Blame

12.15.06

At a staff meeting today one of the dieticians reported an encounter with a client who threatened to kill her if she didn't help him. Turns out he's a psych patient at Kaiser as well and we discussed how to deal with patients who turn on their providers when they get bad news or just need someone upon whom to vent their spleen. It's disconcerting to think that we might face someone in our effort to do well and kindly in the world who can only see their pain and in their mis-guided attempts to be relieved thereof, decide that dumping it on someone else is the only way to cope.

I wonder why some of us blame others for their pain and others blame themselves and then some take a look at the pain, dissect it and take responsibility for that which is theirs to own and assign rightfully that which isn't to the appropriate cause. When we're miserable in a relationship, we tend to blame the other person for not giving us for what we need, even if we forgot to ask them or deep down know that they can't. When someone tells us something we don't want to hear, like we're pushy or self-centered, we might blame them for being judgemental rather than looking at our behaviour and taking stock. Or if a doctor tells you you have terminal cancer, rather than live with that awful awareness, one could choose to take him down in the parking lot with a rifle.

They say that women turn anger inward (depression) and men turn it outward (agression). I've known both genders who do either, but I have found the gender tendency to be fairly accurate. As women we are responsible for creating and sustaining life, a pretty powerful job, so it makes sense we would take on our shoulders a fair load of that which goes on in our lives. But somewhere we teach our girls that it's not okay to express anger or their needs, or that it's only okay with certain polite language and after everyone else's needs have been met. Most of my clients are women, caretakers, pleasers, don't-rock-the-boaters. Some have been abused sexually, emotinoally, physically. And all seem to take out their anger, their sadness on themselves with self-destructive behaviours. Much of their psychological work is to move the blame and shame for their pain to the rightful perpetrators, the parents, social workers, culture, spouses or whomever have hurt them. They may lose the weight of years of self medicating with food, but will they rise out of these skins with their pride, their passions, their power intact?

We do teach blame in this nation. There's always someone to sue, some 800 number to call when we have a complaint, human resources, the help desk, a lawyer. Rather than own our negligence in putting a hot cup of coffee on our lap and scalding ourselves, we blame the restaurant who provided the brew. The blame game seems like yet another opiate to keep people dis-empowered. If there's always someone else to lob responsibility on, we never grow, we never learn. We can slide through life never knowing what it's like to feel the pain of making a mistake, learning from it and getting better for the lesson.

Noah takes on too much responsibility for life's mishaps; Hanah not enough. I wonder where that comes from. Same gene pool, same parents. But different mix, of course. There's a certain power in owning one's actions and children seem to be born with a goodly amount: all they have to do is cry and someone meets a need. On the other hand, when things go wrong they tend to own responsibility for that as well. It seems a challenge to balance the two and to teach that skill to the next generation.

We push victimhood with all of our self-help books and guru led workshops. Our leadership blames jihad rather than our global arrogance for hatred of America; economic constraints rather than military priorities for lack of education funding and bovine eructions rather than man made global warming. Is it the alcoholic mentality who places one's destiny in a higher power? Or is it the tunnel vision of a political elite protecting their own. Or is it some deeply inate human trait that finds some advantage in blaming others than looking inward?

When my mother was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, amongst other diseases, all she could hear was that she had alcohol induced diabetes. When the truth finally sunk in, she knuckled my head one night and said it was all my fault, albeit jokingly. This from a woman who smoked 3 packs of cigarettes a day for 34 years. I have often wondered why she lay that on me, the daughter who begged her to stop, to take care of herself. Was it easier to put the choice to slowly kill herself on someone else's shoulders than her own? Or was she saying, as she had during our childhoods, that raising us as a single mother was a hardship requiring the aid of cigarettes and a nightly bottle of chardonnay? What if she had stopped one day and looked at herself, her choices and decided differently? Where would she have placed her blame for teh pain in her life? Her husband who left her for the babysitter? Her undiagnosed OC mother? Her stern, unbending father? A culture that shackled her youthful passions and talents in an era where women decorated their men?

What if she, the man who would kill his dietician rather than face his unhealthy eating choices, we all could look in the mirror and say, "yes, I have made un-wise choices, let's see what I can do now." Could we listen to our deepest truths? Could we ask for help instead of lashing out, bombing indiscriminately, stuffing 4 pizzas down our throats, pushing away our loved ones? Could we? Would we dare?