater” as being that heavy anymore, and the body feeling only lasts for a few minutes.

Remember how I said that I understand how all of us experience shame differently? Some people even say that they recognize shame by thinking about it. I, on the other hand, would argue shame is a body sensation.

As I said at the beginning of this blog article, to me, shame feels like a wet wool sweater; it can even have a smell that comes with it.

However, after some practice, we can become Somatically and emotionally aware and able to allow our body sensations to simply emerge.

It’s like allowing a bubble in the cess pool to just pop up and dissipate! It smells, it can hurt a little, and then it’s gone…forever! And as we become used to being aware in our Self, we become less resistant to allowing other bubbles to emerge.

With newly developed courage and agency from Somatic practice, we will notice something else emerging inside us. Something we were born with, but that got rejected by our fears of being shamed.

Freedom…to BE…You and Me!

Our innate Self-acceptance and Self-love start to replace feelings of shame. With practice and Self-care, we can become so strong that shame will have no power. It will just be a little whiff of something old that, in turn, will remind us of how far we have come.

And that knowing will allow joy and more Self-love and Self-care. We either spiral down (blaming)…or we climb up (become responsible)…it’s a choice!

A friend of mine just “admitted” something similar to my story and source of shame. I related my own experiences…and we laughed at each other. But, even better, we could laugh at our Self.

That was such a wonderful feeling, to just laugh at my Self without feeling shame, without feeling “stupid”. Just a belly-laugh for being “so weird”! Ahhhh, even writing this now, I can feel how freeing that was.

So, without blame, we don’t have to worry and go through that whole confusion of who, what, and when to forgive. We can let go of blame and resentments altogether and move on to live our life with agency, authenticity, and belly-laugh humor.

And this is what the BEAM process is all about: A combination of education, experiences, and practices to help you resolve the pain that has been running your decision-making process and the resulting behaviors. You can then find clarity to know what you want, confidence to create what you want, and courage to be…You!

If you are interested in learning more about the BEAM process, contact me on my website at www.evaangvert.com or email me at [email protected]