The Blame Game

Late last year I participated in a 12 week anxiety group therapy program. One thing we learned was something called core beliefs. It's probably self explanatory, but basically a core belief is a thought, idea or deep seated belief about yourself that has guided you your whole life; most likely you're not even aware of it. I certainly wasn't.We weren't asked to do this until the group was drawing to a close, because we were suppose to go through the notes we'd accumulated in our worksheets and find our core beliefs from that. We didn't know it but much of what we'd been learning all those weeks was in preparation for this; I guess it was sort of a group therapy final exam. I came up with two core beliefs, but the main one, the most powerful one, was this: I am to blame for everything. It took me a while to discover it, but when I did, it just came at me like a fucking sledgehammer to the head: I AM TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING. And I realized I'd felt that way since childhood. Anytime someone in my family argued, any time someone was upset, any time a friend was acting strangely or was quieter than normal, it was somehow my fault, it was my responsibility, somehow I caused it, even if it had nothing to do with me. Just weeks before having this revelation I'd been in the back seat of my mother's car while she and my brother argued in the front about...I don't even remember what, and even though I wasn't really involved, hadn't even really been involved in whatever discussion lead to the argument in the first place, in my mind it became "I did something wrong, oh my god I am such a horrible person, I caused this, I'm making them fight." Nevermind that it had nothing to do with me, nevermind that both my brother and mother have crazy short fuses and blowup first, ask questions later. Nevermind that they fight all the time, nevermind that 9 times out of 10 the argument is over and forgotten just as quickly as it started. Nevermind all that; it was my fault. So once it was just me & my mom in the car, I started to bawl. She couldn't understand why I was so upset, why I was blaming myself; I told her because I had to. I had to punish myself, I had to blame myself, it was my fault, I had to feel bad, I needed to be punished, I am a horrible person, I need to take the blame for it. I didn't even really know what I was saying, nor why I was saying it, until a few weeks later when I was working on my core beliefs homework.

As I say it was one hell of a powerful realization.

What I would like to do now is end this post with "And everything's been fine ever since. What a relief!" But that's not what happened. Even though I'm aware of this core belief and how much it affects my life, and even though I fight it every day, it's pretty damn hard to change something that's been with you your entire life. I work on it, I work on it constantly. But just today I realized I still have a long way to go. Because this morning I had another revelation: I am constantly ready for a fight. Let me put it another way: I'm constantly ready to defend myself. I've only recently realized how bad it's become. Another thing we learned in group therapy is that people who have an anxiety disorder often cannot stand up for themselves. I always thought I was just a wuss, and that might be part of it, but I used to be able to stand up for myself; I was never a "I take no shit!" kind of person, but I could at least stand up for myself when push came to shove. In recent years however that's proved pretty much impossible. If you've believed your whole life that everything bad that happens is your own fault, you probably don't have much confidence in yourself, and you don't trust your own opinions, you don't trust your feelings. I am constantly wondering "Is it justified to feel this way?" and the answer I usually come up with is "no". So even if someone does something bad to me, even if someone is rude to me, I will not only not stand up for myself, but I'll decide "Well, it was probably my fault anyway," and I'll trace the events back until I can pinpoint exactly where I went wrong. So what I've started doing is preparing comebacks, preparing exactly what I would say if someone said or did this or that to me. And I start acting it out in my head, and I play out my part as well as the other person's part. And I end up extremely anxious, extremely angry, and tired, AND NOTHING HAS EVEN HAPPENED.

Here's an example. I was on the subway this morning, on my way to work, when a women edged very close to me and seemed to be trying to get to the door ahead of me and the two people in front of us both. I started to prepare what I would say if she decided to push ahead of us; I had an argument with this woman in my head, I played both parts, I tried to think of every possible thing she could say, and I tried to come up with each and every possible rebuttal. My stop came, I got out, nothing happened. Then on the bus I started thinking about something that happened at work last week; this woman I work with hit me on the back of my head with a stuffed toy shark (don't ask.) I started to think about what I would do if she does it again. I started to argue with her in my mind head, and ended up very angry, even though nothing had actually happened. At that point it hit me: why would I have to try and defend myself for being hit on the head?! She was the asshole in this situation, why would I have to defend myself?! That's when I realized that I spend much of my day preparing for a fight; whether it's with co-workers, friends, strangers, I am constantly having arguments in my head and preparing myself for conflict. And I realized I'm doing this because I have no confidence in my opinions or feelings, because I think everything is my fault, so I'm constantly trying to arm myself with verbal ammunition in case of a conflict because I don't trust that I'll have the right response if something does happen.

That was yet another pretty powerful revelation, but you know what happened minutes afterward? I saw a co-worker on the bus who always gets off a few stops ahead of me and crosses the street; I like to ride the bus around the loop and get off right in front of the building. Well, this particular co-worker is a bit of a condescending know-it-all, so I started preparing a defense for myself if she were to ever comment about why I stay on the bus those extra couple of stops. Just minutes after realizing I construct non-existent fights in my head I WAS DOING IT AGAIN. It wasn't even 10:00 in the morning and I was already exhausted from being so angry over things that had never happened. That's one reason why anxiety is such a tricky disease. I sort of picture it like a fly in a spider web; the fly can pull away from the web and stretch and stretch and stretch, but he's always snapped back into it. That's how my brain seems to work; I can fight it all I want, but it's too powerful, it keeps snapping me back to lifelong habits, it keeps snapping me back to what it knows.

You know what the worst part is? Even if these confrontations actually came to fruition, I'd never say anything anyway, I'm too afraid. I spend hours and hours each and every day preparing comebacks that I will never use. Fear and anger: these two emotions dominate my life. I'm not even entirely sure what I'm so afraid of. I know part of it is that I hate confrontation, and I hate awkwardness. So even if I'm the one who's been wronged I'll do anything to smooth things over, to prevent things from being awkward, more often than not at my own expense. Then the anger really gets out of control and self loathing boils and boils and there's no outlet.

I would like to be able to end this post by saying "I've learned, really learned, and really believe, that not everything is my fault. I've realized that my opinions and my feelings are just as valid as anyone else's, and I will stand up for myself from now on." But that just isn't true. I still have a lot of work to do, and that's all I really can do, because I don't think I'll ever fully get there. I'm not being negative; despite everything I'm actually an optimist at heart. I'm just being realistic. It's a shame that I have to fight my own brain, it's a shame we can't co-exist peacefully, but we can't. So the fight continues.