When the Consequences Are Not Ours to Carry

Why is it that so many people feel guilty or responsible when others harm them? I think there is something complicated about watching someone we care about face the consequences of their own choices. At least, this is a common theme I observe in others and have even experienced myself.

Even when we know something is wrong, inappropriate or harmful, naming it can leave us with an unexpected amount of guilt, shame or misplaced responsibility. Many people start thinking about the consequences disclosure might have on the other person and even on themselves: their relationships, their work, their reputation, how other people might see them, or whether they will even be believed.

Somewhere in all of that worrying, it can become remarkably easy to lose sight of what someone else's behaviour has already cost us.

I find this particularly interesting from a relational perspective because caring about someone does not necessarily disappear when they hurt us. Let's face it, relationships are rarely that simple. We can get caught up in conflicting emotions and sensations, such as care and hurt. We can want accountability without wanting to see someone suffer.

That complexity can make responsibility surprisingly difficult to sort out.

When someone else's discomfort starts to feel like ours

What we know is that we learn a great deal about responsibility through relationships.

From a young age, we learn how to engage with others based on what we see and observe. Some of us become very good at noticing what other people need. We learn how to keep the peace, when to stay quiet, what might upset someone and how to soften difficult things before saying them. Over time, paying attention to other people's reactions can become so familiar that we barely notice ourselves doing it.

This can become particularly complicated when we finally name something another person has done, especially when our care for them makes us want to protect them from the consequences of their actions.

There is a difference between causing someone's consequences and no longer protecting them from those consequences.

Let me make one thing clear:

Naming a behaviour did not create the behaviour. Telling someone what happened did not make it happen. Setting a boundary did not create the circumstances that made the boundary necessary.

And yet emotionally, those things can feel very different.

Why can speaking about something feel worse than what happened?

When people get to the point of disclosure, it is not unusual for those who share their experience to feel shame and guilt. I often see this when people disclose abuse, coercion, betrayal, inappropriate behaviour or experiences that crossed their boundaries. Instead of only asking, Why did this happen to me?, they may also begin asking themselves:

Why did I stay?Why didn't I say something sooner?What will happen if people find out?Am I ruining their life by telling someone?

Instead of the behaviour being examined, the disclosure is.

This can leave someone feeling as though speaking about what happened is somehow more consequential than what actually happened. There are many reasons we might do this. Let's look at it this way: shame is relational. It is shaped by what we imagine other people will think of us and by what we have learned can and cannot safely be spoken about.

Naming something can change relationships, families, workplaces and communities. Silence, even when painful, can sometimes preserve the world as we know it.

Self-blame can keep a relationship intact

There is another reason responsibility can become complicated.

Blaming ourselves can allow us to hold onto a particular understanding of another person. If I tell myself that I misunderstood, should have known better, stayed too long, said the wrong thing or somehow contributed to what happened, then I still have something I can change. There is a certain sense of control in that, even when the control comes at our own expense.

That way of thinking is often much easier to accept than the alternative: someone I cared about, trusted or believed I knew made a choice that hurt me.

That realization can change more than how we understand one event. It can change how we understand the relationship itself.

This is one of the reasons I believe relational work needs room for complexity. Understanding someone does not require us to excuse them, nor does it require us to carry responsibility for their choices.

People are more complicated than the worst things they have done.

But complexity should not require us to make harmful behaviour smaller so that someone else remains easier to understand.

Letting responsibility sit where it belongs

Part of understanding ourselves relationally is noticing the responsibilities we have learned to carry.

We do not have to become indifferent to another person's life in order to stop managing it for them. We can care about their feelings and still tell the truth about our own experience. We can understand where someone's behaviour may have come from and still hold them responsible for what they chose to do.

And we can feel sad about the consequences they face without believing that we caused them.

Perhaps that is part of what it means to see ourselves more wholly in relationship: not only noticing how deeply we can care for another person, but becoming curious about the moments when caring for them has required us to disappear from our own consideration.

The consequences of another person's choices may affect us. We may grieve them. We may even wish things had unfolded differently.

But that does not necessarily make those consequences ours to carry.

If you would like to explore the ways your relationships have shaped what you carry, relational therapy can offer a place to look at these questions with curiosity and care. I would be happy to set up a free consultation call to explore whether relational therapy feels like the right fit for you.