September 2018

By Ian Goldsmith, Psychologist There are lots of ways we can avoid acknowledging responsibility for our actions. How we portray ourselves or our acts with the language we use is a great giveaway. Two prime examples are “I couldn’t help it” and “I had no choice”. How many times do we hear people use these expressions to kid themselves they are helpless about their own behaviour or that they had no alternatives to pursue? We always have choices even though sometimes the choices may be between a number of unpalatable options. Helping people to explore the options they rejected can be an empowering exercise enabling them to recognise the choices they made. Another form of expression which I hear often are comments such as “She/he made me do it”, “She/he provoked me, led me on” or “So and so makes me feel”. These likewise are powerful ways to attribute responsibility to others for the speakers behaviour. They lead to the inevitable conclusion that the only solution was for the other person, say a spouse, to act differently. Again some careful exploration as to other reactions can often explode the myth of this formulation. Other explanations can be an equally powerful ways for people to promote their own helplessness. When a person describes themselves as “easily led”, or having a “quick temper”, as well as imaginary things such as “a short fuse”, the person is asking the listener to believe that they are at the mercy of this trait and that “it” is therefore to blame for their actions. The same can be said of psychological formulations. Hence when a person declares that they have “low self esteem”, or are “co-dependant” etc., the clear implication is that the existence of this ‘condition’ explains their behaviour and therefore they are at ‘its’ mercy. While the process of ‘de-constructing’ these ideas people have of themselves is not always simple, one approach I use is to help the person find ‘exceptions’ in their behaviour. There are often many such occasions when they acted contrary to their favourite idea of themselves. As they notice these exceptions the power of their previous all encompassing view of themselves becomes harder to sustain and this opens up the possibility of them engaging in more satisfying behaviour. While most people would subscribe to the idea that we are “each responsible for our actions”, many times the language we use to reflect on ourselves can kid us into believing our behaviour was “not our fault”. It is!