The third death of the ego: Blame
This is post #3 in my 4 part post about death of the ego. We released shame in the first death of the ego and anxiety in the second death. The third death of the ego is about releasing anger. This doesn’t mean all anger is bad, because it isn’t. But the anger we want to release in this death is the anger that comes from blame. Blame is poison. It is aggression. It is a toxic way of expressing feelings. We don’t need blame. Everything we want to say can be shared without blame. We can also stand up for ourselves without blame. The problem is that even though we don’t need to use blame, the brain likes to be blamey.
You know how we have built in survival responses of fight, flight, and freeze? Well blame is our “fight” response. When you are in conflict with someone, your brain will push you into blame and encourage you to feel like a victim. This survival response generates anger and self-righteousness as a way to self-protect. It is normal and natural for our brains to take us there. It just isn’t helpful.
Unfortunately, this is the hardest ego to kill off. But when you succeed, you will get a HUGE reward! Your brain will reward you with feelings of tenderness, closeness, and peacefulness … ahhhh, it feels WONDERFUL! And when something feels this good, it’s not surprising that it doesn’t come cheap. You have to pay a price for those goodies, and that price is the pain and effort it takes to kill off this ego.
In order to kill off this ego, we have to take the brain into its humility circuit. And guess what? The brain would rather sit in righteous self-protection than in humility; it feels safer. But your brain is tricking you. It is making you feel that you aren’t safe. Is that true? Are you really in danger? Maybe of being emotionally hurt in your relationship, but guess what? Unless you are in an abusive relationship (which means you are in real danger of psychological and/or physical harm), you ARE safe. Yes, you might get hurt but it is not dangerous.
It is like skinning your knee playing soccer; it hurts, and you would probably rather not have that hurt, but you know it isn’t dangerous; you like soccer so you accept it. You may try to limit skinned knees by getting better shoes so you fall less, but you know they may still happen. So, you deal with a skinned knee occasionally as part of playing soccer because you truly believe it isn’t dangerous and you reject your brain’s attempts to go “ow this hurts, let stop”. You know the other soccer players are decent people who aren’t deliberately trying to harm you. (If they’re not decent people, why are you playing soccer with them? This suggests a lack of boundaries and guess what, that’s an important element to killing off this ego.)
The death of this ego comes from NOT buying into your brain’s strategy of judgment and blame to self-protect and instead self-protecting with BOUNDARIES and good COMMUNICATION skills. Knowing that there is an alternative way to self-protect frees you up to kill this ego.
One of the most powerful tools I have found to release us from the blame ego is David Burns Disarming Technique, which is one component of his compassionate listening framework that he calls The 5 Secrets to Effective Communication. If you commit to trying the Disarming Technique, even when your brain says “ NO WAY”, you will be able to achieve the enlightenment that comes from killing off this part of the ego.
I have lots of help on the disarming technique on my website including worksheets you can use to practice. Remember, your brain is going to say things like “This is STUPID”, or “This is WRONG”. Expect that. This is why death of the ego is hard; our brains believe they have the solution to our survival and they don’t want to let go of blaming, or anxiety, or shame but you don’t need any of those feelings to be safe in this world so don’t buy it. Next time I will talk about the last death of the ego and in the meantime, I wish you the strength to not buy what your brain is selling.
