How to Avoid Reacting With Blame and Anger in Your Relationships

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MAUDE: We wrote a post last week about dealing with strong negative or difficult reactions to the decisions, actions and behaviors of others, most particularly those with whom you have deep relationships. We suggested turning inside and looking at your own responses, what you are feeling and what the meaning of that is to you.

One of our dear friends responded to the post by writing and asking, “But what if I honestly do blame you?” An excellent question, and one that some of you may have asked yourselves after reading that post. The answer is the same. Go within and look at your response. Look at the blame and the feelings attached to it. What are they telling you? Are they about you or the other person?

This creates a special kind of honesty with yourself and consequently enables you to communicate about your thoughts and feelings more honestly; you can’t communicate what you don’t realize. This can be an act of self-discovery that leads you to a more peaceful way of relating in your close relationships. We recommend practicing with those you are close with before moving out further to less connected relationships. As you get better at the practice, stretch out a little more with that same view toward learning about what your responses to others are about.

If you don’t do this, you are likely to be reactive, a victim of your own unexplored emotions. This often leads to anger, recriminations and blame. The result is to be preoccupied with the other person, and the uncomfortable feelings that you think they are responsible for.

What does this reaction bring you? Does it move you further toward peace within that relationship or within yourself?

Regardless of what information you learn from exploring this within yourself, you will be busy looking at your reactions, something you have control over and something you can take action on if you think it calls for it. Your mind will not be occupied with the other person, and you will not be pushing your emotions away from you and onto another.

So, I ask you, which of these paths leads you to peaceful relationships? Peace is our goal, and we have found that sitting within negative emotions toward our closest ones does not take us there. We are peaceful when we own our feelings and emotions, look at them and learn about them.

PHIL: We wrote about how to replace blame with honesty in your relationships and someone asked “What if I honestly blame you?”

When we’re talking about blame, that implies that there are measures of performance; whatever has happened can be scored as a seven or four or whatever. People can be strong in some areas yet still fumble elsewhere, causing you to feel that the person has not lived up to your standards.

This is an attitude of looking at differences between people, but there is another way to look, and that is that to look at similarities. You can see people as human, as frail, as having needs and desires, as having had a background that has made them what they are. You can empathize with them and see why they failed to meet your standards, and the way forward is through forgiveness, which has mental and physical health benefits.

(As an aside, it is very much a Western attitude to look at differences, going all the way back to Aristotle and his study of formal logic. The alternative of looking at similarity is very much an Eastern Approach of unity.)

But what if you cannot do this, and continue to blame the other person for inattentiveness or not caring, time after time? That is the point at which you have to look at values. If you believe that both of you share the same values, then you will need to talk and find out the source of the behavior that is making you so uncomfortable. Is it about the other person or something inside you? If you don’t share the same values, is it possible to continue the association with someone who operates so differently from you? This is where you may need to step back, erect defenses where necessary, and redefine your relationship with this person.

Photo credit: Phil Mayes
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