The Blame Game

Clarity begins when we stop blaming and start observing what we actually feel.

On a walk back in the woods, I reflect on divination, inner alignment, and the difference between blame and clarity. This episode explores how invalidation distorts our sense of self, how tools like tarot can help us return to our own authority, and why healing often begins when we stop explaining, stop blaming, and simply notice what hurts. A walk about observation, agency, and finding our way back to  ourselves. 

Walk with me.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:04

Hello, good morning. Welcome to Embodied Wisdom. Welcome to talk to Dr. Brook. Um, a very pretty day right now. Nice to return to the woods. I really didn't realize I just talked about this in another podcast and how much I missed them. Um yesterday I pulled a card from a uh divination deck. I don't know if you guys uh if you guys do. Divination decks are pretty cool if you've never tried them. Um type of divination deck is uh so if you don't know anything about divination decks, type of divination deck is like the tarot. So the interesting part about the tarot, no, this is funny because I completely did not think I was going in this direction today. This is fun. I like it. Um the tarot is it's a card system. So when I say divination deck, I mean cards. It's a card system. And what it's meant to do is be a reflection of the soul. So it is meant to reflect back the human experience to you. So if you pull a card from that deck, it's it reveals to you things you can't see about your this is how I use the cards. This is this is my interpretation, this is not the interpretation, believe me, just anyway, and this is my interpretation. And or from what I've also read, so that includes others' interpretations, that it gives you a mirror. It gives you, like, so if you if you don't know what's going on with you, and you pull a card from from the tower supposed, it's meant to be a reflection back of what's going on with you. So a bunch of years ago, I started using these cards, and I would pull a card every single day. I still pull cards very, very often, um, and always on a daily basis, but very often, um, to to understand myself better. Because what what it's doing is it's aligning you back with yourself because there's all this research, psychological research. I mean, some of it's really cool if you look at like micro videoing, and what they do is they look at babies and they look at mothers and they they video them each in this micro and you could see whether especially mothers that are not in alignment with the baby, that they the baby smiles and the mother smirks. You know, it doesn't have a congruency. So what happens when you're growing up in an environment, and I don't really care if this is on this very subtle level, or it's like someone says to you, Oh, that's not how you feel, or you're wrong, that's not what I said, or you know, all this stuff I talk about about this levels of invalidation. Um, people who are invalidated on the regular, and what they lose this ability to to know where they are. And I've been doing all this research on something called interoception. And interoception is basically the ability for you to know how you feel in your body, and if that interoception, and this is where like when people say they're sensitive, um people who are sensitive have very high interoception, and if this is inherited, but there's a real mix between what's inherited and then what you layer onto it, right? So this is this idea of nature nurture, or in psychology, at least about 20 years ago. Um, I think it's probably still the same model, but it was called the stress diastesis model, and it's basically like if you have a predisposition for something and you layer um stress onto it, the outcome is like, you know, not no bueno, not good. So uh this is a similar concept, except there's nothing wrong with being sensitive. You could have sensitive interreception or high interreception, except if you layer invalidation onto that, that equals emotional dysregulation. But if you put validation onto that, you get someone who is extremely, extremely perceptive. Okay, so um these cards I see. I know it's really mystical if you guys are more um grounded in any western, you know, philosophical framework, and you kind of get an intro to the mystery from me. I know it's about it sounds like spooky, but it's like don't knock it till you try it. Because these cards, they they create a gateway, a bridge, a space to go back to yourself, to return to yourself. They uh you know they let you explore that mirror if you were invalidated. So I do think it's almost a way back to understanding the truth of your interception, be able to see it for itself. And some people, the tarot feels, if we go back to that, the tarot could feel you know, sort of intimidating because it's a whole system, thousands of years old, feel like you need to learn it. I literally just pulled a card every day, but I like that. I like I like using like the ancient wisdom, so I like the idea of using the tarot because it's like grounded in this for thousands of years in the human experience. So, in my understanding, it's sort of like it reflects all of the human experience, and this is the thing, it reflects all of the human experience, like in a natural way, so it's value neutral. So if you pull like um a card that represents overindulgence and negative emotion, like you're addicted to being sad all the time, you know. Okay, so like you might not like that quality, but really that's like you rejecting yourself or blaming yourself for the way you are. You know, we've talked about that on some level a lot. Blaming yourself for the way you are. It's gonna I was uh thinking about that. I might move into talking about blame. But anyway, so I like I like the idea that these cards include all of that, but but there are many divination decks. People have created divination decks based on all kinds of things. And the one that I pulled was a different deck, more psychological. And the I don't know, people like I'm like making a deck. So people like make they make decks. So my deck is probably foundationally connected to the tarot, but it'll be more like a psychological tool. And I talk about this now so freely, like it's like a part of me, but I know it could, it's I know it's weird, and I guess again, because I'm weird, so it's it's weird, but it's so helpful. I just like I can't talk, I can't say enough how helpful it is because now I don't need the cards as much, which is the goal, because I'm so back in alignment, and a lot of times the card I pull or the space I'm moving from legitimately reflects the space I am in. So I pull a card from a different deck, more psychological in nature, and the card said grief. It was not about the woods, but the card said grief, and I was intrigued because the line in the card is like basically distance makes the heart grow fonder. Or not having something allows you to appreciate that kind of concept, and I never looked at grief in that way. I've looked at loss in that way, but not the feeling, because here comes back to the feeling of grief. Um, and that's really what I was what I was dealing with. It was like one day I didn't have something and it was okay with me, or I was feeling the grief of having had it before, but the day that before when I had it, I didn't even recognize I had it. So this became it became a whole nother um thing for me. Like, in other words, I was like, oh, that's exactly it. The grief made me appreciate something I had that I didn't know I had. But I think the interesting part is I hadn't looked at that from a feeling perspective. So if a loss is like an idea, right? Grief is a feeling. And I'm becoming more interested in this angle because I think that if we have our head on straight, but we're not aligned properly with our feelings, it doesn't work like you kind of feel off. Oh yay, pretty sunrise. No, yesterday, guys. Yesterday taking a picture of the sunrise right now. But yesterday I saw an owl. I mean, I like um I saw an owl so cool. I don't even know what to say. I was not walking and talking. I did take a picture of it, but was not walking and talking, and I was so moved by it. And the thing that's so interesting about when I looked at some research about what owl it is, you know, here they said it it like the research spit back to me, like that's so cool. You saw it because they you can miss them. You can like miss it on a dime if you don't get and I thought about sorry to diverge for a minute, but I like it. Um I I thought about my choice in the morning. But this is like mystical. This is mystical Dr. Brookwalk and talk today. Um I thought about in the morning, or I thought about after I saw the owl, like what the decision I had made even to go on the walk, because I've not I've had a rough week, not in the best mood, and I was trying to figure out what to do with myself. I felt um, as one of my older ladies said yesterday, one of my older Jewish, she felt famished. I love that word, it's a Yiddish word, but it's basically like it it feels it out, like I just felt famished, like neither here nor there. I didn't know what I wanted to do. So I'm like, what do you do when you don't go for a walk? Just go get outside. So when I'm feeling famished, the best thing for me to do is go for a walk. But then on the walk, I didn't go my normal way because I think because it's like pretty wet back here in the woods, I I like have a routine. I think I'm probably just moving slower because um, you know, because it's so wet and I'm going around it, whatever, it doesn't really matter, but I have it timed, not just for your sake, but so I could get home and get ready for the day. And and so I even adjusted my walk the where I'm gonna walk, so it's not even where I normally walk. And I spotted this guy, except you were to see the picture, which is this is why this is just cool that I found this out later. You can't see him in the tree. It's like he's like camouflaged in this freaking tree. And so I take the picture, whatever you really can't see him, but I'm like, I think that's an owl. I that's not a hawk, it was this, you know, much bigger bird than normally. But like, I can't see him, it's whatever. And then it turns out that like that's exactly how that bird lives. Like, you don't see him, so when you do see him, it's a privilege. And anyway, so I was so happy to return to my trees and my friend the owl who showed up, and then also just what it represented, just the beauty of that, just the being of that, just the mystery and all of what I just said. You know, on the right day, that's it's not every day, but on the right day I can feel that order of things, and it does realign me. So anyway, see like that that was a this is a major this if that was like I left what I was talking about. I was like, Brooke, remember, beer mark it or kind of put the bookmark in there for what you were talking about before, you bet that and oh, so I okay, so I am not exactly sure where where I was going before, so forgive me if this is a little disjointed, but that's how we roll on a walk in a talk. Anyway, so it I I was saying basically that I would use these cards to get back in alignment with myself, back in my um authority of the self. But what I've come across really most recently in the research around that is that a lot of us play the blame game. And the blame game distorts this clarity of who we are. The cards bring back the clarity, okay, bring back the alignment, bring back us back from invalidation. Um so we you we would use the cards to find that alignment. Okay, that's why I like using them. That alignment is a mystical alignment in a lot of ways. It's like something you cannot see inside of you, right? So this helps you, especially if you've been invalidated over time. But what I also realized, if we're we are conditioned to do this, this is even if we don't grow up in glass gaslet environments, this blame thing, it's everywhere. I heard it everywhere all of a sudden. And so I'm gonna try to explain what I mean by that because it's even hard for me to follow at this point, but I think it's so super interesting. So I'm saying, oh, I love these cards, the cards brought me back to myself. Now I pull these things, I understand how I feel now, and and that was the distinction I was making. Like, grief is a feeling, loss is an idea, and I'm coming into this really thing about moving through with feeling, and then you can see how even the owl brings that in because I just kind of did how what I felt, and then I saw the owl. So when we align more the mystery and all this beauty, we see it, and that's also the point of the owl. Like, I saw the owl on another day, maybe I wouldn't have. And I think I might have seen the owl before because I was like, on another day, I was like, is that an owl? Freaking just love owls. Plus, the fact that I was like my face on my phone is an owl long, long time ago. A friend of mine that on because of my owl-like energy, because I can see in the dark, and I'm seeing that pop up every single day, and then I see an owl. So here comes that alignment. Now, it doesn't mean oh, if I don't see the mystery, I'm not aligned, but it also could mean that. And that can get real spooky if you're kind of like that. Start to see the order and everything. So, anyway, if I go back to how that's connected to our personal authority, okay, of personal authority and blame, and using the cards to come back to ourselves, or using the owl to come back to ourselves, or using, you know, these signs outside of in nature to come back to ourselves, or going with the flow reveals that to us. Now we're back, okay, and now we're like, you know, oh, that was cool. What do we do with that? And what I'm coming to understand is if we're in alignment and we're in our own authority, we don't have to blame ourselves for anything, and we don't have to blame anyone else for anything, and that's clarity. However, that doesn't mean it doesn't mean that we don't know what happened, you know, we don't pretend shit didn't happen, and I think that I've been using these methodologies to pretend that shit uh methodology coping, to pretend that things didn't happen. I'm above that. I don't blame. I'm above that. Um, but it's not really in the end that I felt so badly about blaming. The blaming brings out shame. Not because we blame, but because we are we hide our shame in it. We hide the shame of our experience. It's like the difference of loss and grief. So um the shame in our experience when we're talking about um, when we're talking about why we would go into the blame game, right, is we get a feeling, and you know, because we don't like what happened connected to what I was talking about last week. And without the reflection, yep, you feel sad. But if you've been invalidated about that, now you're like, I gotta fix it, I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I can't just feel sad. Because it was coupled with that invalidation, it was coupled within it, right? So if you go back to what I was talking about earlier, even about interreception and that level of looking at things, it's like you gotta give yourself a break. You gotta. It's like, well, you don't gotta, but I'm suggesting that you do. I'm saying I'm giving myself a break. Because in the end, how are you supposed to even know what's going on with you if you're not aligned with yourself? And if you got taught that aligning with yourself is dangerous because someone's gonna tell you that you're too sensitive, a loser, um, wrong, whatever that is, who wants to come back to themselves? And then I'm like, oh, then you could just forgive yourself for not even knowing where you are. Um, but you there are these tools to come back to where you are. I was talking with a patient um not too long ago. I was like, how am I gonna know if that job is right for me? How am I gonna know? And I go, you could go to the shaman and you could like look look at it. Look, you look at it from all these different angles. But what does the shaman do? At least my shaman, he is aligning you with yourself, your highest self. So that's not like, oh, I'm gonna blame myself if you know I don't want to look at this because I'm gonna blame myself and make the wrong well, you can make the right decision for you, then there's no blame. But you have to have clarity, and how do you go about having clarity? So, what I want to say is I think that when we aren't clear and we're having a feeling experience, and I guess these days, I don't even think it matters what type of environment you grew up in, is we're sort of conditioned to not stay with the feeling, not be uncomfortable, and go into blame. Now, I'm talking a lot about self-blame right this minute, but it's like other blame. And I'm gonna give you just a simple example. I couldn't find an earring. And when I tell you I freaking love my housekeeper, I I I really there is no evidence ever that she's been a thief. I mean, we're not even not even close to anything, it's the opposite. And immediately in my mind, maybe she took it. Maybe the dog sitter took it. And this is how I grew up. This is I'm not good, I'm not, I'm just gonna give myself a pass on this one because this is exactly what my mother would do. I mean, we're I mean, like, right, I mean, this is not even, she wouldn't even defend this. She'd be like, Yep, I I couldn't find something, immediately blamed the housekeeper. And those poor people, by the way, you should think about it. Like, God, they get blamed all the time. I mean, sometimes it's you know, they did because they are in your house, and but some a lot of but like let's say more times than not, they didn't. They kept the blame. So everybody's projections outward that they can't deal with their own authority and clarity, and they just blame the the person that's the easiest to blame with the least amount of power. That's also what happened. Happens to kids. It's just like if you think about this whole human condition thing, it's just kind of sucky. Anyway so, um, so I can't find the earring. And I know I could do this thing sometimes where I'm like, I don't know if you guys do this, where like I can't find something, but I know it's somewhere. You know, I know, I know no one took it, I know I didn't lose it. I know I'm like not seeing it because I'm assuming blaming myself because then I don't see clearly. And but you know, this time what I did is I just I waited and I watched my reaction. I didn't know I was gonna come back to this and think about this in this way, but I watched my reaction, and my reaction was to blame her, and then I sat with it, and I guess, and then I realized it was like which I thought I checked, by the way, everyone. Thought I checked it, but it was in like one of these bags that I had put in it to to protect it, you know. It was in like one of those like cute um cushy bags to protect the jewelry, so and I thought I checked in there, could have sworn I checked in there, but I didn't. But I saw how I immediately did this. Some of the research now that I am looking at on this, now that I sort of been looking at this through the eyes of this ownership from within, is it's a distortion of reality. It's a distortion. But the clean way to look at it, okay, it's not to let people off the hook then. And I I don't know how this happens, but this like I know that people have confusion around this, and I'm not sure why, because I do did too, or I do still. Like, there's something about the nature of how this is uh integrated into our existence, and I also just think that's why we're like why that's why there's so many enemies all the time. Because okay, here we go, right? Um there's just the objective facts of what happened. So someone let's say someone really hurt you, they hurt you, they hurt you bad. You don't go like, oh, that's not his fault. You don't know, you go, he hurt me very badly. I felt hurt in my body. That's it. That's it. And I'm like finding this to be like really intriguing. That's it. Because listen, I'm gonna tell you, the the conversation that goes on in my head after I am hurt is an entire, it's like an entire narrative. It's an entire narrative. I even forgot I was hurt. I didn't even realize I was hurt because I was so busy blaming the other person. Maybe he shouldn't have said that, and what the the research has shown, I'm blaming the other person too. Like, why'd he say that? These people are dumb, that's why I felt like that. And it's sort of showing it's either you gotta fix you or you gotta fix them so you can feel better instead of being like, yep, that sucked, and take going for a walk, having a hot drink, taking a bath because it sucked. That person did that and it sucked. Why can't we just go with that? Why do we and it's I think it's shame. Like, we don't want to sit with this shame that we associate with a certain feeling for whatever reason society taught us, our parents taught us, the man in the moon taught that to you, instead of just being here. And now now we now I think now I'm gonna even segue then into present moment consciousness and present moment consciousness is I mean it's pretty much this, that I have this feeling. Now, it doesn't mean you don't, you don't, you don't, you can't explore it. Like maybe, you know, your lens and a way the way, you know, sees things as um that maybe are, you know, not meant to be hurtful, but you take it personally, you have a personalizing lens, and you take it in that way, you know, and so you you end up feeling more hurt. So I'm not saying that you shouldn't take an objective look at how you're interpreting the information, but this is a subtle line. You're looking at how you're reviewing for yourself perhaps your interpretation. Sometimes people have they've been so hurt, and always have to be like bring it down a notch, a notch, a notch, or they're brought up by very hurt people that have high levels of anxiety and interoception and all this, and um and that it's it's a lot, it's a lot of their systems, it's it's a lot. So it's just like, well, what lens are you looking through? Fine, but like also you still got hurt, so we don't have to go into blame external, internal, we just go into observation, observation. We look at the context we're in. So, you know, if you're being hurt by kind of like an upper level authority in your corporate workplace, or you know, someone's not responding to you in a way that you uh, you know, like at work, and you treat them through the lens of your father that they had that much power when you were a kid, you understand, like that's a so you we want to look at that. We don't we don't take that out of the equation, but we don't have to go like it's because of him, that's why I feel like this I gotta fix that, you know. Instead, it's just like hmm, and then you can make a decision about how what you want to do, how you want to address that, what do you want to do in that relationship, and that's clarity and that's agency, and in my opinion, there's no urgency then, and that's a return to yourself. That's as I will start to increasingly introduce at some point in the marketplace, that's what I'm calling sanity or wholeness back to the self. So I think I'm gonna end on that note today. Um so thanks for being with me. Thanks for the walk and talk back in the woods. Spring is coming very soon. So have uh many a day to be with my owl and my tree friends. Um, so take care, have a good week, and walk with me again soon.