I Started It: The Power of Taking Responsibility
by Jennifer Paros
“Every time you are tempted to react in the same old way, ask if you want to be a prisoner of the past or a pioneer of the future.”
Sometimes I watch a program called, Dr. Pimple Popper. For the uninitiated: this is a show about a dermatologist who attempts to resolve extreme skin conditions, including the removal of some dramatic, severe lumps and bumps. At first, based on both title and concept, I didn’t understand why anyone would ever want to watch it. I don’t recall what led me to sit through my first episode, but I am now up-to-date and have seen them all. I have discovered why I like to watch it. Most of the patients come in believing they are trapped and diminished by something beyond their control, and leave feeling freed of that sense of limitation. This kind of transformation makes for a satisfying story - though every happy ending marks a new beginning and not everyone is prepared to tend to that themselves.
A recent episode included a woman with lesions and scars, but her previous medical tests showed thickened skin from chronic scratching and rubbing, which meant the damage to her skin was self-created (factitial). There was no skin disease or underlying condition. But the woman didn’t believe she was creating the problem. The doctor told her she had the power to change the pattern. The patient seemed open to the idea at first, but then said, “It just puts the burden back on me.”
When we don’t use the control we do have, we feel out of control. The patient was reticent to use her power. But it’s difficult, if not impossible, to lean into oneself and rest in inner resolve while convinced one’s volition lies in trying to wrangle things from the outside-in. So, the woman was determined to prove there was something to which she had to react the way she was, and her nightmare continued.
She had actually started her own problem and there is great value in owning that. And that value is available for all of us. No matter who or what “started it”, focusing on our response is the only way we can find any power. The definition of responsibility refers to being responsible: answerable, accountable. The definition of blame is “an expression of disapproval or reproach.” Asking ourselves to take responsibility does not have to also involve blame. If we take responsibility without reproach, we put ourselves naturally back in a position of power.
“These things are not asking to be judged by you. Leave them alone.”
When I was a girl I admired and idealized a sort of prettiness I did not have. Women and girls who matched this ideal seemed inoculated from insecurity and unhappiness. I believed they were free and I was not. This pattern of thought continued through most of my teens. At sixteen, however, I got my first job (at a bakery) and one of my coworkers was a girl who I deemed as also significantly without that kind of pretty. As I observed her liveliness, bold personality, talk of boyfriends and dating, I got the impression she did not see herself as lacking any sort of pretty. I studied her. I wondered if that path was also open to me. It was the first time I considered that how I was feeling might have started with how I was thinking rather than how I looked, and that maybe I didn’t have to react to my own appearance the way I had.
We often defend our reactions. If we’re offended, we make the argument for why we should be offended. When we feel bad, we look for evidence to prove we have to feel bad. This is scratching at something that would otherwise be fine if left alone. If we did not defend our negative reactions, we would immediately improve our situations. My greatest progress and growth occurs when I entertain the notion that my current problem starts with me, regardless of the “evidence” - because my reactions start with me. Anyone else’s responsibility is their business. Not one of the logical, sound reasons why the problem didn’t start with me will ever serve to empower me, so what’s the point of pursuing them?
The sooner I say, “I started it,” the sooner I can find a way to end it. Let’s embrace ourselves as the start of our problems so we can also understand ourselves as the source of our own solutions.
Jennifer Paros is a writer, illustrator, and author of Violet Bing and the Grand House (Viking, 2007). She lives in Seattle. Please visit her website.