It’s All My Fault

Do you ever find yourself saying “it’s all my faulty” whenever something goes wrong?

Do you live with a endless sense of guilt and shame?

And blame yourself for everything relationship conflict?

The problem with deciding “it’s all my fault” is self-blame isn’t about taking responsibility at all. It’s instead an unconscious way to avoid facing the reality of the situation you find yourself in.

By taking the blame, you easily sidestep and further conversation or analysis of what has happened.

And always saying it’s you fault is also a form of self-abuse. You push yourself into so much guilt and shame you are unable to grow or change.

The Price Of Always Taking The Blame

It can help to see constant self-blame as a sort of reverse psychological projection. Usually, with projection, we put a quality we don’t like onto another person. To avoid seeing in yourself. Suddenly they are the dishonest one, the rude one.

In this case, you project your good traits onto the other. They are kind and flawless and you are the monster.

But claiming all the blame blocks the other person from sharing. Their own truth about the situation. The can’t face their own responsibility and grow and learn from what has happened. The result can often be that the other person become increasing frustrated, feel trapped, and pulls away.

Your relationships remain stuck in an often dramatic pattern of claiming fault/begging for forgiveness, instead of working through challenges together and creating real connection.

The Result?

You feel lonely, unloved, and even more terrible, shameful person who must therefore always be at fault. And the cycle continues.

The hidden benefits of always using self-blame. If self-blame leaves us feeling lonely and stuck, then why would we continue to use it?

If we want to stop the habit, we must first accept the benefits it gives us. What would be the benefits of always taking the blame?

You Get To Feel Sorry For yourself.

When you blame yourself, you actually victimize yourself. It’s a backward ways to go into poor poor pitiful me mode.

You Gain Attention.

And when we feel sorry for ourselves, it forces the other to feel sorry for us, too. It might not be the best way to get attention, but it does the trick.

You Maintain Control.

This might be hard to acc, but the truth about always claiming responsibility is that it is manipulative. You constantly lock the other person from deciding how things will go, and you use sympathy to make sure they don’t pull away and leave you.

It Gives You Power.

So effectively, always claiming “it’s all my fault” ends up a way to have power over another. It might be hard to believe when you have such low-self esteem that you’d want power over another. But low-self esteem can mean we can’t the power to stop other people from hurting us or abandoning us.

You Can Avoid Changing.

If we always take the blame, then we don’t have to experience new emotions or new conversations.

You Don’t Have To Be Vulnerable.

Accepting someone else has perhaps wronged you (even if not meaning to) can mean you must allow yourself to feel hurt and vulnerable. Using self-blame means you can resort to shame instead of vulnerability.

Why am I the sort of person who always feels “it all my fault”?

No one is born thinking that everything is their fault. Its something we somehow learn from the experiences we have or decide to believe because of the way those experiences make us feel.

Often self-blaming comes out of childhood trauma. If we are abused, neglected, abandoned, or the lose of someone we loved. Our childlike brains can find no understanding of what has happened other than to think. “It’s all my fault”. And our brain takes this assumption as fact. It then applies it to other difficult things that come along, until it is a pattern we carry into adulthood.

Blaming ourselves can be quite addictive. Addictions tend to grow when we are using something to avoid pain.

Things I Learned From My Military Father

I began thinking of this a few days ago, after I went to my Father’s Grave Stone.

The first 18 years my life my household was under military rule. My Father was a Bridgman (BSG) retired. Having been shot in the arm his. And later in the face. I was a man living in pain. We still ruled the house the Marine way. When we got up in the morning. The first thing I did was make my bed. Go get breakfast most the time for me it was one of those Carnation breakfast essentials drinks. When my Dad come home for lunch their was no speaking to him until after he had eaten.

I knew from a early age if I stepped out of line, I would be punished. And my mother was the one who did the punishing before my Father knew anything about it. Sometimes I think my mothers was harsher on me, than my Father would of been.

There was no disrespecting my elders, I would be severely punished if I did. I had to respect my elders even if the did the unthinkable.

My Father taught me there was use crying over spilled milk, or anything else. If I cried, I had to do it where I couldn’t be seen or heard. I learned from my Father was the being upset, apart from being, apart from being intolerable, was a huge waste of time. His attitude helped me to realize that instead of crying, you should change what you don’t like, and just let go of what you can’t fix.

Which in turn meant for me, if I didn’t want to be hurt by me mother. Try and stay out of her way.

Never Stop Working Hard

My Father taught me to be work hard whether it was at school, or at a job. Alway strive to be a better person no matter what it was.

Life Is Never Fair

Deal with it. This I became aware of when my mother was hitting me and putting away where I couldn’t be seen or heard. Not everything in life is even just or fair. Sometimes the scales tipped in your direction, sometimes they favor other people. My father was never one to ponder to the whims of a outraged preschooler. He would say a few comforting works like “tomorrow will be better.” And that would be the end of it. It taught me not to be bitter when things didn’t go my way.

Sometimes You Have To Act Older Than You Are.

I learned from a early age to suck up the pain and move on, no matter what. My the time I was 6 or 7 I knew I needed to know how to do every thing my myself. I couldn’t count on anyone else to help me. If I wanted something done I had to myself. Parts of my childhood were missed. I had to be an adult in a child’s body. I learned to stay out of my mothers way, there were times I couldn’t, but life went on.

My father taught me how to be dependent on myself and no one else. Not even my mother. I knew that I couldn’t trust my mother. Everything I said or did even if it was good, would be punished and scrutinize. Now I am grateful for how independent I have become.

You have To Be Smart With Money

As a Father of 5 in the 1950’s he had to be smart with money. To make sure we had food on the table and shoes on our feet. And a mortgage payment.Even if that meant having us wear hand sewed clothes. Be smart with your money, because you never know how life’s going to turn out. I had twenty years after I left the house, I admit I was horrible with money. The only thing that saved me was a Father that loved me, and a husband that was a marine and had the same value system.

Take Advantage Of Every Opportunity That comes a Your Way

Even though I was taught not to ask help from anyone even if you were taught to take advantage of opportunities. It sounds like a oxymoron. There is opportunity out there. Take that opportunity and go at it full force without help. It will show strength.

People Suck

This may seem pessimistic, but my Father taught me that sometimes, the biggest source of misery in your life will be other people. Sometimes they’re mean, sometimes they’re boring, sometimes they break your heart. Even the best people sometimes suck. I thought my mother the one who was supposed to care for me and love me sucked. And even my Father sometimes.

The many trials I’ve been through in my life. I am grateful that my Father taught me to always keep pushing back and never give up no matter what. He is one of the reasons I am who I am in Life today. With God and my Father I know I can always make it to where I’m going.

When I Say, “I Am A Christian”

I’m not shouting, “I’ve been saved!” I’m whispering “I get lost! That’s why I choose to be this way.

When I say I’m a Christian. I don’t speak with human pride. I’m confessing that I stumble, I need God to be my guide.

I’m not trying to be strong, I’m professing that I’m weak and pray for strength the carry on.

When I say I’m Christian

I’m not bragging of success, I’m admitting that I’ve failed and cannot ever pay the debt.

I don’t think I know it all. I submit to my confusion. And humbly ask to be taught.

When I say I’m a Christian

I’m not claiming to be perfect, My flaws are all too visible, but, God believes I’m worth it.

I still feel the sting of pain. I have my share of heartache, which is why I seek His name.

When I say I’m a Christian

I do not wish to judge, I have no authority to do that. I only know I’m loved.

This was written by Carol Wimmer. But it really rings so true.

What is it like to be deaf?

I’ve always has wondered this. What is it like to be deaf?

I’m writing on this subject because I have a wonderful friend who is deaf. I do not know how to sign.

About 20 years ago I was diagnosed with hereditary otosclerosis. It is progressive hereditary disease the gets worse over time. The Audiologist told me I be completely deaf by the age of 50. I am 53 and last week my hearing got increasing worse within a few days. I went to being about to hear low tones to nothing at all. I am very nervous because my entire work process as well as my home situation will be altered.

Are you hearing? If yes have you ever imagined what it’s like to have hearing loss, I mean complete hearing loss?

It’s like being very isolated even though you are in the same room with someone. I attempted to work at the recovery center last week. I almost broke down in tears. People would call the center. I could see the red light blinking but I couldn’t hear anything that they were speaking. I have to keep asking them to speak up, I was petrified I could do my job.

When the work day was done, I got in my car and I didn’t even know if my car started. I was living in complete silence.

There is no background noise in which I am so used to. I realized how alone I felt.

As the day goes on there was no chatter, or laughing. I as alone with my own thought as they took over.

It made me paranoid and very self-conscious.

I went to church this morning, I didn’t enjoy singing the worship songs. I could only here my own voice inside my head. I am usually a very high spirited talkative person. But I felt completely alone and devastated.

I still have hope God will come through and fix by healing my ears. My hope and faith need to be in God right now, or I will go crazy handling this on my own.

So I wait as patiently for God to heal my ears. I have believe in God nearly all my life. And I’m not going to stop now.

Tomorrow I have an appointment with the audiologist. Today I’m praying for God’s hands to heal me.

Hear are some things I would personally miss if my hearing is lost:

  • Music
  • Birds singing
  • The radio
  • Voices
  • The Sound of the ocean
  • Phone calls
  • My cat purring
  • Having a talk with my husband

Hearing loss is an invisible disability. People don’t often think about the emotional and psychological impact that hearing loss can have on deaf individuals.

What Do You With a Your Time?

Whether your Rick, poor, male of female, we all have the same amount of one thing-time. How we use it will largely determine how far we’ll go in life and in our relationship with God.

Imagine there is a bank that deposits $84,400 into your account each morning. But there’s a catch- it carries over no balance from day to day, so you lose every dollar you don’t spend.

What would you do? You sound spend every cent of course.

Each of us has such a bank. And it’s name is time. Every morning it credits you with 86,400 seconds. Every night it writes off, as lost, whatever you have failed to invest to good purpose. It carries over o balance; it allows no overdraft.

Each day it opens a new account for you. Each night it burns the remains of the day. If you fail to use the day’s deposits, the loss is yours. There is no going back. There is no drawing against tomorrow.

You must live in the present on today’s deposits. Invest it so as to get from it the utmost in health, happiness and success. The clock it running. Will you make the most of the time you’ve been given?

Does Time Really Matter That Much?

Consider the following:

To realize the value of one year, ask a student who failed a grade.

To realize the value on one month. Ask a mother who gave birth to a premature baby.

To realize the value of one weak, ask the editor of a weekly newspaper.

To realize the value of one day, ask a daily-wage laborer with several children’s mouths to feed.

To realize of one minute, ask a person who missed their plane.

To realize the value of one second. Ask a person who just avoided an accident.

To realize the value of a millisecond, ask a person who won a medal in the Olympic.

The anonymous author of the above words helps us to realize just how important time is.

Jesus told us to be careful how we handle our time, asking, Are there not twelve hours in a day [the daylight portion of the twenty-four cycle]?

If anyone walks in the day does not stubble, because he sees the light of the world. But if they walk in the night he stumbles, because the light is not in him. (John 11:9-10).

Time: It’s what our lives are composed of. Yet in this busy modern world it has become all too easy to let time, the stuff of life, run away from us. E-mails, new software, multiple television channels, cellphones and all the other products of our technological revolution that were supposed to simplify and enhance our lives seems to have conspired to strip of the time needed for the really important things in our lives.

What are some important things that you should occupy our time? Can you think of some?

When Does Faith Become Trust

There are people who claim to have faith and pray “Thy will be done,” do their beliefs probe to the depths of our souls. Will ours? When hard times come, will we worry and complain and lose out confidence in the Wisdom of God? Is a God really your rock? Your foundation.

It’s pretty easy to question God in this time of confusion during our lives today. The loss of control which we think we have anyway. Like we think we do. Especially as churches have locked their doors to the faithful. Our shelves become empty the grocery stores. Even the toilet paper hoarders that bought out the store’s supplies. Our minds almost naturally go to a level of forgetfulness, about one aspect or another of the unknown path stretching indefinitely out for us.

While crowds line up in grocery store lines and citizens load up on guns and ammo and self-isolate. We believe that we are working to protect our families and ourselves, but are we acting with Christian charity? Are we able to help others? Or are we putting ourselves first? Are we acting as followers of Christ? As my own “panic grocery shopping” outing, a cashier told me I was the nicest person he’s dealt with in days. I didn’t act out of the ordinary in any way. I just treated him with respect and common courtesy. Helping him bag my groceries because there was no bagger. Just simple things like telling him may God bless him seemed to brighten his day. I chose to bless him with my with my actions and my words. A simple thing everyone could do, if they wanted to.

As we are forced to slow down during this time and spend more time at home. This time offers us the potential to experience the closeness with Father God. Even though this time might leads us to deal with a lose of a loved on or our own death that have chronic illness that put us a risk. I joked around with my family and friends saying what’s the worst thing could happen “I could die” or is it “actually the best.” I still hold a reasonable awareness that when my time has come nothing can stop it from happening. I have a deep developed faith, and that is where I find my peace.

If you’ve read the Bible then you know how this world is going to end. But in the meantime God our Father will send us the endurance and grace we need in our time of need.

When Jesus died for us, the Bible tells us He sweat blood. Nonetheless, He accepted the ultimate wisdom of His Father’s Will, and acted in obedience and tremendous love, whatever the cost. He showed us how to live and die.

What we hold back from following God, we miss out on the greatest gifts. Our faith becomes empty (as empty as the shelves at the grocery store.) As we strive to make necessary preparations for the months ahead, we must turn to a God’s Word and become faithful to our church and our community. To act out what our Faith as a child of God should.

It’s time we start thinking of other more than ourselves that faith and love unite us. Unity can form a basis of trust. Which is the instrument of certitude and dependence that will carry us through these troubling times. Don’t let these times of penance be wasted in fear. Remember Our lives are in God’s hands.