The Cycle of Self-Blame

“Maybe I was born lazy?”

“Maybe I just need to try harder?”

As wandering minds, we often consider our troubles moral in nature. Maybe we were somehow ”born lazy”.  If we could only muster more willpower or discipline, we’d be fine.

Holding things in mind “harder”, trying one list after the next, creating a sea of post-it notes, blaring reminders, and a barely balanced set of files on the desktop—all collapse into piles of incomplete projects and missed opportunities, each resonating more shame.

Trying Harder and Harder

“Just trying harder” is like someone who is near-sighted trying to see better by wanting to. It doesn’t work and often leaves us feeling worse, like squinting until we get headaches.

Often, the world around us, not recognizing this sense of the magnified now (see the first in Story of a Wandering Mind series), never experiencing what that could possibly mean, views these collisions and misplacements as motivationally based, rather than experientially.

The conclusion is that we are morally flawed. We hear some version of,

“If you really cared, you wouldn’t forget”.

both from others and ourselves. And so, once again, we muster up the courage and try again.

With each error, we yell louder, not only through self-recrimination, but in those seas of sticky notes and reminders, demands in all caps like “DO HOMEWORK!” or angry questions like,

“Why can’t you just do it?!”

Maybe if we yelled at ourselves enough, that’ll fix the problem?

A Downward Spiral

In other words, we leverage shame. 

It can work.

For example,

I missed an appointment! Next week I shouldn’t because I’m going to feel bad enough to remember. 

And then if you miss that one…

How about if I just feel worse? Maybe that’ll do it.

The trouble is that leveraging shame, beyond the major pain it inflicts on ourselves, injures us further. We now have not only feelings of guilt and shame, but also a constant worry of gathering more guilt and shame simply by trying.  The world, therefore, becomes increasingly painful and dangerous.

All of these attacks and self-recriminations build over time. At a gut level, we regularly receive the message that the world is a place that we are incapable of navigating.

And that it stems from our moral failing.

Empty Mind as a Stronger Organizer

What’s missing is the central notion that we can organize based on having things genuinely off of our mind. This Getting Things Done concept is still tried and true.

Rather than use shame and guilt to try to keep things in mind, what if we had a method of putting the things we want to be reminded of when and where they would be useful? Further, that everything we’d need to engage were in reach?

For example, if you knew that the appointment reminder would appear, clear of other distractions, with enough time to wrap up what you were doing–could you not then consciously let it go?

Of course, this is easier said than done.  There are a number of skills to here to practice, such as being able to wrap something up, clearing space to have reliable reminders and the like. But these are learnable skills.

– Kourosh

PS For those caught in this cycle, know that you’re not alone—and that there are gentler, more effective ways to begin guiding your focus.  As this series continues, I hope to continue my argument of how a visit-based system, can become a nidus for change.