Externalizing self-blame

Externalizing Self blame

Sometimes a child growing up in a blaming family will learn to

blame herself—to internalize rather than externalize blame—as a way

of avoiding blame from significant others. Such a person learns that if

she is quick enough to blame herself, a parent’s accusations will subside or be altogether avoided. It is as though the child makes an

implicit contract with the parent: I will do the blaming so you will not

have to. In this way, the intolerable blaming, which induces shame in

the child, is placed under the child’s own internal control. It becomes

internalized in such a way that the child’s inner life is forever subjected to spontaneous self-blame.

Stop comparing yourself to others. People with a great deal of

shame react to the awareness of differences between themselves and others by automatically translating it into a comparison of good versus bad, better versus worse. Rather than

valuing the differences, they feel threatened by them. But neither you nor the other person needs to emerge as the lesser if

your awareness of your differences can remain just that—differences to be owned and valued.

Culled from Healing your emotional self by Beverly Engel

Abdulkareem,Taoheedah kehinde