After all these years, I remain struck and fascinated by how readily, abruptly, selfishly and destructively my more narcissistic clients use blame as an interpersonal weapon.
This isn’t a surprising observation: Don’t like what you’re hearing (because it’s inconvenient)? Blame the messenger. Find an expectation oppressive (because it’s inconvenient)? Blame your partner as a nag, a bitch, or as insatiable.
Find it inconvenient to admit your deviousness or treachery? Blame the victim of your treachery for driving you into a corner and leaving you no choice (in other words, you betrayed me, before I betrayed you!).
For such individuals, blame becomes a reflex. It is often staggering to watch, as it suits their convenience in the moment, how they’ll switch it up and accuse a partner of something that they (not their partner) blatantly perpetrated.
Blame, in many of these cases, is often projected. By projected, I mean that the blamer (the aggressor) takes a feeling—say, guilt—and projects it onto his partner as, say, blame.
For instance, his guilt over an affair is projected as, “You drove me into her arms!” (In other words, I’m not guilty, but you should be!)
Should you challenge his twisted version of the truth, he may escalate his projecting along the lines of, “Don’t go pop psychology on me! There you go again, manipulating me with your pop psychology! You were a lousy wife, you treated me like shit, and so what the hell did you expect?! Shame on you! Take a look in the mirror, honey. You’re a loser!”
By now, a gaslighting effect risks emerging: disoriented by his vitriol and the seeming conviction of his accusations, you may begin to wonder, who’s crazy here? Him, as I once thought, or perhaps me?
Blame, of course, doesn’t always involve projection; sometimes the abuser’s contempt—that is, his devaluation of his target—is so great that, even while he’s consciously, lucidly aware that he violated you, he’ll blame you anyway.
This, of course, takes hubris. But what it most takes, as I just suggested, is a massive level of contempt. Consider the example of the individual who sexually assaults his victim and, fully recognizing the nature of his assault, nevertheless (and shamelessly) blames the victim, calling her a whore, saying she wanted it, she asked for it, she had it coming, what the hell did she expect?
My own view is that the sociopath, in general, has less need than the narcissist to “self-justify” his use of blame. His feeble conscience, which makes few, if any, demands of him, effectively enables and liberates the audacious expression of his contempt and self-centeredness.
I suspect this also explains (at least partly) how, knowing full well he’s been a scoundrel, the sociopath can look you in the eye with unabashed, naked contempt and brazenly endeavor to blame or lie his way out of accountability.
The comfort with which he can do this, the seeming absence of conflict, guilt and ambivalence with which he can blithely commit, and just as blithely deny, such exploitive behaviors, becomes a diagnostic indicator of his sociopathy.
(My use of “he” in this post was merely a convenience, and not meant to suggest that females aren’t capable of the behaviors and disorders discussed. This article is copyrighted © 2009 by Steve Becker, LCSW.)
So true… so sad… contempt – great word, pretty much covers it! I was blamed for his anger and contempt “because of the way you asked the question… because it’s too early in the morning.” What a load of cr*p. Thank goodness I don’t have to put up with that anymore now that I have received knowledge from great articles like this one! Thanks!
shabbychic,
I totally agree. Their contemt is enough to drive any one crazy. I heard all those things from my ex S. Now that he is in hiding and lost everything, even the money I agreed to give to him he blames me for him to spend everything with foolish thigs (and trying to impress lovers as he was living in his MUM’s house, and blame me for not wanting him back). How pathetic they are, after so much abuse and when we no longer want them beside us they run to Mummy… No life of their own because they have been accostumed to depend on us for their survival and use us as the puch bag and a victm of their abuses. Big loosers.
What is the key to withstanding such tactics? My husband who was raised in a fairly emotionally healthy environment lets such tactics simply bounce off him. They don’t reach him. Guilt trips, blame, projection….none “work” on him. He doesn’t respond, it takes no energy on his part to ignore such tactics, he simply reacts as he would react if a toddler were screaming, and he puts no thought into it, it is just a natural reaction for him. He just waits for the person to calm down, or he goes away, whatever. It doesn’t stir him up inside, nothing!
He really respects every person’s right to be who they are, I don’t see him trying to ever change anyone. And he is immune to attempts to change him. He HAS made changes in his life, but the motivation came from within him, almost totally.
He is a bit sensitive to what others think of him, BUT only his perception of his behavior. I’m not explaining that too clearly. In other words, he is sensitive about treating people the right way, but his judgement of himself is what matters and guides him, rather than their reaction.
I’ve become very interested in observing mentally healthy people interact with blamers and see when it blaming does NOT work.
Dear JAH,
I think you bring up a good point, we SHOULD observe how mentally healthy people react or act rather than JUST looking at the NEGATIVE EXAMPLES of the disordered personalities.
CONFIDENTLY Validating our own realities without letting disordered others MANUVER US into accepting their disordered thinking as true is the key, I think, to us learning to act/react in a healthy manner as well.
Since, in many cases, my own I know, of accepting that blame and accepting being gaslighted is a life time pattern, it takes some doing to overcome and to acheive.
Looking back I remember one particular episode of gaslighting my egg donor did to be, even before I knew what “gaslighting” was, but she told me that she HAD TO LIE TO ME because if she had told the truth I would have “thrown a fit.” Actually, I knew for a fact that I would have disapproved of her actions (“loaning” money to the trojan horse psychopath, her caregiver) on ethical grounds alone but I would NOT have thrown a fit about it.
I kept trying to get her to believe me, after all, she could not “read my mind” and accurately “predict” what I would have done, and I felt it terribly UNFAIR that she thought she could and was acting as the “thought police”—the point was though, we got away from talking about HER LIE, and talking about and me DEFENDING MYSELF from her unjust and unfair “mind reading” (gaslighting) so the conversation was NO LONGER about HER LIE, what SHE DID WRONG and it was what SHE “KNEW” I had THOUGHT—of course, me denying that I had thought what it was she accused me of is impossible to defend. LOL At the time though, I remember the abject pain and emotional confusion I felt. She kept pressing on this and I kept up going along with it, trying desperately to prove to her she was wrong! Yea! that would have been as rare as a virgin birth!
The personality disordered are self trained in this tactic and they are quite good at it. If we are not confident in our own ability to analyze the situation, or if we are not aware of what is going on when they start to project the blame on to us for their bad behavior it is easy to fall for this tactic.
I’m getting better at this but still doesn’t always feel “natural” and I have to work at it.
Many times if this tactic doesn’t work, they will switch to the PITY PLOY, of how wounded and pitful they were and try to evoke the natural instincts in us “not to kick someone when they are down.” If blame projection doesn’t work, they have an alternative, but I am getting to where I can spot this too, and check my own urge to “help” them because they are so wounded and need my help to “fix” themselves.
I don’t know if these things will ever be accomplished by me without actively thinking about it, because it is “second nature” to me to “fall lfor” the guilt and the “pity ploy” but I am willing to use my BRAIN and logic to over come some emotional responses which lead into the FOG. (Fear, Obligation and Guilt)
Dear Oxy,
Unfortunately, I have to admit that after so many years with my mom, *I* picked up some of those techniques quite unconsciously and used them myself on her! And my husband! But I think there is a difference between me learning bad behaviors through example and having a personality disorder! I was able to stop and correct those behaviors.
Like you, doing the good stuff doesn’t always feel natural, in fact, sometimes I’m shaking inside, but I’m getting better.
I used to always fall for the “your to blame for me being a paraplegic” when I was five and then also growing up, mainly because I was there at five years old , in the middle of the night, when my psychopath father broke my psychopath mothers neck. She became a paraplegic. I thought it must be because i didn’t try to help her that I was to blame. Then they added that there was “something wrong with me” to tell everybody that that is what happened. So I added that to my core belief too.
Those core beliefs held me in good stead to be the skapegoat for every partner I ever had, after that, for the next 50 years!
When my murderous psychopath husband (who still roams free/wild)used to tell me he had ” only just pushed you ” and i was in hospital with broken bones and black eyes and broken nose and perforated ear drums, I would think to myself (shortly after getting out of hospital), “yes, he did only push me, there must be something wrong with me”.
The arrogance and contempt that the psychopath solicitor (another one of my partners that i was with many, many years later), was absolutely astounding. I have never seen anything like it in my life.
P.S.
The upside of this is that the my psychopath paraplegic mother and my psychopathic violent father are still together 50 years on. And she is the worse of the two! What a charmed life they must have had together! (NOT)
Tilly,
I am soooo sorry for all you have been through. Wow! I can imagine a documentary where each of us tells their story one after another. Maybe then people would get what a P is!
I admire your spirit!
Steve:
My S held me personally accountable for many of the world’s ills, including, but not limited to, global warming, erectile dysfunction, and, worst of all, not paying attention to my surroundings (translation: not paying enough attention to him and his demands).
Apparently he was right with respect to the last, or I would have noticed you in my living room, since you obviously had to be listening in to S’s personal blame game vis-a-vis me.
Gosh Matt…..I’m glad Global Warming and Erectile Dysfunction are your fault……I have been taking responsibility for these for years…..I was told I HAD TO by the ex S…..
So…..
Thanks for the ‘out’.