"It is not your fault, and you are completely responsible for your actions."

[catzmeow]

Of course change begins with you and that's all good and great, but on a deeper level, where did this distorted perception of right and wrong come from?

Can you elaborate further?

 

[Said1]

Of course change begins with you and that's all good and great, but on a deeper level, where did this distorted perception of right and wrong come from?

Can you elaborate further?

You know what I mean. At some point, someone plays a role in early cognitive development. Sometimes, depending on the influence, this can distort what is perceived as right and wrong - or what is and isn't abuse.

For example, just recently, I was wondering why my ex-husband used to keep me up a night, all the time. Then, out of nowhere, I remember my mother used to do the same thing to me, from a very, very young age, for very bizarre reasons -usually in relation to something I did or didn't do - same as him. Just conditioning, but I didn't chose to recreate this relationship on a conscious level, but it seemed fairly normal at the time.

 

[catzmeow]

You know what I mean. At some point, someone plays a role in early cognitive development. Sometimes, depending on the influence, this can distort what is perceived as right and wrong - or what is and isn't abuse.

For example, just recently, I was wondering why my ex-husband used to keep me up a night, all the time. Then, out of nowhere, I remember my mother used to do the same thing to me, from a very, very young age, for very bizarre reasons -usually in relation to something I did or didn't do - same as him. Just conditioning, but I didn't chose to recreate this relationship on a conscious level, but it seemed fairly normal at the time.

Oh, yes, I do understand. I could never figure out why I kept being attracted to abusive men. My dad is the LEAST abusive guy you can even imagine. He is very calm and rational. It made no sense, until I figured out, in therapy, that I kept marrying/dating MY MOM. She was the dominant one in our family, and she played all kinds of passive-aggressive dominant games. She was also the one who hit me almost daily, usually in the face.

It took therapy for me to realize that my default/normal was set in the abuse position. Thus, abuse felt like love to me.

If I wanted to stop falling in love with abusers, I had to reprogram my setting.

That's why I say that it was their fault that they were abusive, but it was my work to do to reprogram my innate attraction to them.

The guy I'm dating right now? Reminds me a LOT of my dad. I knew I was getting better when I could spot passive/aggressive/controlling a mile away.

Even now, passive aggressive people REALLY get on my last good nerve. I hate that form of attempting to control other people.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Sky Dancer, an interesting and complex question on a number of levels. We certainly do not raise our children as situational ethicists but life and what happens in it is often complex and tied to all other things that often go un-thought of. So to answer in something other than mundane rantings, I will post a Robert Haas poem which gives a sense of the problem in a extreme and complex personal dilemma.

'The World as Will and Representation'

"When I was a child my father every morning --
Some mornings, for a time, when I was ten or so,
My father gave my mother a drug called antabuse.
It makes you sick if you drink alcohol.
They were little yellow pills. He ground them
In a glass, dissolved them in water, handed her
The glass and watched her closely while she drank.
It was the late nineteen-forties, a time,
A social world, in which the men got up
And went to work, leaving the women with the children.
His wink at me was a nineteen-forties wink.
He watched her closely so she couldn't "pull
A fast one" or "put anything over" on a pair
As shrewd as the two of us. I hear those phrases
In old movies and my mind begins to drift.
The reason he ground the medications fine
Was that the pills could be hidden under the tongue
And spit out later. The reason that this ritual
Occurred so early in the morning -- I was told,
And knew it to be true -- was that she could,
If she wanted, induce herself to vomit,
So she had to be watched until her system had
Absorbed the drug. Hard to render, in these lines,
The rhythm of the act. He ground two of them
To powder in a glass, filled it with water,
Handed it to her, and watched her drink.
In my memory, he's wearing a suit, gray,
Herringbone, a white shirt she had ironed.
Some mornings, as in the comics we read
When Dagwood went off early to placate
Mr. Dithers, leaving Blondie with crusts
Of toast and yellow rivulets of egg yolk
To be cleared before she went shopping --
On what the comic called a shopping spree --
With Trixie, the next-door neighbor, my father
Would catch an early bus and leave the task
Of vigilance to me. "Keep an eye on Mama, pardner."
You know the passage in the Aeneid? The man
Who leaves the burning city with his father
On his shoulders, holding his young son's hand,
Means to do well among the flaming arras
And the falling columns while the blind prophet,
Arms upraised, howls from the inner chamber,
"Great Troy is fallen. Great Troy is no more."
Slumped in a bathrobe, penitent and biddable,
My mother at the kitchen table gagged and drank,
Drank and gagged. We get our first moral idea
About the world—about justice and power,
Gender and the order of things—from somewhere."

Thanks for the poem, midcan, I love it!

The whole practice of not assigning blame but taking full responsibility for one's actions frees up a tremendous amount of energy to just deal with the truth of what is.

We can look how we got from point A to point B

I wish my father had been able to do that for himself. I did that for him. Just the facts, m'aam. It's refreshing to not to judge my dad or assign blame to him but just to look at how he was unable to be there for his kids and ended up taking his own life.

Born in the depression era, with a cleft palate, a twin brother to a healthy sister. He had five oral surgeries before he was three. He was unable to nurse, like his sister. As an infant he was continually hungry and distressed. My grandfather was house painter and heavy drinker. His first son, died at age three, he never got over it.

Dad spoke with a lisp, was a small child, and was bullied at school.

He spent a lot of time alone, sold scrap in order to go to the movies to escape. His favorites were musicals, he wanted to work in the theater, like my grandmother and grandfather had. He was grandiose in his fantasies. He developed into a talented ballroom dancer. He was handsome, a romantic, flawed figure.

He was molested in the theater, but he never talked about it. He dropped out of high school in the tenth grade and went to work for a printer as an apprentice. The printer moved out of state and my father wanted to go with him. My grandmother refused. My father took refuge in the theater and became a sex addict. He lived a double life. He had sex with many people---sometimes three a day.

He enlisted in the army, went AWOL on R and R and was dishonorably discharged.

My father went to work for the theater and met my mother there. They were married, and had two children together. They fought continuously. My father 'lost it' and went into psychiatric hospital where he was to remain for ten years.

In 1966, he completed a GED, and went to Beauty School and became a hairdresser. He continued to dance nightly. His hands always trembled, he took a lot of medication. He struggled with depression--and attempted suicide a number of times. This was a carefully guarded secret. Inspite of all this he was able to have a successful business and get custody of his kids.

When the kids left home, his drinking progressed.

Between 1978-1981 he was arrested numerous times on DUI and morals charges-- mostly soliciting sex with prostitute.

He was arrested again and faced prison term. He voluntarily went into rehab. On October 31, 981, he committed suicide. His death certificate says, suicide 'death by asphyxiation', death by hanging, chronic alcoholism.

One can see how he got from point A to point B at the end of his life, and look at his circumstances without shame or blame.

He was a comic-tragic-romantic figure, deeply flawed, human, vulnerable. He struggled with life long lack of self-acceptance, mental illness and alchoholism and he succumbed to this.

My father was the son of alcoholic parents, themselves traumatized individuals, is it any wonder his life turned out this way?

Is it any less extraordinary when someone survives alcoholism? Did you know the success rate for recovering from alcoholism is a whopping five percent?

Happy Birthday Arthur Francis and Jane Frances

 

[Coloradomtnman]

OK... this is where you lose me. I think blame is as much of our lives as breathing air. If you get in your car to go down to the grocery store for milk and bread, and while you're sitting at a stop sign, some drunk comes speeding up behind you without hitting his brakes and plows into the back of your car totally it and snapping your neck. You wind up in a wheel chair as a quadriplegic. Fault NEEDS to be assigned to the drunk that plowed into you. I could give more examples from now until midnight, but I don't think I need to. Blame MUST be assigned in certain instances. There's no getting around it.

I agree and would add that not ONLY is it the drunk driver's fault and that he is to blame, but that the injured party accept the responsibility that bad things can happen to anyone at any time, so by leaving the house and driving, the victim put themself in harm's way.

But, unless we want to live lives imprisoned in our homes (which an airplane could crash into and kill us anyway), we have to realize that danger is a part of life. Bad things happen. I'd rather live a short, happy life full of freedom than a long fearful life filled with anxiety.

So to be reasonable, the drunk driver should do jail time, pay fines, restitution, all of that and maybe more, however, the victim should recognize their own role: that they were there when the drunk driver hit them.

Anything at all that happens to you during your life, is entirely your fault and is solely your responsibility. As well as whomever did it to you.

 

[Sky Dancer]

The drunk driver is responsible for his actions. I completely agree he should do jail time, have fines, lose his license etc.

But is he to blame? IMO. No. They are two different things.

 

[AllieBaba]

You are now tied to Ravi in idiocy.

How can someone be legally and morally responsible, and be punished...and yet not be to blame?

How about the meth addict who par boils his girlfriend's kid? Is that asshole to blame? Or do you just think he should do the time, but considered blameless?

Good grief.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Are you interested in the topic or are you just venting Allie?

 

[catzmeow]

I think that Allie realizes that there is an artificial distinction between blame and responsibility. These are words that mean essentially the same thing, but you have imbued them with further meaning beyond their scope.

 

[AllieBaba]

I'm asking you a question. Is a meth addict who parboils his gf's kid as blameless as the drunk who kills someone in a car wreck? Explain how someone who is blameless can be prosecuted and punished....if he's blameless.

I don't expect an answer. You exist only to view your own vapidity spread around like the manure it is. But if you honestly have an answer, by all means, go to.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Whatever. It's a subtle and complex topic. Midcan and a few others get it. You and Allie don't.

No problem.

Since Allie asks me questions and doesn't expect/want me to answer them, I'll let her continue to answer the questions for herself.

 

[Coloradomtnman]

The drunk driver is responsible for his actions. I completely agree he should do jail time, have fines, lose his license etc.

But is he to blame? IMO. No. They are two different things.

I guess I don't understand. What do you mean by blame and taking responsibility? And what do you think "at fault" means? This will help me, and possibly others, to comprehend the distinction you seem to be making.

 

[Sky Dancer]

Please read the thread from the beginning. Thank you.

 

[AllieBaba]

In other words, you can't answer the fucking question.

Of course you can't, it makes no sense. Few of your posts do. But do go on deluding yourself that you are too superior to answer questions..and not just stupid as the rest of us see you.

 

[Sky Dancer]

You've asked me not to answer your question. Go back and read your own post, Allie.

 

[Said1]

I think she's talking about disengaging and looking at behaviors for what they are. In your example of the meth head, he would blame meth. Through disengagement from assigning blame, he wouldn't do that, he would say he did what he did and will face the punishment - then hopefully address problems that led him to use meth, separately from his actions while using meth. Or something like that. It's a difficult concept to articulate.

 

[Sky Dancer]

In the case of the meth addict. He is responsible for his actions. If he commits a crime in pursuit of his addiction, then he has to face the consequences. Using meth is illegal. Selling it is illegal.

Is he really to blame? He's addicted. He's sick. The nature of addiction and compulsive behavior is a lack of control.

Can you see the distinction?

It's tricky because our entire criminal penal system is based on shame and blame--rather than just looking at the truth of how things are, and addressing the consequences of behavior.

Shame and blame are heavy. Responsibility literally means the ability to respond. It's much easier to address addiction without adding shame and blame to the equation.

 

[Coloradomtnman]

In the case of the meth addict. He is responsible for his actions. If he commits a crime in pursuit of his addiction, then he has to face the consequences. Using meth is illegal. Selling it is illegal.

Is he really to blame? He's addicted. He's sick. The nature of addiction and compulsive behavior is a lack of control.

Can you see the distinction?

It's tricky because our entire criminal penal system is based on shame and blame--rather than just looking at the truth of how things are, and addressing the consequences of behavior.

Shame and blame are heavy. Responsibility literally means the ability to respond. It's much easier to address addiction without adding shame and blame to the equation.

Aha! Now I get it. Thanks. Yeah, I'm with you on this one Sky Dancer.

The other extreme is one to who takes too much responsibility without - how to put this - assigning responsibility to others who may also be responsible. For example, a child is raised by a mother who invalidates everything the child says or its behaviors. They live in an abusive household where the mother enables the abusive husband. As the child develops into an adolescent, s/he doesn't believe that s/he lives in an abusive home, but that s/he is over-reacting to a situation which isn't really as bad as it seems. Then the adolescent becomes an adult and doesn't realize that the coping mechanisms s/he developed during their formative years doesn't work anymore because they believe that they had a normal childhood and don't realize there is anything wrong. Instead they begin to use alcohol or drugs to self-medicate instead of coping in a healthy manner. They doubt everything including themselves, because they've never learned that how they think and feel is valid. Failure is only logical and natural for a person with this perspective. S/he won't realize that the coping method s/he developed in reaction to the environment in which s/he was raised has resulted in his/her current unhealthy behavior; and that environment was cultivated, whether consciously or not, by the parents. So the parents share in the responsibility of that person's unhealthy behavior. Yes, the person/subject is 100% responsible, but, so are the parents also 100% responsible.

And no one is to blame. But everyone is at fault. Right?

 

[Sky Dancer]

You got it, mtnman. No one is to blame, and everyone is responsible.

Your example reminds me of something I've been studying for months called 'trauma bonding'. It's also called Stockholm Syndrome--based on what happened when bank robbers held bank employees as hostages for five days.

The hostages were terrorized and threatened with death daily. At the same time, the robbers showed little kindnesses each day--which caused the hostages to bond with their captors.

When the ordeal was over--hostages and captors parted with hugs and tears. Two of the women hostages corresponded with their perpetrators for ten years, and later married them. These women were not stupid, nor did they have bad childhoods--yet this is the result of the experience of living in terrorized captivity.

This is a reason why some people are unable to leave an abusive situation and continue to recreate the same kind of relationship with others.

Trauma bonding.

I've been reading that book for months and it makes me so pissed off I throw it across the room every time I pick it up!

 

[Ravi]

In the case of the meth addict. He is responsible for his actions. If he commits a crime in pursuit of his addiction, then he has to face the consequences. Using meth is illegal. Selling it is illegal.

Is he really to blame? He's addicted. He's sick. The nature of addiction and compulsive behavior is a lack of control.

Can you see the distinction?

It's tricky because our entire criminal penal system is based on shame and blame--rather than just looking at the truth of how things are, and addressing the consequences of behavior.

Shame and blame are heavy. Responsibility literally means the ability to respond. It's much easier to address addiction without adding shame and blame to the equation.

Aha! Now I get it. Thanks. Yeah, I'm with you on this one Sky Dancer.

The other extreme is one to who takes too much responsibility without - how to put this - assigning responsibility to others who may also be responsible. For example, a child is raised by a mother who invalidates everything the child says or its behaviors. They live in an abusive household where the mother enables the abusive husband. As the child develops into an adolescent, s/he doesn't believe that s/he lives in an abusive home, but that s/he is over-reacting to a situation which isn't really as bad as it seems. Then the adolescent becomes an adult and doesn't realize that the coping mechanisms s/he developed during their formative years doesn't work anymore because they believe that they had a normal childhood and don't realize there is anything wrong. Instead they begin to use alcohol or drugs to self-medicate instead of coping in a healthy manner. They doubt everything including themselves, because they've never learned that how they think and feel is valid. Failure is only logical and natural for a person with this perspective. S/he won't realize that the coping method s/he developed in reaction to the environment in which s/he was raised has resulted in his/her current unhealthy behavior; and that environment was cultivated, whether consciously or not, by the parents. So the parents share in the responsibility of that person's unhealthy behavior. Yes, the person/subject is 100% responsible, but, so are the parents also 100% responsible.

And no one is to blame. But everyone is at fault. Right?

I dunno...if your using something to self-medicate you pretty much realize you're fucked up.