They turn the story around to make it seem like you are at fault, deflecting attention and blame away from them to make you feel guilty. This type of emotional manipulation is called gaslighting.
If a certain family member is always criticizing or blaming you and never taking accountability for themselves, that's a sign of a toxic individual. As Nuñez explains, perhaps they're always playing the victim, they say everything is always your fault, or they avoid responsibility at all cost.
Projection refers to attributing one's shortcomings, mistakes, and misfortunes to others in order to protect one's ego. Blaming others (i.e. projection) is more common in those who are experiencing negative feelings and are unable to regulate their emotions.
The reason why people usually blame others is that it's a quick escape from guilt. Blame is an incredibly easy and effortless tactic to use when we feel defensive.
Paranoid personality disorder (PPD) is a mental health condition marked by a long-term pattern of distrust and suspicion of others without adequate reason to be suspicious (paranoia). People with PPD often believe that others are trying to demean, harm or threaten them.
Children with ADHD may deal with their emotional pain by “externalizing”—blaming others for their problems and taking no personal responsibility. ADHD may overlap ODD with behaviors marked by: Openly defying rules at home or at school. Arguing excessively with authority figures.
Deflection is the act of blaming another person for your own mistakes or shortcomings rather than accepting the blame or criticism yourself. This type of defensiveness as a coping skill is commonly used to divert the focus or blame away from ourselves.
Often, blaming (whether blaming others or blaming yourself) stems from traumatic experiences in your past. Physical, emotional, and sexual abuse are common causes, but any traumatic experience can lead to blaming. Working with a therapist, you can uncover the underlying causes and begin to institute positive changes.
“An option is to not engage in the blame shift,” says Ferris. Keep the conversation on topic and try not to respond to their deflection. “Let the person finish, then redirect back to your complaint, even acknowledging that you want to hear what they have to say after you can talk about what you brought up.”
Here are some examples of blame-shifting phrases so you can be on the lookout for this tactic from the narcissist: “If you wouldn't have said that then I wouldn't have called you names!” “If you weren't always nagging me then I wouldn't have cheated on you!” “You always do that!”
People with bipolar might get caught up in blaming others because they have not developed healthy coping skills to deal with their painful feelings. They are fearful of losing what their life used to be, and they may be in a stage of complex or prolonged grief.
If you are wondering why your narcissistic mate blames you for everything that goes wrong no matter who is at fault, the answer is simple: People who have narcissistic personality disorder cannot tolerate the idea that they might be to blame, so they accuse someone else instead.
Self-blame is a cognitive process in which an individual attributes the occurrence of a stressful event to oneself.
Toxic family dynamics refer to unhealthy family relationships characterized by harmful behaviors, poor interactions, and ineffective conflict management. Unhealthy family dynamics include signs such as: Lack of boundaries and empathy. Lack of personal space and privacy. Constant conflicts, hostility, and aggression.
It could be time to cut the person off if you or your child start to dread visiting that family member, especially if they only interact in negative ways with those around them. "Recognize that spending time apart from them is important to one's own mental health," adds Dr. Halpern.
Feelings of extreme anxiety, low self-esteem, worthlessness, difficulty trusting others, maintaining close relationships, or feeling worn out after a visit with your family are all signs you grew up in a toxic family.
Blame-shifting is an emotionally abusive behavior or tactic. These are some definitions or descriptions of blame-shifting: abusers have difficulty taking responsibility for problems. They go as far as necessary to attribute blame for their circumstances to anyone else, even if it may sound somewhat conspiratorial.
They turn the story around to make it seem like you are at fault, deflecting attention and blame away from them to make you feel guilty. This type of emotional manipulation is called gaslighting. [clickToTweet tweet=”“Am I going crazy? Am I being too sensitive?
Tell them you disagree, but don't argue.
Instead, tell them that you don't agree with what they're saying, but do it calmly and without raising your voice so it doesn't sound like an attack. They're blaming you to try and instigate a fight—don't let them. “I'm not quite sure that's the way it happened.”
Deflection and narcissism
The main difference between deflection as a self-defence mechanism and deflection as a manipulation technique is that narcissists lack empathy and, when they deflect the blame to the person who accused them in the first place, they try to increase their control over them.
a social psychological phenomenon in which individuals or groups attempt to cope with the bad things that have happened to others by assigning blame to the victim of the trauma or tragedy.
The 4 Trauma Responses: Fight, Flight, Freeze, Fawn: Examining The Four Trauma Reactions. According to a research on the neurobiological consequences of psychological trauma, our bodies are designed to respond to perceived threats with a set of near-instantaneous, reflexive survival behaviors.
Weiten has identified four types of coping strategies: appraisal-focused (adaptive cognitive), problem-focused (adaptive behavioral), emotion-focused, and occupation-focused coping.
Maladaptive, or unhealthy, coping mechanisms are behaviors that do not always seek to resolve the problem but are usually attempts to reduce its symptoms in the short-term. These can end up causing harm and increasing stress in the long term.