Chapter 8: It Was My Fault

“Sometimes I just want to paint the words "It's my fault" across my forehead to save people the time of being pissed off at me.” ― Christina Westover

Gerald, aged 10, was walking home from school. The weather was nice and rather than hang out with his friends at the shops he decided to walk along the river and skim stones across the surface of the water. The way he used to with his dad.

As he stepped off the curb to cross the road to get to the river, a car sped through the red traffic light and knocked him over at full speed. The car continued to speed off, leaving Gerald on the road in a heap, helpless. Gerald laid still on the road, unconscious until he was quickly discovered by another motorist. He woke up in hospital with lifelong injuries to his spine and legs. A week later, Gerald and his family were told that he was unable to walk again due to the irreparable damage.

A boy of 10 had just been told that he will never walk again. Gerald’s family and friends felt the extreme helplessness akin to Gerald when he laid motionless on the ground after the car hit him. Waves of guilt crashed through them all. One by one they all said, “It was my fault!”

Gerald said it was his fault for taking that route home and stepping off the pavement when he did. His mum said it was her fault for deciding he was old enough to walk home from school. His dad said it was his fault for showing Gerald how and where to skim stones along the river. His friends felt it was their fault for not insisting that Gerald stay with them at the shops or for not going with him.

Following this traumatic event guilt consumed each and every one of them. They needed to answer the question that trauma asks of all its victims “Why did it happen?”

It is clear from the story above that negligence on behalf of the driver is the reason for the accident occurring. We can rationalise from an objective viewpoint that there would have been no accident had the car not gone through the light. Poor Gerald happened to just be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Yet it is very possible we have all been in a position where our only response to trauma is to blame ourselves for its occurrence. Even when we are the victim of it.

How do we feel guilty for another person’s actions? Trauma can’t just happen. There has to be a reason for it.

At times it is inconceivable to believe that the cause and effect of trauma exists outside of the victim. This horrible thing that affects our survival cannot just simply materialise through the fabric of life. So we fill in the blanks. We the victim affect the sequence and therefore it is our fault. It didn’t just happen, we made it happen. To think anything else is just far too scary. Especially for a child! Trauma is learned by a child as the understanding that this is what life is. This is how life works and to make sense of it is to believe that trauma is life. Everything outside of this narrative for a child is confusing, distrustful & frightening.

When trauma is complex and ongoing, it exists relationally to others. In childhood trauma, there often exists a perpetrator who commits physical and/or emotional abuse onto another over a period of time. The role of guilt or shame is present both within and after trauma. Guilt and shame in its most destructive sense ironically becomes a safety mechanism to stop trauma from happening.

Internalised guilt will often say, “Your actions are wrong!” and internalised shame will say, “Who you are is wrong!”. It elevates those external to you to be both judge and jury to who you are and what you did. The punishment they deliver - trauma.

I read somewhere that children who were abused in childhood have a strong tendency to people-please. My people-pleasing was a learned safety mechanism to stop or lessen further abuse from being inflicted. Even as an adult, it was my submission to others and a willingness to cooperate on their terms. Often it was misconstrued as just wanting to be liked by another. Actually it was my learned communication of defencelessness, fear and disconnection of self. My fear wasn’t saying no. I was communicating my internalised fear from my past when I did not act the way the perpetrator needed me to.

I’ve learnt that pleasing people has many different layers to it. One of which is that it acts partly as an admission of guilt on behalf of the victim. It says to the world, “Being myself was the cause of my abuse”. People-pleasing after child abuse communicates to others, “It was my fault!”

Internalised guilt and shame is used to restrict authenticity within the victim. In trauma, there has to be a cause and there has to be an effect. “It was my fault” narrates that the cause was due to the victim and the effect is solely the punishment that follows. Perfectionism acts in the exact same way. If the victim is faultless, there is no punishment.

So why isn’t the perpetrator the reason for the trauma? A narrative is internalised following complex trauma. The relational trauma can be coupled with psychological or emotional abuse. The leftover residue following trauma is to feel incredibly guilty and find it alien to appropriate responsibility to the perpetrator. There are many reasons for this, a lot of which are individual to the person and the trauma they experienced. Some are below:

• The perpetrator always said that you were the reason for the trauma.

• You were left feeling guilty because you were unable to stop the trauma.

• You compared yourself to the perpetrator and felt they were better than you.

• To “save” the perpetrator from your emotions and the fallout that may follow.

• To prevent any further traumatic actions from taking place.

• To try and move on or block out the traumatic memories.

Healing does not come from blame. The same blaming language we give ourselves offers no more healing to us if we transfer it onto another. It will only serve to give short-term gratification but it doesn’t release us from the emotional effects of trauma. It keeps us stuck in the same psychological state the trauma left us in.

Although there is great justification and willingness to do it, sadly, life does not move on for the person who continually blames themselves or others for the trauma they experienced. Blaming himself or the car owner does nothing to restore the use of Gerald’s legs or help him learn to live life without the use of them.

So to heal from trauma and proceed to live our lives, we have to learn the full story of trauma and use compassion to navigate safety and understanding following it. Understanding with compassion alleviates blame, guilt and shame. In single instances of trauma, understanding with compassion allows for the grieving of what happened and how life could have been. Rather than being stuck in guilt, it allows for sadness, anger, helplessness and grief.

When the trauma is ongoing, compassion is the voice that tells you over and over again, it was not your fault! It continues to fight off messages from guilt and shame that consistently tell you that it was your fault and you are wrong. Compassion doesn’t just come to you. It comes with the true understanding of trauma which exists beyond what your mind tells you of it.

When your mind asks you why, compassion asks how. How can a child affect the actions of an adult? How might the cause of abuse exist outside of you? How was it your fault? How did it happen to you? How did you get through it? How did you overcome it? How are you to blame? How do you repair yourself from the damage that trauma did to you? How do you live your life following on from the trauma that took place?

Compassion turns the language from accusatory and blaming, to growth and development. While guilt firmly traps you in the same place, compassion allows you to feel through the emotions from trauma to find your innocence.

Please feel free to comment underneath or get in touch through the details on my website if you want to share anything about what I’ve written. Find out more about me here if you’d like to but in the meantime, look after yourself!

Watch out for the next blog post titled, ‘Chapter 9: Becoming the Abuser’.