Beyond Blame: Freeing Yourself from the Most Toxic Form of Emotional Bullsh*t.

I can think of far more toxic emotions. Hate, envy, bitterness, grudge, maliciousness...

The word "blame" is frowned upon because it's often misunderstood. There's nothing wrong in holding people accountable for their actions.

If we're talking nominally healthy relationships plagued with superficial bickering, then I can see how you'd want to stop blaming each other for who started the lastest silly fight.

But the concept of blame itself is entirely valid. I blame the people who turned my father into a drunken monstrosity.

I don't hate them, because they're dead and they were oblivious, unreachable blockheads.

There was a reason Dad was a destructive shambles. Pointing my finger directly at the people responsible isn't toxic in the least, nor is it bullshit.

Without blame, we can't understand the reasons terrible things happen. If we can't understand, we can't prevent.

The term "blame" has come to connote petty anger. I reject that characterization. I can blame without anger. I do blame without anger.

Some people deserve to be blamed.

There are effective and ineffective ways to discuss an issue with someone and to get people to behave in ways that you'd prefer. This is the point of the show.

Which is what I said.

If we're talking nominally healthy relationships plagued with superficial bickering, then I can see how you'd want to stop blaming each other for who started the latest silly fight.

The title of the book, however, posits that blame is the most toxic form of emotional bullshit.

I'm not assuming anything. I'm repeating the author's own words.

But the concept of blame itself is entirely valid. I blame the people who turned my father into a drunken monstrosity.

...

Some people deserve to be blamed. --Thomas Wictor at December 8, 2013 2:23 PM

Why? Did they hold your father down and force him to drink? Did he have no free will to sip at a beer while the rest drank in quantity? Did they come home with him and beat your mother? Or beat you?

There is only one thing a person external to you can make you do is die. I can't make you happy. I can't make you sad.

Even with physical force I can't do much more than make you hurt. But I still can't change your emotions.

Why? Did they hold your father down and force him to drink? Did he have no free will to sip at a beer while the rest drank in quantity? Did they come home with him and beat your mother? Or beat you?

Nobody forced him to do anything. But they tortured, humiliated, abused, and warped him until he was transformed from a sensitive child with no coping skills to a brutal man, just like his dear old dad.

If he'd been raised with love and nurturing instead of mind-warping violence and inhumanity, he would've been the man he was supposed to be, not the man he was.

Your post is perfect evidence of what I said before, that the word "blame" is now viewed as a kind of cop-out.

Baloney. When you smash the hell out of someone from their very birth, you get the blame for how they turn out. Trauma prevents people from making informed choices. It changes the chemistry of the brain.

Everyone is accountable for their own choices, including the people who choose to transform perfectly viable children into disasters.

Nobody forced Dad to drink; he drank because his individual temperament and limitations prevented him from choosing a different route.

He's to blame for his choices, and the people who mangled him are to blame for mutating him into a person who made nothing but terrible choices for eighty-four years.

OK. Five of us pitch in ten dollars. Amy goes to Ebay and buys a two-year-old Android smartphone, one with no service contract, just a phone. Then she installs a dictation program, and takes everything else off the menu screen.

When she wants to do a radio show with someone, sends them the phone, with instructions on how to start the dictation software.

At the beginning of the show, they switch on the Android and set it down on the desk, and then she does the phone call in the usual way... But she also records her own voice on a good microphone. After the show, she has the guest mail the smartphone back to her.

She gives it to Gregg. He takes Amy's microphone audio and edits with the guest's audio using cheap or free software... And the whole thing sounds like a studio production instead of like a phone call.

The podcast goes big time and everyone makes money!

And the whole thing sounds like a studio production instead of like a phone call.

All the most successful talk radio shows have phone interviews that sound like...phone calls.

How odd.

"Trauma prevents people from making informed choices. It changes the chemistry of the brain."

Thomas, I really like what you said. It took me many years to accept why my mom was such a nasty little cunt to me. My therapist kept repeating to remind myself that she got her head bashed in so many times as a toddler/teen and adult that she just isnt all there.

My therapist kept repeating to remind myself that she got her head bashed in so many times as a toddler/teen and adult that she just isnt all there.

Context is everything. My father died February 23, 2013. He was terrified of death, convinced he was going to hell. As he lay in his coma at the hospice, the chaplain told me that he might linger for months, his fear keeping him alive.

She asked if I could take part in a kind of Last Rites for him, so I agreed. We spoke to him, and I reminded him that his religion taught that if he was sorry, nothing bad could happen.

When asked if he was sorry, he squeezed the chaplain's hand.

She said, "Edward, you are forgiven. Tom has forgiven you."

And for a second I felt total outrage. I wanted to yell at her, "Don't put words in my mouth! I didn't say that!"

But as I looked at that dying old man and remembered the photos of him as a toddler, clasping his hands in front of him like a little German diplomat, looking lost and afraid, I realized I'd forgiven him, in the sense of letting go of the monumental sense of injustice and anger at the things he'd done.

Everything he did to me had been done to him.

So I said, "I forgive you, Dad."

And he jerked violently and then relaxed.

The chaplain said he had weeks or months to go, but he died seven hours later.

I forgave him to break the cycle and end the ugliness. An hour after he died, I was overwhelmed with the scent of Old Spice aftershave, which he wore when he worked for Exxon. It faded after a few seconds.

A lot of people have given me grief for forgiving him. They can fuck themselves. We're under no obligation to either forgive or to not forgive. It's entirely up to the person who was wronged.

Everyone not involved should keep their yaps shut.