There is folk wisdom that says, when you point a finger at someone there are three fingers pointing back. Essentially when I am blaming someone what I am experiencing them doing is aggravating a part of myself that I can’t bear.

It’s the feeling tone of blame that needs noticing. It’s aggravated and cross.

A dear friend of mine can veer into being opinionated and domineering towards me and others. It was getting me down. I was in a depleted state through over work, and I knew if I complained about his behaviour we’d just get into reactive argument. But I felt stuck and occupied by my him and my complaint.

In this state I’ve mislocated an experience of mine in another, here in my friend. I can ‘prove’ the rightness of my observations about him, but that’s not the point, it’s my crossness about it that locates it as something in myself I can’t bear. 

My mind will tend to rant righteously about my complaint. Noticing the obsessive quality, the repetitiveness, is useful, obsessions are displacements, the object of the obsession is never the actual matter that needs attention.

It’s always hard work bringing my attention back to myself, to recover myself.

I love walking and making drawings, and I’d let this slide. When I am out of the regular practice of drawing I can feel insecure about its value, which is that it brings me into presence.  I spent a day walking and sketching, and came back to myself.

Sometime after my return I found myself able to refer to his behaviour without crossness in my voice, he heard me, protested his innocence a bit, but softened and calmed.

Confronting only has a chance of working if it’s done without a trace of self-righteousness.  If the feeling tone is angry (hurt) the chances are is that it will result in reactivity, which is contagious; two unintegrated selves butting heads.

I had been stuck in blaming his bossiness because I wasn’t being pushy enough with myself doing something I love in this case drawing.

Even though know about this, the useless of blame, I can still get stuck in it, sometimes I am able to get quite quickly what the other person’s behaviour is triggering in me that I can’t bear, other times it can take minutes, hours or weeks.  The point is, like so much in psychological life, it’s a matter of getting things wrong and recovering, again!