Most folks don’t have much respect for those who try to blame everyone else for their mistakes. Yet some people seem unable to learn how to take personal responsibility. Why is that? Interestingly, those who refuse to take accountability tend to share a number of traits, such as the ones listed here:
1. Intense fear of failure or punishment.
Many people who blame others for their mistakes deal with paralyzing fear or anxiety. Most are terrified of failure or punishment, usually due to abuse they received from authority figures in their youth. According to Dr Nicole Lipkin, blaming external forces for their failures serves to protect their egos and confirm their self-worth, and as such, they’re ruled by fear and let it govern their behavior instead of acting with integrity.
2. Lack of personal past successes.
A person who has failed at their endeavors time and time again may feel disheartened — or even defeated — by their lack of achievement. As such, if they feel that they’ve made yet another mistake, they may try to pawn it off on someone else so they don’t have to deal with potential pain and humiliation again.
3. The need to be thought of well by others.
In many cases, a person who blames others for their mistakes or failures is obsessed with the idea of others thinking highly of them and can’t bear the thought of being judged poorly. According to trauma therapist, Anya Surnitsky, this is often linked to perfectionist tendencies and manifests as a refusal to be wrong. As a result, anything that illuminates them in a negative light must be someone else’s fault.
4. They can’t accept criticism, even if it’s constructive.
People who struggle to take responsibility for their actions are often intensely hypersensitive to criticism, and will be deeply hurt by a remark (or a valid observation) that others would simply take in their stride. As such, they may try to avoid that pain by any means possible, such as tossing blame at someone else to save themselves.
5. Excessive defensiveness.
You’ve probably noticed that many folks get defensive and feel like they’re being “attacked” if they’re asked to hold themselves accountable for their actions. In situations like this, they’ll often play the victim card and blame any wrongdoing on the fact that others have done them wrong in the past. According to Psychology Today, this type of defensiveness is particularly common in those whose inability to take responsibility stems from deep-seated insecurity.
6. A persecution complex.
A person who falls into this category will insist that things are always their fault, and that everyone is perpetually picking on them for no reason. This is the type of person who’ll treat others horribly, and when reprimanded, insist that it’s because of their ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar.
7. The inability to learn from past mistakes.
Most of us have people in our lives who seem incapable of learning from past mistakes. They choose the comfort of self-destructive chaos over and over again, and when confronted with this behavior (be it conscious or unconscious), they inevitably have an excuse as to why it’s not their fault.
8. Intense feelings of shame.
According to psychotherapist, Dr Sharon Martin, shame is a key driver in a person being unable to accept responsibility for their actions. This is often a trait that’s shared by those with disorganisation or timekeeping issues: they inadvertently let things fall through the cracks, and then feel immense shame about their perceived incompetence. As such, they try to counteract their self-loathing by shifting blame onto someone else.
9. Unfounded arrogance.
These people can’t possibly do anything wrong, so whatever it was must be someone else’s fault.
Their pride simply prevents them from accepting the fact that they messed up, so they’ll get angry and spiteful and blame any and all issues on those around them, often leading to relationship breakdown over time.
10. Excessive pride in themselves.
People like this often have such blind, misinformed self-confidence that they can’t conceive of the idea that their actions may have had less-than-ideal consequences. As such, they refuse to take accountability because they literally cannot process the fact that their plans went awry. To them, that’s too inconceivable to accept.
11. Childishness.
Those whose emotional development was stunted in their youth often revert to a childlike state when they’re called to account. Some might sulk, while others will cry and speak in a babyish voice in the hope that they’ll be seen as too small and innocent to be responsible for their own actions.
12. A tendency to live in denial.
Denial is both powerful and infuriating to contend with, because the one who’s denying responsibility will shut down the part of themselves that can be held accountable. They simply refuse to acknowledge or process what’s happened at all, and instead choose escapism from the reality of the situation for the sake of self-preservation.
