We blame nature, we blame God, and we blame our enemies, spouses, and ourselves. We even blame politicians for never taking the blame!

We use blame for the regulation of feelings, the reparation of harm, and the restoration of order on personal, interpersonal, and broadly social levels.

In the best of circumstances, blame for wrongdoing, once acknowledged, results in apology, concessions to meet the demands of restorative justice, or punishment to meet the demands of retributive justice.

With Toyota’s commercial truck company’s agreement to pay $1.6 million for faking emissions tests, we see evidence of justice resulting from blame.
When a partner takes on the blame for their infidelity as the cause of heartache and disruption in a marriage, they restore trust, show love, and perhaps the possibility of reconnection.

The Misuses of Blame

Blame is complex and, like most human dynamics, rarely unfolds smoothly. The inability to blame, the projection of blame on others, and retaliation for blame with an imposed code of silence in the face of mistreatment are all misuses of blame that are incompatible with regulation, restoration, and recovery.

When a 12-year-old teen runs from sexual abuse in the home to the hands of a pimp, she rarely understands why the courts see her as the one to blame.

When people finally stand up in revolt against the oppression of a monarch, and the response is blame for civil unrest and retaliatory attacks on them and their children, we see another misuse of blame.

The Danger of Self-Blame

Although self-blame may be warranted as personal acknowledgment and rectification of actual wrongdoing, we often use self-blame when we are innocent of any wrongdoing. It is often an attempt to regulate unbearable feelings or situations that are out of our control.

In her book Trauma Bonding and Interpersonal Crimes, Joan Reid (2024) discusses the emotional attachment victims develop toward their abusers, whom they defend as their only predictable attachments. Similarly, a child will often blame themselves to cover parental abuse.

In a contribution to our understanding of the formation, intensity, and persistence of guilt in Holocaust survivors, psychoanalyst and survivor Alfred Garwood (1996) suggests that “survivor self-blame” had the initial and principal function of reducing the pain and anguish of intolerable powerlessness in the face of annihilation risk and overwhelming loss. The ultimate result was obstruction of the mourning process and suicidal despair.

In his powerful book, Where War Ends: A Combat Veteran’s 2,700-Mile Journey to Heal (2019), Tom Voss shares his self-blame and his experience of moral injury for inflicting and witnessing the wounds of war. Having the chance to speak with Tom personally, I learned that he found a way to heal by walking across the country and meeting other veterans, whose connection and stories relieved him of his self-blame.

Our Own Blame

In the trauma work I have done over many years, I have never met anyone who has suffered a natural or man-made disaster, or even a serious medical diagnosis, who did not, in some way, blame themself. It would seem that we would rather regulate our existential helplessness with blame than consider that we cannot control life’s assaults.

The Impact of Other’s Blame

Self-blame is often fueled by the need of others to blame the victim as a way to psychologically distance themselves — “She should never have taken the train so late.” “He never watched what he ate.” “They insisted on living abroad.”

The inevitable consequence of incurred self-blame is not only guilt but a sense of shame, which is reflected in a lack of confidence, self-disdain, and fear of exposure. Too often, it precludes the necessary empathy we need from ourselves to heal.

When blame is warranted and constructive, it can lead to actions that regulate us personally and interpersonally. The owning of blame is reparative and restorative to oneself and/or the recipient of wrongdoing, be it a neighbor, lover, or foreign country.

But blame should not come to define your life. If self-blame persists, it eventually becomes the only feeling allowed. At some point we need to mourn, to tolerate rage, to acknowledge fear, to accept our limitations, to self-forgive, to unlock ourselves from blame and embrace the path going forward.

“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” —Arthur Ashe