Some spend their entire lives defending themselves against punishment and shame, seeing it lurking everywhere. Those with a tendency to engage in black and white thinking tend to either feel threatened and vulnerable or completely secure, with no in-between. So, they erroneously conflate blame and responsibility, terrified of the latter because of what the former entails.

To hold someone responsible is to explain a chain of events leading to some negative outcome, where one or more individuals are believed to have caused it. Responsibility can imply anger and a need for justice, or the desire for the culprit to make up for the misdeed. But responsibility also implies the ability to overcome past mistakes through sincerity and disciplined effort. Responsibility makes reasonable requests for redress. Responsibility cares about each individual involved. And responsibility concerns itself with fairness. Blame is something else.

While blame can be perceived as responsibility, it more often than not veils difficult truths. Unlike responsibility, blame doesn’t seriously consider justice, fairness, collaboration, and growth, even if it pretends to. Blame is poorly justified dominance. Responsibility means the feedback is limited to some moral error, or even a series of them, while blame assassinates character. And shame is blame’s main weapon of choice. While

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