Blame Shifting 101

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Pointing hands and a clear background. One picture is worth more than a thousand words. This is not just a picture. It is an expression of the entire post I am writing right now.

What do you see?

I see a scene of conflict. When I look at it, words like blame, argument and stress immediately come to mind. These are patterns from conflict situations.

Throughout my life, I have dealt with blame shifting in different contexts, at work, in relationships, and outside of both. 

Last year was particularly significant in this regard. It was the year when the term blame shifting took on a completely new meaning for me. Fortunately, I only had to deal with two people who genuinely lived by this concept. I have already talked about toxic people in another post, which I will gladly refer back to here. One relationship was something I chose for myself. The other was something I had to go through, sadly. I was simply unlucky, I can say that quite clearly at this point. To me, people like this fall into the category of: "If you know them, you don't need enemies anymore."

Person 1 constantly blamed the entire world for everything. They were never responsible for anything. And whenever someone did hold them accountable, the response was always something like: "Yes, but that didn't come from me. It was X…" or "It's like this because…"

Like I said earlier, it is a pattern. These are the people who never want to be held accountable for anything. I already said this in my post about meritocracy: "We live in a world where nobody wants to be held accountable for anything." To me, these people are simply toxic.

Person 2 did reprehensible things and, in the end, pointed the finger at the other person. Whenever the situation became tense, the blame was shifted onto someone else.

And when clear boundaries were finally set, the person who spoke up those boundaries was  the one at fault, simply because they had boundaries.

- Every healthy person has boundaries and stands by them. People who deliberately disregard those boundaries are toxic to me as well -

P1 and P2 have a lot in common in my eyes. They are unwilling to reflect on their own actions and show very little empathy. And people who lack empathy are a particularly difficult subject for me, because those are also the kinds of people who may stop at nothing. There is a reason the saying "They would walk over dead bodies" exists. 

In situations like these, you hear statements such as:

"Don't take everything so personally."

"If you really loved me, you wouldn't have done X…"

And honestly, it is not even the statements themselves that bother me the most. It is the sheer conviction with which people who are wrong can pronounce them so easily! 

That is blame shifting 101.

Blame shifting happens when someone who has objectively done nothing wrong is made responsible for something anyway. Situations that have absolutely nothing to do with culpability are deliberately twisted until they suddenly become a question of guilt.

The person is deliberately made to feel responsible. Stories are fabricated. The person doing the blaming presents themselves as the victim and tries to make the other person feel bad, guilty, or responsible for their emotions. Quite manipulative if you ask me.

And to me, that is where the real problem lies. Someone who did nothing wrong ends up facing consequences.

Consequences for what?

For protecting the self image of (narcissistic) personalities who do harmful things and then want others to feel bad so that their own "emotional bank account" stays clean. 

I am a realist. Anyone who knows my posts, knows that I base my perspective on real life experiences. That is why I am fairly certain that what I have written here will sound familiar to many people. We have all dealt with people like this at some point, in relationships, at work, or at school, or we have at least witnessed situations like these. I am pretty sure of that.

Truly knowing another person takes a very long time. Many people only show their true face after a long time. Others, like these two, reveal it surprisingly early. In my cases, I was lucky that their masks fell off quickly enough for me to recognize what was happening and take the necessary consequences.

But not everyone is that lucky. 

Many people remain trapped in toxic dynamics for years. And I genuinely feel sorry for everyone who has to go through that.

Having control over your own life and caring about the truth are values and excellent qualities that everyone should have. In a fair world, they should also be recognized and respected. These are the things that can make people charismatic.

People who build themselves up by putting others down, however, are not exactly my idea of role models. They are individuals who may have simply played the game better because of favorable circumstances or plain luck, while leaving behind an entire poisoned landscape of suffering, hatred, and manipulation.

Have you ever experienced something like this yourself?