|
|
Self-blaming is simply finding fault with yourself. To hold yourself responsible for your actions when bad things happen to you. Ordinarily this would be an admirable quality. Knowing that you did something wrong is a useful lesson learned, so as not to repeat the same mistake. Guilt and self-blaming keeps a person on the straight and narrow so to speak.
Time Limits
But guilt and self-blame can only last so long. Natural guilt and self-blame have natural time limits, depending on the severity of the wrongful act. Eventually the time for feeling guilty is over and your life must return to a more mormal routine, somewhat similar to a mourning period over the death of a friend or relative. Extensive periods of mourning and grief are no longer natural and are actually harmful, leading to depression.
Chocolate-Tripping
Feeling guilty for having fun for example, is unnatural and often called guilt-tripping. Obviously if you skipped school or work to go have fun, you should feel guilty for being irresponsible. Feeling guilty for eating an extra piece of chocolate (one of life’s greatest pleasures), is guilt-tripping. If you feel guilty every time you do something nice for yourself, you are obviously guilt-tripping.
I’m Just Hopeless
When people combine “should” statements with self-blaming they are beginning to enter the dark side of depression. Thoughts like “I don’t think I’ll get out of bed today, it’s all my fault that I’m this depressed,” or “I should just stay away from whats-his-name, I know they don’t really care how I feel.” It’s depressing just to read statements like that. Depressed people are especially imaginative when it comes to self-blame, like: “I can’t do this without a lot of help, I’m just hopeless,” “I can’t work on my depression because I feel depressed so I can’t work on my depression,” “something is definitely wrong with me, I feel fat so I must really look terrible.”
Depressed people hack a tendency to confuse feelings with facts. Their feelings are absolute facts to them. But thoughts and feelings are not facts. Likewise, depressed people re-live past situations and re-judge themselves over and over, blaming themselves continually. Obviously this is not healthy thinking.
Accept and Cope
Accepting things, events and thoughts for what they are, and having the willingness to cope with whatever comes our way, including sadness and some uncertainty, is how one stops judging and self-blame. In order to become accepting we must give up self-judgement, as this leads to rejection, depression and feeling inferior.
Accepting our thoughts as just thoughts and nothing more, is the first step on the path of mindfulness and ending a cycle of self-blame and guilt-tripping.
This report is not a diagnosis. We hope this information can guide you toward improving your life.
Review our Knowledge Base or the links displayed on this page for similar and related topics.