“Admitting he may be somewhat at fault, he is sure that other people are more to blame.” (Page 61, Big Book)
Blame is one of the chief tools of the ego.
Sometimes it is other people who are blamed.
Sometimes, the blame is accommodated ‘in-house’ but attributed to some internal characteristic beyond the scope of the individual’s responsibility. Other people are then given the job of taking up the slack or picking up the pieces.
I used to cite psychological symptoms or disorders as explanations for my behaviour. In a sense, I wasn’t wrong, as the symptom or disorder really was there, but I was treating the fact of a psychological symptom or disorder as something in the order of a mole or a defective heart valve, in other words an immutable feature that I—and others—simply had to get used to.
The symptoms and disorders were really my responsibility, though, and with patience and labour remarkable change is possible.
I can’t change my first response to a situation, but I can change my response to that response. In other words, I can change what I do next. As my habits change, my first response also changes. It turns out the first response is not neurologically conditioned but merely an approximation of all my prior choices, the way typing software will sometimes make a guess based on what you typically type.
In other words, it’s remarkable what can change.