“It’s All My Fault” – When You Can’t Do Anything Right
Dr. Sheri Jacobson
March 3, 2023
by Andrea M. Darcy
Find yourself saying ‘it’s all my fault’ whenever something goes wrong?Do you live with an endless sense of guilt and shame? And blame yourself for every relationship conflict?
The problem with deciding “it’s all my fault”
Taking responsibility when we have chosen an action that upsets others can be a sign of maturity, and shows respect for those around us.
But we all make mistakes, not just you. And conflict is a group effort.
So it’s simply not possible or realistic that everything is all your fault, all the time.
Which means often, self-blame isn’t about taking responsibility at all. It’s instead an unconscious way to avoid facing the reality of the situations you find yourself in.
By taking the blame, you neatly sidestep any further conversation or analysis of what has happened.
And always saying it’s your fault is also a form of self-abuse. You push yourself into so much guilt and shame you are paralysed, unable to grow and change.
The price of always taking the blame
It can help to see constant self-blame as a sort of reverse psychological projection.
Usually, with projection, we put a quality we don’t like onto another person to avoid seeing it in ourself. Suddenly they are the dishonest one, the rude one.
By: Mills Baker
In this case, you project your good traits onto the other. They are kind and flawless, and you are the monster.
But this claiming of all the blame blocks the other person from sharing their own truth about the situation. They can’t face their own responsibility and grow and learn from what has happened. The result can often be that the other person becomes increasingly frustrated, feels trapped, and pulls away.
Your relationships remain stuck in an often dramatic pattern of claiming fault/begging for forgiveness, instead of working through challenges together and creating real connection.
The result? You feel lonely, unloved, and even more of a terrible, shameful person who must therefore always be at fault. And the cycle continues.
The hidden benefits of always using self-blame
If self-blame leaves us feeling lonely and stuck, then why would we continue to use it?
Personal coaching would suggest that if we want to stop a habit, we must first accept the benefits it gives us. What would be the benefits of always taking the blame?
1.You get to feel sorry for yourself.
When you blame yourself, you actually victimise yourself. It’s a backwards way to go into ‘poor me’ mode.
2. You gain attention.
And when we feel sorry for ourselves, it forces the other to feel sorry for us, too. It might not be the best way to get attention, but it does the trick.
3. You maintain control.
This might be hard to accept, but the truth about always claiming responsibility is that it is manipulative. You constantly block the other person from deciding how things will go, and you use sympathy to make sure they don’t pull away and leave you.
By: Leland Francisco
4. It gives you power.
So effectively, always claiming ‘it’s all my fault’ ends up a way to have power over another. It might be hard to believe when you have such low self-esteem that you’d want power over another. But low self-esteem can mean we want the power to stop other people hurting or abandoning us.
5. You can avoid changing.
If we always take the blame, then we don’t have to experience new emotions or new conversations.
6. You don’t have to be vulnerable.
Accepting someone else has perhaps wronged you (even if not meaning to) can mean you must allow yourself to feel hurt and vulnerable. Using self-blame means you can resort to shame instead of vulnerability.
Why am I the sort of person who always feels ‘its’ all my fault’?
Nobody is born thinking that everything is all their fault. It’s something we somehow learn from the experiences we have, or decide to believe because of the way those experiences make us feel.
Often a habit of self-blaming comes from a childhood trauma. If we are abused, neglected, abandoned, or lose someone we loved, our childlike brain can find no understanding of what has happened other than to think, ‘it is something I did somehow, it’s all my fault’. And our brain takes this assumption as fact (called having a ‘core belief’ in psychology). It then applies it to any other difficult thing that comes along, until it is a pattern we carry into adulthood.
Self-blame can also come from certain types of parenting that don’t allow us to be ourselves. If you were, for example, shown love when you were ‘good’ or ‘quiet’ but shunned, criticised, or punished if you dared to be angry or sad or show a different opinion, then you would take on the idea that you have a ‘bad’ side. If you show that side, well, then…anything that goes wrong is ‘all your fault’.
Why is it so hard to stop feeling it’s all my fault?
Blaming ourselves can be quite addictive. Addictions tend to grow when we are using something to avoid emotional pain.
And even though on the surface blaming yourself seems to be about making yourself feel many things (worthless, bad, no good, furious at yourself) what we often are doing is avoiding feeling the one emotion that our childhood trauma would have caused – sadness.
How can I break this pattern of always feeling it’s all my fault?
If you find you can’t stop feeling everything is all your fault, it might be time to seek support. Counsellors and psychotherapists are trained at helping you find the root of your shame and self-blame. They create a safe space to process old experiences and repressed emotions. And they help you learn and practise ways of relating that don’t involve the default setting of deciding it’s all your fault.
Therapies you might want to try to end cycles of self-blame include:
- compassion-focused therapy
- cognitive analytic therapy (CAT)
- cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT)
- mentalisation-based therapy (MBT)
- mindfulness-based cognitive therapy
- schema therapy
- transactional analysis.
Contact our Harley Therapy clinics where we connect you with top therapists in central London including Harley Street. Or find an affordable therapist anywhere in the UK via our new sister site harleytherapy.com
Andrea M. Darcy is a health and wellbeing writer as well as mentor who often writes about trauma, relationships, and ADHD. Find her on Instgram @am_darcy
I was wondering if you can recommend any books to read to address this feeling of “Its all my fault” specifically to a parenting style
Hi Melinda, it’s a good question. Unfortunately we can’t think of a book that addresses just this. But you might find some research on attachment theory and anxious attachment interesting, as well as codependent parenting.
In my dealing with this in myself, I found that using the Al-Anon model, and replacing “Alcohol” with “chaos” (guilt, blame, & other terms work too), helped me recover some. I learned that it’s statistically impossible for everything to always be my fault as my parents, partners, & sometimes other community members would make me feel; then weeding out some of the not so great traits with their step 4 guide workbook helped me find the roots of why I thought & felt like this. I’m far from cured, but I’m far less codependent for it, & I’d like to think that I’m a better (not perfect & don’t want to be perfect) parent for it. Has Harley Therapy thought about putting together a book on this matter, or even your own 12 step self help guide?
Hi Aingel, we are really glad that 12-steps worked for you, thanks for sharing. It certainly helps a lot of people. It is not the approach we take, so we won’t be doing a guide, but we do feel that what matters is that people find what works for them.
Sounds like bullcrap to me it’s my fault because I can’t do anything right and I fuckeverythung up not because of something in my childhood
And sounds like a deeply help limiting belief to us. Which is formed…. in childhood ;).
How would one identify whether the blame that we assign to ourselves is warranted or not. Whether we actually are to blame in a particular situation or whether we are just indulging in self-blame as a coping mechanism?
From personal experience, as a child I avoided taking responsibility for just about anything but once I got older, I understood that I needed to take responsibility for my actions and the lack of them as well (Vestigial catholic guilt there)
Wouldn’t taking responsibility actually mean that one is more mature and trying to make things right at that point of time rather than trying to exert control?
When we are blaming ourselves as a coping mechanism it’s not that we don’t know it’s illogic, it’s that we can’t stop feeling guilty for it. We know that it’s not entirely our fault that our marriage fell apart, our partner wasn’t perfect, but then our thoughts keep returning to all we did wrong. Coping mechanisms don’t mean we are stupid, just that we are trapped in ways of dealing with stress. Taking responsibility for something we know we did wrong is indeed required to be a responsible mature adult. Best, HT
How do you move past the childhood trauma? Something happened when I was 10 and my sister has blamed me for it and still does to this day, I’m 38. So I’ve always believed it was my fault and carried the shame & guilt around with me. I’ve became a people pleaser and internalise everything. I was in a car accident a few years ago that wasn’t my fault but I’m still reliving it and blaming myself for what happened. I just seem to have to many issues I don’t know where to start to work through any of them. I use to apologise just for breathing. My mental health is not good.
I’ve tried to get help, but I always feel like I just wallpaper over the cracks, how I feel is normal to me. No interests, no life, no relationship intimate or platonic. The only connections I’ve had was with my mother & grandfather and he’s just past away and I don’t feel anything. It’s just like I’m messed up & should be able to do or feel something, anything.
Hi Toni, have you heard of ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ mode? When the brain experiences stress, it chooses one of these modes. If we have complex PTSD from trauma, we can constantly be in one, and sounds like you are often in ‘freeze’. You are frozen, unable to invest in relationships, for example. So you say you have tried therapy. The problem is that if we are deeply traumatised then some forms of therapy can just make us feel… worse! It wasn’t recognised until quite recently. And some counsellors, no matter how well meaning, don’t know how to stabilise a person with trauma issues. You first need a therapy that helps stabilise your brain’s response to even thinking about your past, otherwise you’ll constantly be triggered. And then you need to work with a therapist who works with trauma. We have an article here on therapies for trauma http://bit.ly/therapyfortrauma. Therapies that help you stabilise include EMDR, BWRT, clinical hypnotherapy and CBT, as the article details. Finally, there are some things you can do for yourself. Mindfulness meditation, really committing to a practise, is shown to help. We have an easy guide here http://bit.ly/mindfulnessallabout. And journalling to heal is also great http://bit.ly/journalmentalhealth. Finally, educate yourself on recovering from trauma and c-PTSD. There are many self help books. We’d also recommend learning about the incredible power of self compassion http://bit.ly/selfcompassionHT. But really do try to find support again, as trauma needs it to be overcome, particularly the therapies that help you stabilise that literally work on calming down your brain and mind. Change is possible. Don’t give up. Best, HT.
I have just see a prime example of this in myself. Some damage happened in the property I am currently renting. One was a hob that hadn’t worked for two weeks. I thought I may have broken it and because of shame and fear I did not ring the owner but just used the oven thinking that I would deal with it later and see if it needed an engineer. But the desire to hide was overwhelming and then when the wind broke a aluminium patio door, – so I could not lock it when I leave in three days time. A completely sleepless night fretting and feeling the familiar fear in stomach. I broke down and pleaded and cried on the phone for someone to help with these problems. To no avail as it was a weekend so close to Christmas. I broke down in front of two lovely young people who told me that the houses always have problems and to phone the owner and not take responsibility for something that was not my fault. I phoned the owner as I couldn’t bear to leave her without a cooker for Christmas and an open house. Again I became very upset and she was the loveliest girl in the world. Told me how to work the hob and said she was going to sent so and so to fix the door. She said she had plenty of lovely neighbors who would keep an eye on the place until it was fixed. She also said she was having a family Christmas where her home is. I am exhausted now and so is my daughter and friends who must wonder what the heck happened to me but I suddenly realised it was a terrified child, I think about 7 years old so incomprehensible and afraid of retribution. I realise that during all this time that should have been happy there was a little mite inside me afraid to put a foot wrong but I do’t remember why.
Liz, we totally get all of this. What we want to say here is that it sounds like classic anxiety disorder. We can’t diagnose based on a comment, but with anxiety, our mind goes on addictive loops of worse case scenarios, and, most of all, our body is flooded with fear. You went into total fear. Physical symptoms of anxiety include sleep disruption, upset stomach, muscle tension….when we have anxiety, it’s out of our control. Our brain triggers into fight, flight, or fear, and we are on a cortisol/adrenaline high and our mind goes nuts. Sounds familiar we imagine! We feel it would be a very, very good idea to get some help with all this. The thing about anxiety is that you can get help with it and things can really change. There is a short term therapy called CBT, you don’t even have to talk about your past, it focuses directly on helping you retrain your brain into balanced thinking and teaches you how to stop your thoughts from taking control of your actions (such as hiding, which is a coping mechanism). Research shows it helps anxiety. Other things that can help include clinical hypnotherapy. If there is any chance you have c-PTSD (which we think is also worth looking into as you mention a challenging childhood )which is a long term PTSD like condition created by a difficult childhood that has us living in constant anxiety, then you might want to also look into EMDR (eye movement desensitisation and reprogramming). Hope that doesn’t sound too overwhelming. In summary, anxiety is a condition that is beyond our control, so don’t beat yourself up over this, gather up your courage and seek some support! Best, HT.
I can’t help it. I know where it comes from but when I feel I’m being neglected I just think somethings wrong with me or I did something wrong.
Some of you are extremely judgemental and I accept constructive criticism because I want to fix whatever is wrong with me. I have begged to know what’s wrong with me but everyone says nothing so why do they treat me so badly or leave me?
Y’all really need to learn empathy.
Hi Amanda, it’s interesting how even in this comment you’ve managed to call out for help and support then unanimously almost aggressively lash out/push back. At people, readers, you’ve never even met. Without realising it you might be pushing people away if this comment is anything to go by. We sense a lot of anger. This happens. We aren’t judging, we are suggesting that you need to learn empathy, too, for yourself most of all. The real issue is that you believe there is something wrong with you. You aren’t offering empathy to yourself. Counselling could go a long way to help with all this. We hope you gather up your courage and get some support to gain some clarity on all this. What happens is we get so caught up in our thoughts we assume they are true, unable to see how we are making assumptions and acting in ways that lead us away instead of towards what we want. Our real, loving, kind self gets buried. But all this can change with commitment and hard work. Best, HT.
Life is a complete mystery. There just doesn’t seem to be any answers. There’s just nothing in life for me. Therapy sucks. No one understands. My life is Hell.
Yes, you are right. Therapy does suck sometimes, life can be hell, and sometimes we aren’t understood. Absolutely. But then sometimes therapy works and is amazing, life is surprising and joyful, and people get us. Life is not black and white. When we are depressed, our mind can get addicted to black and white thinking, but it’s a cognitive distortion. Not reality. Life is many shades of grey, or multi coloured, but not black or white. You’ve got to make the choice you want to get out of the black and white trap, and commit to moving forward even though there will definitely be days that feel like hell, lonely, and like nothing is working.
I can’t, I can’t stop. I can’t stop the guilt, I can’t stop apologizing, I can’t stop shaking and crying.
Why does no one tell me what I did wrong, why does no one tell me what they want from me? They just mistreat me for not being that. It’s a shitty rigged game to make me kill myself.
Hi there Guilherme, sounds like you are a sensitive, emotional soul who feels deeply and finds life difficult. Some of us are born more sensitive, and then have a childhood that doesn’t leave us with much self esteem, or teach us how to navigate the world as a sensitive soul. We end up adults who are more fragile than other people, who can live with a distorted belief that everyone against us, and even, without realising it, choose to surround ourselves with the wrong sorts of people. It’s a very lonely, hard experience. If there was trauma as a child, if we feel that everyone else has an emotional ‘skin’ we seem to lack, we might even find out we have what is called ’emotional dyregulation’, where we go from 0 to 100 emotionally in several seconds. And if we also have a really big fear of being rejected and abandoned, and often threaten suicide, we might even have ’emotionally unstable personality disorder’, also referred to as ‘borderline personality disorder’ (we don’t know you, we aren’t implying this is you, we are just explaining about emotional sensitivity for all readers seeing this stream). These things can be helped, there are even certain kinds of therapy that focus just on this sort of issue. As for where to start right now, sometimes it’s with some good questions. When you are again in a calm state of mind, you might want to ask, is it really true that it’s all just other people? And that it’s up to them to realise I don’t know what they want? Do I have any responsibility here? Am I more powerful than I realise? Am I making any assumptions? Or are these thoughts actually facts? Sometimes our emotions can distort things. We can think people are angry with us when they aren’t, even. And the other issue is that just as you can’t read their minds, to know if they think you did something ‘wrong’, they can’t read your mind. They might have no idea you feel all guilty and upset. So what has to happen is learning positive communication skills, where we learn how to calmly, without blame, ask people to explain things to us, in ways that get us useful answers. So we’d highly suggest that you need some support to learn how to regulate your emotions before it gets to threatening suicide, and learn how to communicate in ways that get your needs met so you avoid this level of emotional breakdown and the exhaustion it brings. That you’d highly benefit from therapy that helps with emotional sensitivity and suicidal ideation, we have an article on therapies that help here http://bit.ly/BPDtreatment. Also do know that if you are ever feeling like hurting yourself, it’s a great idea to call a free mental health help line, they are confidential and the trained volunteers can be really helpful, here’s a list of those in the UK http://bit.ly/mentalhelplines. In summary, you don’t have to live this way, always feeling crashing, horrifying lows where you feel hated and unloved. Therapy can really help. we do hope you reach out for support. Best, HT.
Can I check tjat is possible to still comment on here and recive feedback?..
Hi Claire, yes we do look at comments several times a week and respond to questions about articles. Do note we can’t offer free counselling via comments, as that is not fair to you, as people are more complicated than a comment. If you have a serious issue that is worrying you, it’s always best to go see a counsellor who can create a safe space to truly explore things with you. Best, HT.
This is so interesting reading the questions and comments. I came to this site looking to find out why I feel that I am responsible for everything that goes wrong. As a manager I try to help my team find solutions but when it’s out of our control or if I can’t I feel terrible and blame myself. I hate to see others in pain and want to take their pain away by blaming myself for not being able to help them. It is a very disabling and strange feeling and I am left feeling completely out of control.
Hi Jennifer, that’s an interesting situation. We’d ask some good questions here. Is it only at work this happens? Does this ever happen, say, with intimate relationships? Partner, friends? What about your family? Do you also feel responsible there? We’d then look for the root of this pattern. We’d explore whether it’s about control or about avoiding things you judge as ‘pain’ or ‘negative’ and where that fear of things being painful or negative comes from. Is this about work at all, or is it a bigger picture that needs looking at? If you really feel it is just about work, then it would be interesting to look at why you feel so anxious at work and where that comes from. In other words, instead of a problem, we’d see this as your mind/being trying to speak out and get your attention, to help you help yourself, trying to red flag that there are things that need dealing with. So in a way it’s an opportunity, does that make sense? Definitely something worth doing a bit of counselling over, if your workplace provided insurance for some sessions. Best, HT.
i am suffering from intense shame and guilt. An year back I met a person through an online matchmaking website. We started talking and i was drawn to him so intensely and so quickly that i hardly had any chance. we never had audio call, he would video call me once in a while and i would wait everyday for it. but it was only once in a while. I would always text him first and then for 8 months we talked only through texts i wanted him to call but he would not, After four months of talking he told me he had not talked to his parents yet. I asked him to do so. Two months after that he said that he talked to his parents but they didn’t respond.. He also told me that he was in a relationship with a girl but it did not work out due to family reasons. He said he respects my feelings. I felt frustrated whether to stay or leave. after 3 months i again asked and he said he talked to his parents twice and got no response. I am caught in a loop. He says to me that you are a nice girl and i respect your feelings. Some ten days back he said that he can’t promise me anything and he cant help himself and he has been going through personal and professional problems. Now when i am trying to move on, I am feeling huge guilt.
Hi there Meher. So just clarifying if we understand correctly, you were waiting for this man to marry you? But you never even met him once. We are then curious about what you feel guilty about. Is it that you are moving on? If anything he should feel guilty. Very. Sounds like you were led on and he never had any intent of anything serious but was potentially using you as a sort of escape from his unhappiness or using you as a distraction. You say “I hardly had any chance”. But it’s up to you to decide who is worthy of your time and energy as we get what we think we deserve in life. We’d suggest that you deserve someone who is honest, clearly single, clearly available, who agrees to meet you quickly. The moment you are hunting and waiting, you are in an addictive cycle, and that bit is about you, not him, so it’s worth taking a look also at your own beliefs about love and your self worth, what you think you deserve. We advise you read our article on an attraction to people who are unavailable here https://www.harleytherapy.co.uk/counselling/emotionally-unavailable.htm. In summary, you owe this man nothing. But you owe yourself more than this, no? Best, HT.
I’m scared to make mistake. I want to be loved but I can’t trust others and also can’t see the reason for anyone to love me. I can’t stop worrying about disappointing my parents. To the point that if my sister have a child, they will be even more disappointed in me. Im a failure
Hi M, sounds like you have a lot of anxiety and are suffering from low self-esteem. This level of worry and self-criticism doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s often connected to life experiences, such as our childhood or the environments we grew up in. So we’d highly suggest you reach out for support. Attending counselling would be very helpful for you. We don’t know your age or situation, but you can always see if your school offers free or low cost counselling or your workplace insurance covers it if you are older and working. We also have an article here on how to find free and low cost counselling. http://bit.ly/lowcosttherapy
I just think “its me” “i am the problem ” because if other people can get along with the people i don’t like or butt heads with then i am the problem and unable to tolerate others. I make friends and lose friends. I have good professional relationships until they want to know me then i go awkward because outside of work i feel very vague about who iam or what i like. I’ll always remember my sister say “at least i am not boring ” when i was 19 and i always think she was and is right…i am boring and plain and why do people like me? I am now 38 and still boring with no excitement even though i have a loving family. I can’t see beyond having nothing to my personality. I feel phony and want others to like me, especially those who show less interest towards me.
Hi. Stumbled upon this site and it really helps me alot but I can’t seem to find any of the solutions easy to do. I have a girlfriend and anytime we have an argument and I pull the blame to myself, she gets angry and sad all over again. I don’t know what to do. I don’t want to lose this girl and I don’t ever want her to think she’s the problem because she can never be. It would always be me. If it’s not my fault, people would be unhappy. Everyone around me might then leave me. I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to die alone.
This is all me, I can’t have an argument/discussion without blaming myself. I’m finally realising at 30 how traumatic my childhood was, from the constant beatings to threats it was alot. As the eldest I was expected to act wiser than my years, I was raised by a mother who would not take accountability so I had to shoulder the blame for most things and a father who was and still is emotionally unavailable. To be on their good side I would people please and do everything possible to gain their approval. I never really got the chance to be individual or think for myself. They have controlled my life entirely even to who I dated and now who I marry. I expressed how I felt finally and I wanted to leave and my parents are more concerned about how they appear and have threatened to disown me. I’m in the worst of places right now and feel like I am the cause of all of this.
i am feeling excite to read this because it’s not my fault always i have a great plan to solve this social problem it’s one of my future project i gonna work on thank you for your comment it asset for me……..10Qall
Thanks for the article. I’d be grateful if you could expand a little on something that initially seems quite contradictory and even accusatory to me. I assume the first part where you talk about there being benefits such as wanting attention, avoiding emotional pain, getting others to feel sorry for you is in reference to if a person shows very externalised self blame and in every interaction outwardly states this as a form of control, which I have certainly seen in some people. I’m not sure what you have experienced in terms of people’s stories and life experiences but I feel a fair proportion who struggle with self blame would not externalise it and would carry on in an outwardly practical and pragmatic way and not tell others they feel that way, it just happens immediately and actually causes them to withdraw or not burden others rather than try to manipulate others. Perhaps its my own trigger, it just felt immediately very blaming towards people who probably already doubt their perceptions and will internalise any remark about their behaviours being manipulative. I’m struggling to marry the first part of the article with the following part which advises self compassion for trauma. Perhaps it’s my own experience, but I grew up being accused of things I didn’t do constantly, there were lies all the time, perceptions about big things changed and one my biggest struggles has been trying not to see myself as this inherently manipulative person I was told I was as a child. Whilst I agree we should be accountable for what we do, and be able to acknowledge that some protective behaviours from childhood can seem manipulative and should be corrected, it seems strange that same sentiment is written what feels like quite an accusatory way and telling people that the reason they self blame (even if no one else sees it) is because they want attention or sympathy. It feels quite similar to a lot of modern psychology that seems to over confidently tell people these things without thought for the complexity of each individual.
I can list out 10000 things about being in a relationship and self blame.
I always feel like it’s my fault, too. Sometimes, I even feel like I’m the only one to have this long cycle of childhood misunderstanding. I have an extreme amount of self-loathing and blame.To punish myself, I take it far. Like, big time.To do this, I partake in self-harming atrocities such as banging my head until I open a scab, caused by repetitive headbanging, and leave blood on the surface I banged my head on, psycologically harming and insulting myself until I look in the mirror and recognize my face as if it was one from a stranger… until I found this miracle of an article. I have finally found the origin of this war within myself, and can now I can tell my therapist the truth and be free… Although, it pains me in the heart to realize my beloved parents are part of the root or cause of the whole problem… my loved ones.
I can really relate to the struggle of self-blame discussed here. I used to hold myself responsible for things that went wrong in my life, even when it was out of my control. I remember feeling overwhelmed by guilt after a friendship ended, thinking it was entirely my fault. It took therapy for me to realize that everyone makes mistakes and that it’s okay to let go of that burden.
It’s comforting to read that so many people are disturbed much in the same way I am. I always like to feel that I am smart enough to figure out why I act the way I do, yet I get trapped. Everything you say makes perfect sense. I seem to be a typical case. As an “elderly” person, living in this state all my life, it’s not comfortable, but I’m used to it.