Chronic blamers are often hiding shame

Psychoanalyst Galit Atlas has a phrase she uses with patients: “Follow the blame to find the shame.”

Atlas, who treats adults haunted by early emotional wounds, argues that shame is an especially agonizing feeling to carry, and one of the hardest to talk about. Because it hurts so much, people defend against it. Instead of saying they feel small or bad, they insist someone else is at fault.

That is why she listens to chronic blaming not as information but as a signal. When someone always says it is not their fault, she hears a person trying not to feel shame. The blame is the defense. The shame is underneath.

She puts blame in a larger pattern. What we usually see in other people, and in ourselves, is not the feeling itself but the move to avoid it, she argues. With fear, we often see anger or shutdown rather than fear. With envy, we see devaluation rather than longing. Blame works the same way, covering a feeling the person does not want to face.

The catch, Atlas says, is that constant blamers often deny they blame. So people rarely notice this on their own. They learn it from other people.

If people keep telling you that you blame them all the time, take that seriously, she advises. That complaint is the moment to pause and ask whether shame is making it too painful to tolerate responsibility for having hurt someone. Phrases like “you did that to me” or “it’s because of you that I did that” are worth investigating, not as facts about the other person but as clues about yourself.