Why we turn to self-blame and how to release ourselves from it

“I am not smart enough.”

He took a sizable exhale as if about to confess to a crime. He had decided it was time to “come clean.” His shoulders were slumped over, weighed down by years of internal strife and self-blame as he apologetically revealed this agonizing belief. We sat across from each other, with only his desk and his truth between us, in the office of the radically successful company he launched just four years prior. The gravity of this statement was palpable for both of us.

“Please, just don’t tell anyone,” he asked. Believing his self-proclaimed “ineptitude” was the cause of a recent business loss.

It would have been easy for me to express how the smartest people routinely sell themselves short. And that it is wise discrimination, and far more impressive, to recognize personal limitations instead of exhibiting illusory superiority. You know, the “brilliant jerk” type. Or perhaps, that smart people are more tolerant of ambiguity, a soft skill imperative to success as a leader.

However, because I have had the honor of sitting within offices of power for decades as a strategic business consultant, executive coach, and torchbearer for executive well-being, I can recognize the imperious grip of self-blame quickly. One thing I’ve learned is that nobody else can release that clench for us. And, even more importantly, it is simply not possible to judge or blame ourselves into improvement.

Self-Blame as a Means to Control

Self-blame is a futile control mechanism. We can’t fault ourselves. Every day, we are repeatedly exposed to conditions outside of our control. Behavioral self-blame is a maladaptive attempt to fulfill a genuine, primitive need for survival and psychological safety.

In my client’s case, his investors were coming down hard on him for an acquisition that recently fell through. There was nothing he could have done to salvage it. Instead of viewing it from that lens, accepting circumstances beyond his control, he perceived the loss as a direct hit to his long-term battle with self-worth and average intelligence.