Self-Blame

Posted On January 27, 2024

According to the National Alliance on Mental Health (NAMI), 1 in 4 children living in the United States experience some type of maltreatment. Without a supportive adult to talk to, these children are doomed to grow into adults who blame themselves for what happened to them.

 

This article will focus on blame, what it is, who feels it, and ways to help you mitigate its effects.

 

What is Self-Blame, and How Does It Form?

 

 

Blame involves negative judgment where a fault or wrong is assigned to someone else or yourself. Blame includes making negative statements holding someone or yourself responsible for action or inaction.

 

When a child is mistreated, especially by their primary caregivers, they are unable to defend themselves. Still, they also cannot admit to themselves that those who are supposed to care for them are hurting them.

 

The result of this cognitive dissonance is that children are left blaming themselves for what happens to them, telling themselves they must have deserved the abuse. Self-blame is often associated with anger, but children in abusive circumstances cannot escape, so the resentment, anger, and indignation turn inward.

 

What Affects Does Self-Blame Cause?

 

Self-blame for childhood abuse causes low self-esteem and sometimes self-hate in its victims. Self-blame causes negative, self-sabotaging actions, making the children, now adults, live unfulfilled lives and sometimes hurting others.

 

Other effects of blame on survivors are as follows:

 

Toxic self-criticism. Self-blame leads to toxic self-criticism that appears to the survivor as a negative voice, always passing negative judgment.

 

General anxiety. Mental health conditions form as a result of self-blame, such as depression and generalized anxiety.

 

Painful emotions. People who have survived an abusive childhood often struggle with painful and intrusive emotions that include shame, guilt, confusion, lack of motivation, and constant alertness.

 

Unable to function socially. People who blame themselves for their maltreatment when they were children often make biased self-appraisals and are crippled with shame, making social functioning difficult.

 

Early exposure to maltreatment or neglect disrupts healthy development, having lifelong consequences.

 

Self-Blame as a Trauma Response

 

 

Trauma is anything that disrupts one’s life that is unexpected and sudden. For the purpose of this article, trauma involves the abuse and neglect of children.

 

When people, especially children, experience trauma, they feel their life is threatened with an element of horror and shock. Helplessness becomes very real during trauma, leaving the victim feeling out of control. To overcome helplessness, we often blame ourselves for the trauma.

 

Remaining stuck in self-blame motivates addictive behavior, unconsciously seeking violent relationships, codependence, self-harm, not finishing one’s education, and the resulting under or unemployment.

 

The Neurological Underpinnings of Self-Blame

 

Your brain does many things to protect you when you are experiencing trauma that involves complex factors, including subcortical or unconscious processes. Your brain determines your response at the time of the trauma, causing you to have one of four reactions: fight/flight/flee or fawn.

 

Sometimes, people are judged by the fact that they froze and couldn’t defend themselves during trauma, questioning if an assault actually occurred. The survivors may not know or understand their own responses, leading to self-blame.

 

It is critical to understand that, as children, we can’t flee, fight, or leave because our brains tell us to dissociate from what is happening, and thus we freeze.

Any self-blame is highly unwarranted as you did not make the conscious decision to freeze or, in some cases, react positively to the stimulation your abuser was supplying you. You were a child, and children are never to blame for the abuse and neglect perpetrated against them.

 

The Fawn Response and Self-Blame

 

 

There is a fourth response alluded to above: the fawn response. This form of trauma response is also known as the ‘tend and befriend response’, where the victim recognizes they cannot survive unless they tend to the needs of their perpetrator.

 

Instead of becoming immobile or dissociating, the victim will say and do things to please their abuser to survive the experience.

 

Often abused children who experience fawning in childhood grow into adults who say things like, “My body betrayed me” and “I feel I deserved what I got.” However, such beliefs are unwarranted as their brain is doing what it is supposed to do in the face of overwhelming odds.

 

Ending Our Time Together

 

Self-blame is unnecessary, as when you were a child or even as an adult, you were not to blame for what happened. Period. You can’t have that one.

 

I once blamed myself for what happened to me until my therapist finally convinced me that it was not my fault. I wasn’t a bad child or a spoiled brat; no, I was an abused and lonely child with no adult to talk to and resolve my feelings.

 

I also had to face one other thing involving my teenage self, as I sometimes enjoyed what was happening to me. Still, I was only an underage teenager who was being forced to do sexual things that were beyond my years. I did not choose to respond; my body responded in the only way it knew how to keep me alive.

 

If you are blaming yourself for what happened to you as a child, please rethink and examine those thoughts. Seeing a therapist is the best way to put these issues to rest as you will finally talk to an adult, the thing you needed most during those traumatic times.

 

“You are not to blame for what happened to you in the past— but it is your responsibility to move forward.” – Mel Robbins.