Have you ever noticed how easy it is to blame others for where we are in life? How we breathe a sigh of relief that it isn’t our fault? Assigning responsibility to external factors, individuals, or circumstances thereby taking away your own agency? “I’m not blaming my parents….but.” “I’m not that much of a bitch, my mum was psychotic!” How often have you heard this statement, or even said it yourself? I know I have.
Why Do We Blame Others?
Blaming others is like a warm security blanket for your ego and self-esteem. It shields you from the sting of admitting you may have messed up. When you blame external factors, you safeguard yourself from the discomfort of acknowledging your shortcomings. While this defense mechanism can temporarily preserve your sense of self-worth, in the long run, it stunts your personal growth.
Blame often comes with a side dish of negative emotions – anger, frustration, and sometimes even resentment. These emotions cloud our judgment like a stubborn fog, impeding our mental clarity, and making it difficult to objectively evaluate the lessons hidden in the chaos. In this article, we’ll discuss the 4 psychological reasons why we do this and what to do about it instead.
1. Defense Mechanism
Our brains are hardwired to seek pleasure and avoid discomfort. Blame often arises as a defense mechanism to shield us from unfamiliar situations or potential failure. Blame helps you avoid uncomfortable feelings of guilt, shame, or inadequacy. Egos are these fragile things that want to be protected and hate change. Your ego is constantly looking for scapegoats as part of its defense mechanism. And who are these scapegoats? Everyone but you. This defense mechanism ultimately causes you to lack accountability in your life, you’re Teflon…nothing sticks to you. This makes it hard to move forward or to make meaningful changes.
The Challenge is the Point
Embrace the fact that making mistakes is a good thing. It’s practically our job description as humans to mess up from time to time. Instead of fearing failure, view failure as a chance to learn and evolve – failing forward. When you overcome these challenges they are like badges of growth in your development. Reflecting on your failures and understanding what you would do differently, is how you create your principles and lasting change. However, it’s hard to reflect on previous failures if you haven’t taken responsibility for them. Having this mindset shift minimizes the need to point fingers elsewhere and allows you to take full control of your life’s direction.
2. Cognitive Biases
Cognitive biases are like the fingerprints of our minds, shaping how we think, decide, and even remember things. They’re mental shortcuts that our brains use to rapidly process information. Basically, our brains have certain biases. Our cognitive biases such as the fundamental attribution error and self-serving bias can contribute to our behavior of blaming others.
Think about the last time someone cut you off in traffic. What was the first thought that came to your mind? “What a s***head, terrible driver.” Our minds jump straight to attacking the person rather than thinking about external factors like they could be rushing to a hospital or late for their child’s recital. That’s the “fundamental attribution error.” It’s your brain’s default setting to blame their personality rather than to consider that the situation might have influenced them.
On the flip side, the self-serving bias, aka the Ego’s BFF, leads you to attribute your successes to internal factors such as how intelligent you are while blaming all your failures on external factors. Blaming others can be a way to protect your self-esteem by shifting the cause of failure away from yourself.
Practice Compassion
You’re never going to know if the driver cutting you off was a terrible driver or had a life-threatening or family emergency. For things that you’ll never know the answer to, why not practice viewing it from a lens of compassion? The same goes for ourselves. Notice how hard we are on ourselves? If we had more compassion towards ourselves for making mistakes, would we feel the need to blame others? When you’re busy tossing excuses like confetti, you’re missing out on golden opportunities to become a better version of yourself. Self-mastery thrives on self-awareness, learning from experiences, and taking responsibility for all our actions.
3. Emotional Regulation
Do you consciously manage regulating your emotional state? Whenever I ask clients this question, answers vary, but go somewhat like this. “Yeah, of course I do! Well, maybe not all the time. Actually, I haven’t done so in a while. If I’m being honest, I just manage my emotions after the fact.” When we don’t have a system in place for emotional regulation, blaming others can be an unconscious way we manage negative emotions. When issues arise, it’s much easier to cope by placing blame on external factors rather than confronting your own feelings.
Ownership is Key
How do these two statements feel to you?
- I’m terrible at managing money because my parents were.
- I’m great at managing money because my parents weren’t.
What are the differences between these two statements? One statement takes no responsibility for their current actions and the other takes ownership of their past and learned from it. Taking ownership requires us to really look inward and have those uncomfortable conversations. To admit our mistakes and understand their implications. This is where regular self-reflection can really help you understand your reactions and uncover patterns of justifications in your life. Living from a place of coherence will help you develop a deep level of self-awareness. More on that here.
4. Cognitive Dissonance
Cognitive Dissonance Theory, developed by Leon Festinger in the 1950s, explains how we all strive to maintain consistency between our attitudes and behaviors. It is the unresolved gaps between our thoughts and actions. When your actions are inconsistent with your beliefs or values, justifying them on external factors can help reduce the feeling of Cognitive Dissonance by rationalizing your behavior. The problem with this is that you don’t ever solve your problem, they just don’t sting as much. If you resonate with this, don’t feel too bad, research has shown that this is the most common way people respond when they’ve done something wrong. The blaming and excuses we use, help quiet the guilt that we feel about not living out our values.
Take Ownership Like it’s Your Superpower
When we change our actions to line up with our values, our Dissonance goes away. Resolving Cognitive Dissonance is about being honest with yourself about the choices you make. Whether your life is a masterpiece or a mess, it’s ultimately your canvas. Accepting accountability for your actions in both positive and negative situations will empower you to take control of your responses and choices. Being responsible doesn’t have to be this boring burden, it can actually be a huge source of energy to propel you forward in life.
In a Nutshell
We can all take comfort in knowing that our struggles are not the truth of us. Life’s about growth and owning your path. Your personal evolution requires self-awareness, accountability, and a willingness to learn from life’s experiences. Blaming others might feel like a cozy cocoon, but it’s more like quicksand for your personal growth, ultimately locking you into a cycle of denial. The more tightly you hold on to the ego and blame others, the more likely you will continue to repeat the negative cycle. In life by taking accountability, we stop the negative cycle and move on to the next lesson. What if you approached your failures as – there is no ‘failure’ simply a lesson to be learned? Would you focus on the lesson at hand or find who to push the blame on?