Self-Blame Only Lives in Your Thinking, Not in You
If you are someone who has spent years working on yourself, reading numerous books, always got a course on the go, trying all the techniques, there can be a subtle thought running underneath all of it. Something like: there is something wrong with me that I need to fix.
It kind of makes sense. You have tried so many things and none of them have quite stuck, so the mind decides the problem must be you. Something deeper, harder to reach, something that makes you the exception.
But notice another possibility. The fact that nothing stuck is not evidence you are broken. It might just be that you have been trying to solve the wrong problem.
Most self-help, however good, carries the same message underneath: that there is something in you that needs fixing, that you are a project to be completed. And so improving yourself becomes a full-time job. The result is not peace. It is pressure. More to remember, more proof that you are not quite there yet.
There are two things going on in you all the time
One is the track of thought. The inner narration, often the critical voice, the one that says do more, be better, you are not enough. It is the same voice that pushes you to change and then talks you out of it because it's too hard or now isn't the 'right time'.
Underneath that is another track. The track of life. The same intelligence beating your heart and digesting your food right now, without you managing any of it. It is running you all the time. The thinking just narrates over the top and makes it seem complicated, as though there are things you have to do to be okay.
A painting
Imagine you have been standing very close to a painting for years. So close that all you can see is one brushstroke, and you are analysing it, working out what is wrong with it, how you could have done it better.
Then something helps you step back, just a few steps, and you see the whole picture. You realise there was never anything wrong with it. You just could not see that from where you were standing.
You are not the brushstroke you have been worrying over. You are not the critical voice. That is the thought track, and it is not who you are. The life underneath, the thing living you, that is who you are. And it was never broken. It couldn't ever be.
Where self-blame actually lives
Notice where self-blame lives. That feeling of not measuring up, of it being your fault somehow, it lives in the thought track. Only there. It is not in the life track at all. The heart beating, the breath rising and falling, none of that is blaming you. There is no self-blame anywhere in nature. A tree does not think it should have grown differently.
The mind offers self-blame up as if it helps, as if it is how you stay on track and keep improving. But look at what it actually does. It keeps you listening to the mind. It keeps you close to that brushstroke, certain something is wrong.
So when the blaming thought comes, you do not have to turn towards it or argue with it. You can see it for what it is. A thought. Not the truth of you.
What if the only place you need improving is held in a thought, and nowhere else? Not you. Not the life underneath.
Listen to the track
I have made a guided track on this, a place to actually rest in the track of life for a few minutes rather than just read about it. It is free on Insight Timer now and you can also find it above.
There is nothing wrong with you.
That inner critical, overly responsible, self-vigilant voice has a name. I call her Sue. She's the part of you built around Safety, Uncertainty and Exposure (yes this spells her name), and once you can see how she works, she loses a lot of her grip on you. Take the Meet Sue quiz to find out how yours shows up.
Comments