Why Taking Responsibility for the Past Will Help Our Growth

If we can hold ourselves responsible for our reactions, what others do to us will never hurt us.

I’ve been reading an excellent book by Kain Ramsay: The Responsibility Rebellion. He believes we should hold ourselves responsible for the things we experience in life.

It’s incredibly easy to blame people and things in our past for why we’re not growing now. It is comfortable for us, since we are used to it, and it feels as though we are exonerated from blame by doing this. Of course, there are many things that people deserve some degree of blame for, but only we own our reactions. Only we decide to focus on the things that happened in the past.

Over the longer term, it is uncomfortable to stay stuck in the past, turning over what we have been through. Blame began to eat me alive at one point, and it wasn’t helpful at all for my growth.

What was helpful for my growth was accepting my part in things. I realised that the reactions were mine and that I now had the choice to take ownership of them and move forward. Taking that choice was my responsibility, no one else was stopping me doing that.

I have a failed PhD, which at the time I saw as down to my supervisor. Whether it was or not isn’t the issue: it was that I was resentful and upset about it not working out.

At first, I thought ‘taking responsibility’ meant blaming myself for what had happened. I soon realised that this would keep me stuck since I’d go from a resentment spiral to one of shame.

For me, taking responsibility looked a lot like acceptance. I accepted that the PhD wasn’t right for me, and for whatever reason, I was not destined to complete it. It was this thought alone that stopped me feeling so stuck and upset.

Responsibility is about moving forward, and it took me realising that I’m not the person today that I was back then. I’m not stuck in those memories, and I don’t have to repeatedly churn up things that happened to my past self. It is not about taking responsibility for the event itself, but for my reaction to it.

We cannot control what happened to us, but we can control how we react to it, how we grow through it, and how we move on from it.

Every time you remember the event, you are choosing to react to it: you are choosing to relive it. In my case, the constant rehashing of events in my mind has led me to shape many negative core beliefs.

Failing to complete my PhD strengthened a lifelong core belief of “I’m not good enough.” It remains a powerful belief for me, and the incomplete PhD is ‘evidence’ I’ve come to associate with that thought.

No one can make us feel something for a long time, no matter what they do to us. My limiting beliefs come from within me, no matter how much I associate them with an event I went through. We need to be strong enough to make the choice to move on with our lives. The person who did something to hurt us likely forgot it long before we did.

Forgive or Forget?

Those age-old religious references to ‘forgiving thine enemy’ have generally passed me by.

People have done unforgivable things to me, and I understand those things weren’t my fault. However, just because I choose not to forgive, I still control my reactions to the events.

Things others have done to me are theirs, not mine — I don’t have to take on ownership of the events. I only have to own my part and my reactions.

Whether I forgive someone or not does not change the fact that I can take responsibility.

I’ve been in that place of sitting and waiting for someone’s apology, in order to ‘move on.’ I’ve now learned I can move on without an apology, without my forgiveness, and without thinking about them!

I forgive myself for any part that I’ve played and for my reaction afterwards. I do this because it avoids the self-blame and shame spiral that I’m so familiar with already! It’s difficult to own something raw, so I work through self-forgiveness first.

Choices, Choices

We get to choose our reactions at the time of the event.

We get to choose our reactions after it.

We get to choose to be hung up on it or move on.

We get to choose to forgive ourselves for our part.

We get to choose to see the event as a lesson learned.

We get to choose our relationship going forward with someone who’s hurt us.

We have so much more autonomy in every situation than we realise — we are not pawns in a chess game.

It feels uncomfortable at first to realise this independence we have and to step into it. The more we can be open to taking responsibility, however, the more we will be able to move forward with our lives.

I’m on this path of responsibility now. It’s not always a smooth journey, but it’s a lot more comfortable than being stuck in resentment and shame spirals. Trust me.

Originally published at https://wildeaboutwellbeing.com on July 23, 2020.