The Blame Habit

Blame distracts. Ownership transforms.

It’s easy to think the problem is them. What they said. What they didn’t do. How they let you down again.

Blame is persuasive. It feels like clarity. But underneath it often lies something murkier: discomfort we don’t yet know how to hold.

Blame feels active but it’s passive. It waits. For someone else to change, admit fault, or finally act differently. And while we wait, the pain doesn’t go away. It just gets sharper. More rehearsed.

In many relationships, blame becomes the default lens. You fight the same fight. One person gets angry.The other shuts down. You blame their reaction they blame yours. But no one stops to ask: What’s really going on inside me right now?

When couples finally reach for help, blame is usually baked in. They sit across from each other, ready with evidence. But what actually moves things isn’t who’s “more right.” It’s who’s willing to look in. Who’s brave enough to say: “This isn’t just about what you did, it’s about how I’ve come to see myself here.”

Blame keeps us at the surface. We say, “You made me feel…”But what if no one can actually make us feel anything that isn’t already waiting there? Old wounds. Unmet expectations. Fear of abandonment, control, shame. They don’t start in the argument, they live just beneath it.

This isn’t about guilt. It’s about authority. The moment you stop blaming is the moment you stop outsourcing your wellbeing.

It’s not easy. But it’s clean. And it gives you back the one thing blame never will: agency.

Questions to Consider:

·      What part of this dynamic feels familiar, even beyond this relationship?

·      What am I hoping blame will get me?

·      When I’m blaming, what feeling am I trying not to feel?

·      What becomes possible when I bring attention back to my own experience?

If this speaks to you...Let’s look at what it touched in you and what that reveals.

Visit www.katinapallaras.com for online sessions and for my book Awaken the Heart.