How To Stop Blaming Yourself For Everything
Thomas Harris, the creator of the fearsome Hannibal Lecter, says that “blaming your nature for your mistakes doesn’t change the nature of your mistakes.” This sentence is an invitation to reflect on the usefulness of guilt and to understand the importance of letting go of blame for everything.
Being a perfectionist is good, but you have to find the middle ground. Otherwise, perfection can become a real punishment through guilt. We will hardly be satisfied with what we do, as most of the time we will find a reason or reason to improve.
We can try to improve our weaknesses, but not to the point that we become obsessed with it. If we reach that dangerous limit, we could be consumed with guilt and frustration.
How to stop blaming yourself for everything
Stop blaming yourself for everything is a practice we should take into account. We are not always to blame for what happens to us that we consider negative. It is necessary to study each situation in detail so that we can improve our personal well-being. However, when we are really to blame for a situation, it makes no sense to waste our time blaming ourselves for what happened.
If we do not let go of the vicious circle of constant self-incrimination, we enter a vortex from which it is difficult to get out. This is what the psychologist Arturo Torres says, who offers us a series of important keys for us to stop blaming ourselves for everything that happens to us.
If we can stop feeling guilty about what happens to us, we can face life with a positive and constructive attitude. This does not mean that we are not aware of the consequences of our actions and that we ignore what happened. We need to take responsibility for our actions, acting constructively, seeking solutions rather than focusing on the problem. For this, in addition to following these tips, it is important to modify our behaviors and the way we relate to our environment.
Relativize the importance of guilt
We may be responsible for something negative that happened to us at some point, but that doesn’t mean we have to feel eternally guilty. The feeling of guilt is likely to linger over time, but we cannot continually torment ourselves. The ideal is to accept and learn from mistakes to prevent the situation from happening again.
Thus, if we manage to learn from mistakes, we will be internalizing the learning and relativizing guilt. It is useless to be constantly blaming yourself, it has no reason to be and it is not even logical. Instead, we can ask ourselves what happened, what triggered this situation, or what we can do to improve it.
Analyze your strengths and weaknesses
Nobody is perfect. It may sound like a cliché, but it’s also real. It is important that we know what our strengths are, what we are good at, but also what our weaknesses are, where we can fail more easily.
We certainly don’t do everything right, we’re not perfect. This is a reality we need to accept. If we remember this and know what we do well and what we don’t, we will know what our responsibility is and what is not, at what point we will have to work harder.
If a complicated obstacle appears and we are aware of it, we will know how to avoid it or, at the very least, we will assess the possibilities for action that we have. Now, if we don’t do this out of pride or stubbornness, we will have to take responsibility for the decision not to do anything.
Reflect on your behavior with others
It is common for people with a high degree of guilt to have attitudes of self-deprecation and self-devaluation in front of others. You tend to take the blame often, even if it has nothing to do with what happened. In this way, they will accept any accusations of guilt that come from others and will behave in a submissive manner due to their limited assertiveness skills. This is the usual dynamic in this type of relationship.
It is important to reflect on what happened and what is the degree of responsibility of each person present. It is necessary to question the claims that are made, because it is very easy to fall into the trap of taking the blame if we have low self-esteem. And let others do it too, if there really is a possible culprit.
Letting go of blame for everything can be relatively simple if we know how to act. If we can analyze our particular situation, we can detect the problems and try to redirect them. Thus, it is not about worrying about mistakes, but about looking for alternatives and building other paths that allow us to continue growing.
