Blame delays grief

This weekly column seeks to help educate our community about emotional healing through grief. People may write questions to Golden Willow Retreat and they will be answered privately to you and possibly as a future article for others. List a first name that grants permission for printing.

Dear Dr. Ted:

You have covered this before but I’m hoping you will say more on blame and the grief process. I watch people over and over again sit and blame others. Sometimes this blame is valid and other times, it just seems wrong or nonproductive. How do you see blame playing in grief?

Thanks, Levi

Dear Levi:

The topic of blame is so prominent that it needs to be discussed often as it is such a barrier to growth and healing.

In the grief process, blaming floats between anger and bargaining, within the phases of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Blame can get you caught in the past and make it difficult to start rebuilding your present foundation as it keeps someone caught in the story of the past.

Please believe me, many losses do have levels of accountability in which someone or something has caused loss to you. When you first experience a loss, you are going to look for the factors that have caused that loss. These feeling may be true but can cause barriers to emotional healing as the cause is external, and makes it hard to do internal work.

Blame can also be a way to deflect accountability in which you find others to blame for your actions, rather than owning your behaviors. A good example would be if you had some sort or negative behavior, let’s say have a temper tantrum and yell profanities at someone on the road, instead of owning your yelling, you blame it on the driver, the pandemic or anything else rather than your behavior.

Blame also has a tendency of focusing on historical issues and events rather than how to start to move forward in a positive manner. Grief is removing the story from a past event and having it become a fact in your life, rather than a wound that emotionally pulls you back into history.

Grief gives the opportunity to glean the wisdom from a situation in the past and start to release the drama around that event. This includes your own actions and defending the past by continuing to build on a story that has already happened by deflecting blame on others, defending your actions and being caught in that moment while being depleted from the present moment.

As a litigious world, and especially what I have seen in the United States, the courts examine a moment in time to decide what legal decisions and actions need to take place. This way of thinking has bled into how we try to work with emotional healing which does not work.

The goal of grief is to slowly not grip onto a story that keeps you caught in defending and feeding on that story. But instead, allowing that story to become a fact on your lifeline that can serve you rather than pull you out of the present, while using wisdom from the past to build on your present moment. Blame is different than accountability.

Blame searches for an external source for your internal discomfort, with the hope the external reason will rescue you by changing, in order for you to feel better. Internal discomfort is asking you to change the situation, rather than be rescued or blame others. This is the interpersonal work that can improve the quality of your life and allow less irritation from the world around you, allowing healing rather than recycling internal pain.

Thank you for the question. I wish you well. Until next week, take care. Golden Willow Retreat is a nonprofit organization focused on emotional healing and recovery from any type of loss. Direct any questions to Dr. Ted Wiard, EdD, LPCC, CGC, founder of Golden Willow Retreat, at GWR@newmex.com.