How to Deal With Angry Family Member Who Blames Depressin

"If she didn't say that I wouldn't have hit her." "If he didn't cut me off I would never have chased later him!" "My father is to blame for my bug with anger."

These are simply a few examples of comments I've heard over the years, made by individuals who blamed others in club to justify their anger and how they expressed information technology. In the start, a 32-yr-old husband, married for just 2 years, assaulted his wife while under the influence of alcohol. He hit his wife subsequently she threatened to divorce him and brand certain that he would suffer financially. His aggression was a reaction to his anger—rage that masked his feelings of powerlessness, hurt, and predictable loss. In spite of arguments that had escalated in the previous year, he was unable to honestly acknowledge that he and his wife were incompatible.

The 2d example was a commuter'south reaction to being cut off past another driver. He experienced this event as a personal attack. The activity triggered intense feelings of insult, feelings that were already in place long before the incident occurred—feeling devalued and disrespected—made to feel "less than" and invisible.

The third comment is i I've heard from individuals who arraign their parents for how they manage their anger as an adult. They might site the modeling they observed or experienced first-hand. At times, they suggest that their quickness to anger and even how they manage anger were inherited.

In each scenario, these individuals deny their responsibility for their beliefs. They portray themselves equally powerless in their actions and, often, incapable of change. The details of how they blamed others for their acrimony is different. However, in each situation, these individuals failed to recognize that their trend to arraign others merely strengthened their perceived powerlessness and–in turn– their likelihood of blaming others.

It is one thing to suggest that an event contributed to triggering our acrimony. Information technology is an entirely dissimilar effect to advise that others are responsible for our feelings, their intensity and how nosotros manage them.

Origins of Blaming Others

Like many of our habits, the tendency to blame others tin be traced to our early development. Some of us may have learned this strategy past observing parents who modeled information technology. Others may have been intensely shamed or punished when admitting responsibility for something that went wrong or for making mistakes. Perhaps nosotros've never adult the capacity for self-soothing to bargain with our feelings, particularly the powerful bear upon of shame–regarding our feelings or our behavior.

Blaming others for our anger, whether every bit individuals or countries, tin can be traced dorsum in history. It may stem in part from our demand to see ourselves as better than we truly are and equally not being flawed. It tin help united states to justify actions based on feelings that nosotros judge as weak, impulsive or inappropriate. Equally individuals or countries, nosotros tin so justify our actions every bit we avert awareness of our flaws.

Role of Blaming Others

As with destructive anger in general, blaming others for how nosotros manage anger is a defensive strategy that helps u.s. to avoid recognizing and experiencing difficult and challenging feelings such equally shame, guilt, hurt, disappointment, sadness, and feelings of inadequacy or powerlessness. Blaming is similar other formal defense mechanisms–a strategy of deception that we use to help preserve our self-esteem. It encompasses an endeavour to disown feelings that we judge to exist besides uncomfortable or part of ourselves that create within united states a sense of shame. Arraign, specially with regard to acrimony, too farther reflects disowning our responsibility for our own behavior.

Blaming others can be considered "arraign avoidance" and, similar all defense mechanisms, can be considered some other form of "emotional abstention", evading the experience of powerful, uncomfortable feelings. Additionally, the payoff for blaming others for how we express anger is the enhancement of our sense of being "correct", "perfect" or "justified" in our actions.

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The posture of blame.

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For many individuals with chronic anger, blame is all too frequently used, not simply with regard to how they express anger but besides in other areas of their lives. Blaming others can help them save face when they experience themselves as having weaknesses, flaws or mistakes.

Consequences of Blaming Others for How We Manage Anger

1. Blaming others for how nosotros manage anger ultimately interferes with experiencing true self-worth and genuine empowerment. Each time nosotros blame others for our actions, we diminish our power and enhance our sense of victimhood. And when we perceive ourselves every bit a victim we unwittingly foster feelings of powerlessness, helplessness, and pessimism—all of which may increment our proneness for anger arousal.

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Blaming others denies our autonomy, our free agency to make choices. In the process, we experience macerated liberty. In this fashion we blaming leads to a cultivation of victimhood that increases the likelihood for anger.

2. Blaming others can also be viewed as deriving from as well as contributing to dependency. Taking responsibleness for ourselves is non always easy. Taking responsibleness for ourselves can inherently agitate anxiety. It may heighten our sense of feeling lone also every bit confused regarding the choices we brand in our lives. It is the kind of feet that moves many of us to seek a distraction–including blaming others for how we alive our lives.

three. Blaming others distracts us from the constructive merely difficult task of self-reflection. This makes sense. Notwithstanding, while self-reflection can be uncomfortable, information technology is an essential component of taking responsibility for ourselves. Blaming others constricts our sense of choice while self-reflection expands it. Through self-reflection, nosotros more clearly define our desires and how to constructively satisfy them. Nosotros develop connection with ourselves that informs the choices nosotros brand regarding our lives.

4. Past itself, and through diminishing the openness for reflection, blaming others contributes to feelings of helplessness and powerlessness. This tin can pb not but to acrimony, only to low too. In recent years, developed acrimony, especially that of men, has been increasingly recognized as a sign of their depression. Equally such, while blaming others may be, in part, derived from depression, it just farther exacerbates those feelings of helplessness and powerlessness associated with depression.

v. Blaming others may reflect global thinking. This is the instance when individuals angrily blame an entire group of people–targeting individuals past their ethnicity, religion, race or sexuality–for all of the major difficulties in their lives. Such scapegoating reflects a global perspective that further increases our reactivity and sense of powerlessness. Information technology fosters a massive renunciation of responsibility that may further fuel a justification for aggression. Additionally, it engenders a demonization of others that supports dehumanizing them.

6. Blaming others for our anger and how nosotros manage it robs u.s.a. of the opportunity to develop resilience to better handle life'south challenges. Each moment we blame others for how we manage anger, nosotros make it that much more difficult to examine the ways in which we get in our own style. And, in the process, we motility further away from actually satisfying our key desires. Each time we arraign others for our acrimony miss out on an opportunity for personal growth.

7. Blaming leads to blaming. Brain research increasingly emphasizes that the more oft nosotros take certain thoughts and behaviors, the more strongly they become embedded in the neuronal pathways of our brain. Consequently, regarding anger-provoking situations for instance, the more frequently we blame others for how we react, the more likely we will keep to do so. And the more than nosotros respond aggressively, the more such aggression becomes the "go-to" reaction.

Cultivating Compassion as an Antidote to Blame

Life is challenging and all of u.s. experience some caste of suffering. We take weaknesses and flaws and we make mistakes. This is what it means to be human. Equally such cultivating cocky-pity offers an antitoxin to blaming others. It encompasses learning to fully accept our humanity. Self-pity helps us to acknowledge and accept our thoughts and feelings with curiosity rather than judgment. It supports our capacity to respond to sit with and acknowledge our hurting rather than minimize, deny or suppress information technology. Information technology helps u.s. accept all parts of ourselves rather than act in means to disown them.

Additionally, cultivating pity entails evoking our wisdom to be mindful to identify what is in our best interest. It helps us to engage in self-reflection that is essential for more deeply connecting with ourselves–an essential job that helps us place who we are and who we wish to go. It consists of turning inward, specially during suffering, to inquire and define what we tin can do to help ourselves, in a way that is well-nigh constructive for us. Such compassion further supports our capacity to engage in solitude, a country of being that allows for reflection increasing our self-awareness.

Steps to Reduce Your Tendency to Blame Others

ane. Recognize it when it occurs.

2. Reverberate on the purpose it serves you lot. What feelings are you trying to avert?

iii. Cultivate increased self-compassion to recognize that being man involves making mistakes, having flaws and weaknesses.

4 Recognize how your tendency for global thinking contributes to blaming.

5. Look for your contribution to your suffering.

6. Place what you lot could do to more than constructively address your suffering.

7. Experiment with being vulnerable.

viii. Cultivate assertive communication that emphasizes how you lot were impacted by an action rather than how someone caused you to feel.

nine. Be enlightened of any negative cocky-talk or criticism y'all feel reading these suggestions. Determine how certain fears may contribute to this reaction.

Decreasing your tendency to arraign others for how you manage anger may have provided you protection from some very uncomfortable feelings. As such, it may be a long-term predisposition, reflecting a habit in your thinking, feeling, and behavior. These habits can be changed. However, having mixed motivations and feelings about such modify is a office of letting get of any protective defenses. Since these tendencies are established habits, yous may need some professional help to address information technology.

Reducing our tendency to arraign can be invigorating. The process helps us to take back the mental free energy that would exist expended in trying to flee from recognizing our internal landscape. Just by engaging in the process we live a life that allows for increased choice and agency as we develop the resilience for dealing with life's well-nigh difficult challenges–whether in our relationships, in daily activities or with our past.

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Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/overcoming-destructive-anger/201811/7-consequences-blaming-others-how-we-manage-anger

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