The Liberating Power of Taking Responsibility

If we want to grow, then we best learn how to take responsibility for our problems. One of the things that brings me the greatest joy is working with our son Scott on a daily basis. Few parents have this privilege. Sometimes Scott and I have conflict and we get to sit down and figure out what's going on. This is really a great problem and has brought us a lot closer - in my opinion.

Early on, I would sometimes get defensive if he disagreed with me over an issue. Not always, but under the right conditions, I took exception to his feedback. Thanks be to God and our work with the Enneagram, we began to get more clarity around our habitual ways of getting out of sorts with one another. That cleared up a lot of the conflict.

But not all of it. And here's why. Part of the issue was rooted in my own insecurity. This was part Enneagram stuff and part historical context but it was ALL 100% my responsibility to work on - and I have done just that. Failure to take responsibility for every single bit of my life could have had disastrous consequences for our relationship. I might have continued to ask HIM to take responsibility for my own insecurity by changing how he "handled" our conflicts. That was NOT his work to do. This was easier than it could have been because Scott takes responsibility for is stuff too. Separately and together, we work on taking responsibility for our own work and that means we have far fewer instances where we confuse responsibility with fault-finding.

Last week Scott had a power outage right before our Thursday night meeting - which he was leading. He threw his stuff in his computer bag and rushed to our house to get set up in time to run the group. After the group, instead of assuming that there was fault to be called out, I instead took responsibility to follow up with curiosity. "Hey, I thought you were a little grumpy tonight. Is everything ok?"

He replied, "With the group?" Looking chagrined and no small amount of mortified.

"No! That went fine, I thought you were a little short with me." I clarified.

He paused. He thought. He answered, "Man, I was really stressed. I was worried that I would leave everyone hanging on that call. Sorry you got the brunt of that." He took responsibility and I immediately knew that he was also not finding fault with me. He was not saying I was an annoying mother with many faults that he tolerates. No one was at fault, everyone was taking responsibility for speaking about their experience.

I concurred with his assessment and reiterated that the problem at hand got solved, which was a big win. No residual conflict or feelings or issues stand between us and our treasured relationship. When we take responsibility for our lives, it is liberating.

Responsibility vs Fault

My mom's death was...complicated and it left me completely bereft. I desperately wanted to understand the circumstances surrounding it. But there was no way that would ever happen because the parties involved all had their own experiences that colored their interpretation of said events...including me. But it was a great lesson in learning that problems can be powerful, and less painful, when we take full responsibility for the issue at hand. Problems can be powerful in that they provide us an opportunity to self-examine, reflect, and notice our failures, blindspots and even innocent-ish mistakes.

One of the issues that slowed my own recovery from this traumatic event was my confusion over responsibility versus fault. My therapist kept telling me, "This is not your fault" and she was right but it was hard for me to agree with her.

Over time, I came to realize that I resisted her determined attempts to draw a distinction between responsibility and fault because if I could find a way I was at fault, I unconsciously believed I could find a way to control and change the outcome. Which, when I think about it, is really silly. But it is true. I also had the opposite problem. There were parts of this family drama that I absolutely did not want to claim any fault for - no way! I did not know how to believe that I could be responsible without being at fault. And, I struggled to think about how to be responsible in areas where I was at fault.

Here is what was helpful for me. Fault is past tense. We find someone at "fault" as a result of the decisions they already made. Responsibility is what we choose to do in the present moment. Responsibility is claimed as we make choices in the here and now.

There are people whose decisions and their outcomes can result in fault being found and named. But no one is responsible for my situation because my situation is always my responsibility. The guy who hit us head on was at fault for speeding, driving on worn out tires and trying to change his radio while smoking a cigarette and navigating a turn on a rainy day. But only I am be responsible for how I follow up after the accident. I had to choose how to treat my medical conditions; our family had to choose the next vehicle. He is not responsible for that even though his faulty driving resulted in us needing to take on some additional responsibilities.

If you were able to separate fault from responsibility, would any of your nagging problems become more clear? Would solutions present themselves? Would life feel a bit more free from the burden of complicated grief?

Taking Responsibility for Our Interpretations…

It is absolutely true that we do not always get a vote in what happens to us. Years ago when someone hit us head on one rainy morning in November, we were in our lane. Pete was on full alert. He saw the car barreling toward us and he did everything he could to avoid the crash. We still crashed. Our car was totaled. The other driver was declared "at fault". But we were responsible for the clean up. We had to make the insurance claim, we had to get another car, we had to do the medical follow up required for my injuries.

We were also responsible for how we interpreted what happened to us as well as how we responded.

I was initially furious with the young man. I wanted someone else to take responsibility for my problems. Eventually, because my attorney is a great friend and no one else received a head injury like I did - calm prevailed. We chose to see it for what it was - an accident. This young man did not set out to lose control of his car.

Even when it seems like this is not the case - it is always true that we are constantly, actively interpreting and evaluating what is happening. We are jumping to conclusions and making assumptions. Our experiences - which are always limited - are gathered in our brain and shouting out explanations that may not have any basis in reality.

It is absolutely NOT true that if you pay your kid's rent she will be safe. She may not be homeless as a result of your generosity, but that does not guarantee her safety. She is responsible for her safety. Now, can she take full responsibility for her safety and still be unsafe? Absolutely. We do not always control what happens to us. But it is also true that we cannot control what happens to others.

This is why, if we want to grow and change, we need support and feedback. I did not know I had some bad habits that were causing my tennis ball to behave in ways that were frustrating. Who knew that I was taking my racket back way too far? Not me! But my tennis teacher knows, and he also knows how to help me correct my wild swing.

Here is the bottom line: We do not know what we do not know AND we are responsible for figuring what we do not know out if we want to grow up.

Checking Your Core Values

When we try to use our core values to make decisions, we need to be very, very careful and proceed with caution. Why? Because often we are wrong. Some of you remember when a parent was whipping you with a belt (or switch or lead pipe) hearing your parent say, "I am doing this for your own good and because I love you." Maybe parental units were once taught that spanking a kid was good for them - that's not considered great parenting today.

I am particularly fond of all those meme's on Facebook that say something like, "I walked four miles uphill in the snow both ways to school and look how great I turned out." Or the ever popular, "My parents beat me with a paddle, gave me beer to put hair on my chest, and cured my bronchitis with whiskey and honey and look how great I turned out." And we wonder: why do so many of us struggle with substance abuse, anxiety and depression? Are we all really turning out "so great"?

This fits under the category of potential attribution errors. Attribution errors occur when we attribute behavior to external situational factors outside our control. Typically we tend to overemphasize negative motives to people we do not like and positive motives to those we do like. If we do not want to actually wrestle with the effect certain aspects of our childhood had on us, or if we want to blame our childhood for all our problems, we will "attribute" certain memories according to what suits our bias.

We do this with our own core values too. Sometimes we attribute our behavior to self-care when we are actually being selfish. Or we say we are taking a particular action because we love someone when in fact we are judging them.

Here's a suggestion: we should take responsibility for our lives without excuse. When we make a decision, we do not have to explain it or justify it - we take responsibility for it. We own the decision. We do not excuse it in any way. Some of you may be wondering - what? Wait a minute! I was not responsible for what happened to me!!! What the heck do you mean? Tomorrow, I'll do some explaining of my own.

A Lesson of Self-Awareness

At Northstar Community, we often talk about our core values as preferable ways to guide us in decision-making. If I value recovery, which I do, I try to support recovery work. MY recovery work. Families say they find this helpful. A friend of mine discovered that he was paying for his son to visit a psychiatrist who was prescribing a stimulant for his adult son's ADHD diagnosis. Dad was very upset because this particular stimulant has been highly addictive to his son in the past and led to lots of negative outcomes. Plus, there had never been a diagnosis of ADHD in his son's medical history. Dad thought he was being a recovery ally by helping his son deal with his mental health issues by paying for treatment but now Dad feels like a sucker who is paying for his son's addictive drug of choice. What's Dad to do? He's been OBSESSED with fixing his son for so very long but lately he's wondering if his efforts are actually hurting his boy.

Dad is anxious and panicky. He wants to call the doctor and give him "a piece of his mind". He wants to yell at his son and ask him, "What the heck are you doing?" But neither of these seem very recovery-friendly. Using his core values (recovery-ally, compassion and kindness) Dad decides that he needs to stop paying for the psychiatrist in order to be kind to himself. He makes an amend to his son about getting up in his business by having access to his medical records and explains that he will no longer be able to pay the psychiatrist's bills that exceed insurance costs (Dad does pay for the insurance premiums because he does not want coverage to lapse) because it is not good for Dad's recovery. No judgment of the doc or the adult son. Just a simple, direct, clear and apologetic communication about a change Dad needs to make in order to apply his core values to himself and others.

I appreciate the way Dad is continuing to learn and apply his core values. He's even chosen to shift the priority of his core values and add "self-care" to the top of his list. He is going to use that money he has been spending each month on his 40 year old son's psychiatrist visits to fund his own self-improvement project by hiring a personal trainer and improving his fitness.