Personalization

When I was a freshman in college I took a Calculus class at the suggestion of a guidance counselor at the university. I failed the class, and after the last test I went home and cried and thought "Its all my fault! I'm a failure."  When I had to explain what happened to friends and family, I told people the guidance counselor was to blame for advising me to take calculus.  I oscillated back and forth between blaming myself 100% and blaming the counselor 100%, but usually defaulted to feeling like I was completely to blame for listening to him in the first place and thinking I was smart enough to handle that class, my self talk became negative and my confidence in my abilities in math disappeared, and I changed majors.

 After some time passed, I started feeling like maybe it was both our faults for failing calculus, so even though the failing grade permanently imprinted on my transcript caused me much embarrassment, I was able to get passed the feelings of guilt and inferiority.

Much later in life when I learned that there are many pieces to the responsibility pie, I was able to think back on failing calculus and see that it wasn't just my fault, wasn't just the counselor's fault, but many circumstances set that failing grade in motion.  My high school trigonometry class didn't adequately prepare me, my parents limitations in math prevented their helping me, the university class size of 250 students was not conducive to helping those falling behind, my friends who wanted to hang out instead of encouraging me to study, my inexperience in college classes in general, etc etc.  My responsiblity pie looks more like this:

The unhelpful thought distortion "personalization" is one of the many variations on "all-or-nothing" thinking. Thinking "It's all my fault" or "It's all their fault" cause us excessive guilt, anger and resentment and neither promote healthy change after a mistake has been made.

"Our weaknesses are secret doorways to our strengths." --Madeleine L'Engle