To make a change we need both personal responsibility and self compassion. Different factions of social media discourse tend to overemphasize one at the expense of the other. When we are learning something new, too much self compassion can tip into defeat and complacency, whereas too much personal responsibility can tip into self blame or loss of compassion for ourselves and others. Powerlessness and overinflated self determination play out within each extreme, with a personal bias towards either limitation or possibility overriding the ability to simply do the best we can within whatever circumstances we find ourselves in, knowing our desired outcomes are never guaranteed.
In the coaching field, there is a HUGE bias towards personal responsibility. While that can be impactful for people learning their self determination–who need a kind of “tough love” to claim their life as their own–it tends not to come with very robust socio-cultural literacy and is often proliferated by self styled teachers who believe their own success/experience is the gold standard, or is indicative of other people’s failure to “take more responsibility for their life.”
On the flip side, many people who discover information about systemic inequality, neurology, trauma, and mental health, merge this awareness with their bias towards impossibility (limitation), and haphazardly decide there is nothing they can do to help themselves–making them vulnerable to self limiting beliefs that easily become self defeating excuses. While we all must go through a stage where we validate that our hardship isn’t our fault, validate how we have been let down by society and community and family, and validate that things really are a lot harder for us than others, the end game of this compassionate awareness isn’t to stay frozen around change.
Because of the way social media discourse falls along party lines, it’s extremely difficult to talk about these biases. If the only people you have ever heard call out a limitation bias are extremely problematic in their adjacent worldviews–belittling systemic oppression and trauma as a “need to be a special snowflake,” for example–it can be VERY triggering to explore the reality of unhelpful beliefs and how those beliefs can cause self imposed limitations to creating a life that we love. No one wants to hear that their suffering is “their fault” when they are really suffering, even if that is not at all what is being suggested. And, in fact, it’s not their fault. Marginalization and inequality is real, just so we’re clear (and case in point re: can’t even LOOK at limiting beliefs without it feeling like someone is saying it’s “my fault” I am in so much pain and hardship).
Likewise, if you have worked hard and have lived a life that validates that hard work pays off, it’s extremely difficult to explore the reality that your own success is not evidence of another person’s failure. Contrary to popular opinion, success at drastically changing one’s life circumstances is not always purely a result of unseen privileges, although of course that is present if we see things through the lens of intersectionality. It is very common that the people who hold tight to their possibility bias and overinflated personal responsibility mindset are people who have legitimately gone through hell, experienced severe hardship and disadvantage, and have had to develop an intense psychology of personal responsibility to survive the odds stacked against them. This is why so many people who double down on conservative, hyper individualistic worldviews are themselves from oppressed or marginalized populations and disadvantaged social positions.
Photography by Corey Brie of Minivanarchy Photography
In homemaking discourse, this can be seen in the dichotomy of Hot Mess Mom vs. Sanctimommy. Hot Mess Mom makes a joke out of her complacency and day drinking, masking the severe under support, mental health struggles, systematic marginalization, and sometimes neglectfulness as “being real,” because revealing the imperfection is how she copes with the social pressure to perform perfection. Sanctimommy is completely tone deaf to her privileges and advantages, and believes that the intensity of her need for control in order to feel safe or valued as a human being is evidence of her moral superiority. Obviously, there is a lot of nuance and context here, but hopefully you get what I mean.
What’s interesting is that people who were raised by Hot Mess Mom often grow up to become Sanctimommy, and people who were raised by Sanctimommy often grow up to become Hot Mess Mom. We tend to rebel against or replicate what we experienced in our upbringing. The pendulum swings. We play in the extremes. Then, if we’re lucky, we find the third path: autonomy. The ability to access our personal responsibility AND our self compassion, determine what is within our control and what is outside of our control, allow our struggles to deepen our compassion for others, and our successes to become generosity.