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Blame Won't Keep You From Being Harmed

If it were just useless, blame wouldn't be so bad. But we consider it one of the most damaging and dangerous concepts that has crept into self-defense training and post-incident counseling.

Like a raven raucously screeching with indignation from the safety of the tree branches, it seems you cannot avoid hearing about blame when it comes to self-defense, crime, violence -- and most of all -- rape.

Unfortunately, while everyone is playing hot potato with the whose fault an incident was, three critical components are overlooked:

1) People get hurt. 2) Blame is a form of damage control, and no damage control is ever as good as prevention. 3) There is nobody on this planet who is more concerned about your personal safety than you.

Blame Wont Keep You From Being Harmed
If you insist on putting other issues above this, (such as pride, party-going, anger, emotions, invading other people's space, self-esteem, aggressiveness, your supposed "right" to do dangerous things, etc.) you can easily put yourself into a position where you can be successfully attacked.

Yes, the attacker is wrong. Yes, he is to blame for his actions. Yes, you were the one who was wronged. But ...

You are the one who was hurt. You are the one who was traumatized. You are the one whose view of life was destroyed. You are the one who has to live with that damage for the rest of your life. You are the one who is suffering PTSD.

And we hate to say this, but the rest of the world doesn't care.

It's kind of busy with its own problems. What was the most traumatic and horrible event in your life will often be met outside your small circle of friends with a "gee, I'm sorry to hear that" and a quick change of subject. In other circles the response often is a whole less polite.

Both advocates and victims feel that the rest of humanity needs to change their behavior in order to be more sensitive to the pain and trauma that someone one who has been raped lives with. When put into those black and white terms, it's obvious that getting a couple of billion people to change for you is a pretty tall order. But there's also something else standing in the way of that. We're pretty rude about pointing out that sensitivity to the needs of others is a two way street.

Dianna once made an observation about a woman who had been raped "She's so wrapped up in her pain that she can't see anybody else's pain." While this may seem like an insensitive comment, it was made over the fact that the woman was pontificating about how her pain was so unique to a group of folks for whom PTSD was as common as brown hair. It wasn't that she didn't have legitimate pain, but she wasn't talking to (or with) them. She was talking AT people who hadn't just undergone one traumatic experience as she had, but had spent years in warzones, grown up third world countries and survived lifetimes of street violence and crime. And yet, she was honestly blind to the fact that these people too had suffered not just trauma, but of a magnitude she couldn't imagine.

The raw truth is that you will commonly find this attitude among those who focus on blaming others. Now you can rationalize this all you want, but this is how blamers come across to other people.

What's even worse (having dealt with rapists, abusers, violent criminals and many other brands of low-lifes for many years) we can assure you, you can blame them all you want and they don't give a damn. In fact, it won't bother them at all. These people are so self-absorbed that unless they are immediately faced by legal action, physical repercussions or are in some other way inconvenienced, they don't care how much you hate them. Like water off a duck's back, the blame and hatred of others has no effect. It will not teach them a lesson, it won't make them suffer, in fact, they won't even feel guilty about what they have done. They're generally too busy blaming others themselves.

And if you do pursue legal action against them, do not be surprised if they hate you for "ruining their lives." It would not be accurate to say the idea that they did anything wrong doesn't even enter their minds, but it dies a grisly death throwing itself against the fortified walls of self -justification, rationalizations and self-pity. That's right: self-pity. These people are so self-absorbed that they are going to turn around and blame you for their misfortune.

So while it may seem like an overwhelming force within you, in the real world, it doesn't carry much weight

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