[lizardlady]

"People need to stop blaming others for how their life turned out and make the best of what they have now."

I saw this quote elsewhere and wondered what y'all think.

I have mixed feelings. Way back when I was still in counseling my therapist told me I needed to stop blaming other people for what happened in my past. I was frustrated. I didn't feel like I was blaming anyone. Part of it was that I was finally recognizing what happened was abuse. Mainly I was pissed that I was having to clean up the mess other people created.

On the other hand, I get tired of hearing people whinge about the unfairness of life. Things like the rich should give up their wealth to support the poor. Recently, complaints about wishing people have happy holidays. I was struggling this holiday season. All the happy, happy, joy, joy was painful to be around, but I would not begrudge others.

I guess, for me, it comes down to personal responsibility. Crappy things happen to people who did nothing to cause it. Life isn't fair. Poop happens. It's what we do with the life we are handed.

[Nammu]

Sure other people can have caused problems but there comes a point when a person has to accept personal responsibility. Unless you lock yourself in a padded room your gonna have triggers, bumps and bruises. If something triggers you it falls on you to deal with it, all this politically correct stuff and dumbing down the USA to suit over sensitive types is hurting everybody. It’s like antibiotics too much backfires and causes superbugs. There has to be balance.

I’m tired and I’m not sure I’m making it clear. But balance and moderation are the key points.

[MuddyBoots]

I have mixed feelings too. I had a traumatic childhood/adolescence, and I'm just starting to realize that it does affect me negatively in ways I don't even know. I do have some animosity towards the people that abused me and the people that didn't take care of me when I needed it. I'm working on realizing what led to what and I'm in therapy to help out with bettering myself.

So I guess the quote is more so about living in the present, but it's not as simple as reading a quote and going "hey, that's right! I'm going to do that!" and miraculously you're not blaming others, it's a process especially for those with a significant trauma history due to abuse and neglect.

[*Beth*]

I hope, @MuddyBoots, that you share the bounty of the rare wisdom you contain within yourself and complete that book you are working on. What you have to teach people is immensely important.

[Open Eyes]

I think I carry too much guilt and self blame. If only I had known sooner I could have prevented the losses.

There is a lot of statements that encourage self blame if you think about it.

Yes Liz I felt frustrated myself in that I had deep triggers that were “intrusive” that were caused by others who treated me badly or behaved badly to where I was traumatized. I can relate to the anger about the effort it took in cleaning up “self”.

Originally Posted by lizardlady

I guess, for me, it comes down to personal responsibility. Crappy things happen to people who did nothing to cause it. Life isn't fair. Poop happens. It's what we do with the life we are handed.

This. I agree with the meaning of this quote as you defined it here.

People are allowed to be where they are at with their trauma and no one headspace is better than another. I think that the quote you posted is a perspective that helps some people in the journey of trauma, but its worded harshly and in a judgmental way.

[splitimage]

I did some compassion focused therapy years ago, in rehab, and on the day of the first group the psychologist leading the group wrote this "It's not your fault, but it is your responsibility." It's saying much the same thing as Lizardlady's quote but in a gentler way and I prefer this version. I had to get to the point through therapy, where I could let go of all the bad stuff and trauma that I'd experienced and start working on myself to change how I responded to things so that I could make the positive changes necessary to move my life forward.

[KublaKhan]

I more or less agree with that statement. My motto about troubling issues from the past (or present) is "Fix it and move on. Unfixable? Accept it and move on."

People have criticized me for advising others to do this; they say it's just "bottling up your feelings". But this supposes that negative emotions are like hydraulic pressure - they have to go somewhere or else they'll damage all the innerworkings and then catastrophically burst out. I don't agree that this how emotions actually work. We often experience an emotion - nobody can help that - but then add to it with thoughts of exaggeration, conspiracy, and doubling down on the negativity.

Example: I used to struggle with feelings of worthlessness, failure, and lack of purpose in life. My negative moods might develop something like this:
1. (Something undesirable happens at work)
2. "Man, I really hate this job. I wish I could find a better one."
3. "But I can't and never will. It's too late for me."
4. "I'm going to die without ever achieving anything or really enjoying life."
5. "I'm going to spend my entire life overworked and broke, and no woman will ever go for a man like that."
6. "Since there's no prospect of any enjoyment or meaning in this kind of life, why go on?"
7. "Suicide would be like going to sleep forever. No more pain; no more facing my shortcomings. Just eternal rest."

I read a ton of books on self-improvement and positive psychology over the years, but perhaps the biggest takeaway for me was that you need to watch out for this "catastrophizing" and cut it off before it puts you in a seriously dark place. There's always going to be some twinge of negative emotion when bad things happen to us, but it frequently goes away very quickly if you can avoid exaggerating and building on it. My life improved a great deal when I put this into practice. I can say it's been six years - probably more - since I contemplated suicide.

There are two ways of looking at happiness:
A) Happiness is something that others must deliver to you. People have to always behave how you think they should and give you everything you believe you're entitled to from them. If they fall short on those obligations, they're guilty of MAKING you unhappy. They're destroying any chance of you being happy by their actions.
B) Happiness is largely the result of a mindset. You won't be up and over the moon every single day. But you can enjoy the good things in your life without being crippled by fear of losing them. And you can't stop bad things from ever happening to you, but you can come to terms with these things and accept that they are part of reality.

As long as someone subscribes to mindset A, their happiness will be rare and fleeting. That's just how it is. I know this isn't what people *want* to hear, but just as with physical ailments, we often have to hear and accept things that we don't necessarily like. It's a bitter pill that will make you much better off in the long run if you can swallow it.

I realize this turned into a pretty big post and may have veered a bit off topic, but I've been wanting to share this with people and see what others think. I hope it can help others the way it helped me.

[mote.of.soul]

"People need to stop blaming others for how their life turned out and make the best of what they have now."

Sounds like something someone would say when they're fed up with hearing "negative stuff" or things to do with "other people's" problems. But if what they mean is: it would be good if people could find a way to be happy with their lives, then I agree. I mean that's a big part of life isn't it.

[cool09]

People need to stop blaming others for how their life turned out

A lot of things go unsaid in life like how you treat other people, etc. But people have feelings and are allowed to express themselves. Suffering is prevalent all over