I understand, people who lack awareness of their own impact on their circumstances/situations are very challenging to interact with. What I try to remember is that there is something, whether it's a disorder or cognitive distortion or simple lack of emotional development, that's behind it. In many instances there is a narcissistic injury behind that behavior, where the person's identity is SO dependent upon their ability to be right about things, to be wrong or to have agency in a matter would actually cause them to destabilize.

I honestly don't think it's intentional that some people do this; I really think it's a protective mechanism, and it's very hard to change. Often, people who are like this, their identity is so dependent on outside factors and outside/external assessments, that any criticism or inkling that they had some responsibility in their situation threatens their identity. They aren't strong enough to be wrong (so to speak as it's not about right or wrong) and believe they are a good person even though they made a mistake. There seems to be an internal value judgment that if they've made a mistake then they are at fault or a bad person versus simply that there is not good or bad to it: they made a mistake and there was a result. It simply is what it is, but not good or bad.

So when presented with people who constantly blame others, I try to have empathy for why they behave this way, and I also limit my contact with them because they can be difficult to interact with as well. But I've definitely met people who behaved like this at one point, realized they were doing it, and were able to change their behavior. It's not an impossible thought process to change.

In the peer support groups through NAMI that I'm involved with and other advocacy work, it's not uncommon to run into people who know something is wrong in their lives but are not in the stage of readiness to look at any place for change within themselves, it all must be external at this point. People will change when they're ready, and some will never be ready. It's not our job as peer support to force change, just to support it when someone is ready to.