The art of taking responsibility
(And the consequences of not doing so)
I cannot be the only person who grew up feeling overwhelmingly ashamed of every single aspect of my existence.
Moreover, for most of us, shame came together with other strong, heavy weight feelings , such as fear, guilt and inadequacy.
We are constantly haunted by regret and the never ending sensation of not fitting in just right.
I could spend hours talking about all the different reasons a person is subjected to such inner battle in such an extreme, life changing, traumatizing way; but I shall better say something that will piss you off:
Not because you should not battle harshly against yourself means that you should not do it to a certain degree at least
FLASH NEWS: responsibility and accountability are still things that just CAN’T be ignored, and I’ll tell you why.
Our moral compass needs this negative feedback in order to internalize what is morally right and what is not.
There are things that are clearly-not-ok.
When one, as a common human, commits a mistake, consciously or not, serious or shallow, fixable or completely irreparable, the thing that ACTUALLY determines whether your moral compass is more towards the positive than the negative, it’s not the fact of having committed a mistake per sé, but rather the decisions you make after being faced with the fact that you screwed up.
Our mistakes are not defined by the mistakes themselves, but by the implementation, or lack of, accountability and reparations.
So many people get so anxious when they are being complained upon, triggering their defensive mode and ending up either avoiding any hint of responsibility there is to take, or whipping themselves with guilt and self pity.
They don’t realize that due to their drastic view of either taking too much accountability, or trying to avoid it completely, they are ultimately displaying — and sorry for the word — toxic behavior.
Toxic people are not always bad, they are profoundly unaware of themselves, because they rather ignore their flaws in order to avoid carrying with the heavy weight feelings I mentioned before. They are too unhealed to be able to take responsibility of themselves.
That is the saddest truth of toxic people: they’re primarily toxic towards themselves, and that mindset is being projected onto those around them. They don’t hurt others more than they hurt themselves, because people come and go out of their lives, but they remain hostages of their own mind.
Behind many toxic people there is just an unregulated person who hasn’t learned yet how to properly take care of themselves in every aspect, which completely prevents them from actually owning up to their mistakes, and sentences them to having to repeat them again and again in different people and in different environments.
And the top of the cherry is: in the moment they break resistance and recognize their toxic behavior or patterns, they feel SO EXTREMELY vulnerable, overwhelmed, ashamed and judged, they end up taking it out on themselves to the point where you feel bad for even having faced them with the truth.
It is really a sword with two pointy ends.
What’s then the art of taking responsibility without being stabbed by heavy weight feelings?
Just as any dumbbell you attempt to lift: it hast to be proportional to the strength that is holding it.
The weight of your feelings of inadequacy have to be in accordance to the degree of mistake you committed.
And above all, your feelings of inadequacy should NEVER be stronger than your will to empathize and make amends to the extent of what you are responsible for.
If you find yourself receiving any complaints, criticism or nagging, and the only thing that comes to your mind is excuses and arguments to defend yourself, it’s time to take a step back, breathe in deeply a few times, and ask yourself what needs to be done in order to fix the problem; whether that means an apology followed by an explanation, a conversation to find common interests and solutions or, why not, defending yourself adequately if you have indeed not committed such mistake, or have a good reason for having done so.
But you have to PLEASE stop making yourself and others victims of your own mistakes
You affect yourself and your environment every time you refuse to take action towards changing to a better version of yourself because you think that “whoever loves you has to accept you exactly how you are “, and that is true to a certain degree, but just as bad as it is accepting and allowing physical abuse, it is bad accepting and allowing psychological and emotional mistreatment.
