Am I blaming instead of feeling/dealing?

Dear EQuipped Leaders,

Hi!

Blame, the hot potato game of emotional avoidance. One of my all time favorite moves for escaping myself and my own feelings. Let’s talk about it!!!

Sometimes I get stressed. Can you relate?

When this happens, I usually need to feel:

Journal
Talk with a loved one about my messy feelings
Go for a walk (or if I’m real fired up, a run)
Admit that I’m a flawed human being
Thank my feeling and give it space to be here
Basically anything that helps me feel my feelings without losing it and screaming at everyone. (Or once I have lost it, and screamed at everyone, apologizing, and excusing myself to do one of these things, and coming back to repair the damage I caused.)

Then I need to deal:

Figure out what I need: what is this feeling really signaling, what is going on for me?
Get that need met myself. (For example, I’m shocked at how much building a little bit of fun into my week drastically reduces my normal levels of resentment. Who knew?)
Ask someone in my support network to help me get that need met.

This is the emotionally mature thing to do. Assume the best of myself, offer myself compassion, and make room for all my feels.

Assume the best of other people, offer them compassion, kindly set boundaries and ask them for what I need, appropriately.

It doesn’t always go down this way.

I get stressed, and it’s my husband and son’s fault because “Who could be calm in this disastrous house!?!”

I get insecure, and it’s my kid’s teacher’s fault because “How could she say he’s anything other than 100% perfect all of the time at his conference!?!”

I get tired, and it’s my fault because “Shouldn’t it be easier than this? Isn’t everyone else having an easier time of it? Why am I so bad at this?”

You know, dark spiral-y blame places.

No fun! So let’s EQuip ourselves with more tools to handle our stress. Instead of always reaching for that blame-thrower, my self-protective weapon, I can opt for an EQ tool instead.

In our EQuipped Classroom trainings, we teach self-awareness and self-regulation in 3 main components:

Climate: My Personality

Weather: My Emotions

Storms: My Stress

As I grow my self-awareness, I’m learning that when things get stressy and stormy for me, I tend to reach for my blame-thrower:

This stress storm hurts and scares me and makes me feel vulnerable and like a failure. I don’t want to feel that way. I want to feel on top of it, have it together, be crushing it. So…this must be (looks around wildly and points a finger randomly) all YOUR fault!

I’ve started noticing this self-protective move in small children. Have you ever seen this? A kid gets hurt, feels pain, cries, and then their hurt shifts to anger, and the kid starts angrily blaming someone with them? It’s wild to watch. Blame gives us this short term out. Feeling pain is scary, and I don’t ever want to feel this again. So if I can blame someone and try to hold them responsible, maybe I can prevent facing the reality that sometimes pain just happens to us no matter what we do.

Who do you tend to blame when stress storms roll into your life?

A spouse?

A daughter?

A boss?

A student?

A colleague?

The car in front of you who just decided to turn left here! How could they?!?

Blame happens. It might help us survive the moment, but eventually we all have to own our own feelings, stress, and issues. Circle back, apologize, and try to do better tomorrow.

I’m not great at this, but I’m getting a little bit better all the time. I still reach for the blame-thrower first, but I’m starting to notice it more often and even starting to (sometimes) put it down before I cause more damage.

Would you like to learn concrete ways to engage and disengage with your stress without blame-throwing?

It’s the season for perusing your summer reading options. Might I suggest picking The EQ Intervention paired with a lovely book club with me? In person or virtual. One time or four one-hour sessions sprinkled throughout your school year. Let’s find a format that best suits your faculty’s needs: