[jaamkie]

Originally Posted by Angela

I don't think it's off-topic at all. But I do think that you are still hearing "blame" when I say "responsibility." That happens a lot, so once again I'll spell out what 100% responsibility is for me: accepting reality exactly as it is and exactly as it is not, and boldly looking at who you are being that reality occurs for you the way it does.

That has absolutely zero - zilch - nada -- to do with blame, shame, or fault.

I'm so glad you were able to free yourself from circumstances in which you were feeling bad. That's great!

And if I am talking to someone who is sad, and was referring to himself as a victim, I would not limit them by telling them they are at the effect of their circumstances -- that it's the circumstances that must change, not the sad person. Arguing with reality only has sadness and victimhood persist. Only when you fully accept reality do you have power to generate the missing factor: joy, freedom, peace, etc. -- until then you are just hauling around your old prison of pain.

A person is really free when she realizes that she can have what she wants regardless of her circumstances -- by generating it. But if she requires her external circumstances to be just so before she will be free, connected, joyful, safe, whatever -- then those things are as temporary as a sneeze.

*sigh* realizing I've gone from bad to worse in trying to say what I mean- I was agreeing with you there- of course it's never REALLY externals, but it was a shift from seeing circumstances as immoveable and out of my control (so therefore my entire power was limited to acclimating myself to whatever I'd happened to create) to allowing myself to focus on the future and freeing myself to make changes and live a different sort of life as I learned better what would make me happy- it's almost going from blaming myself for the past and being a victim of my own past ignorance to taking responsibility for the future- but connected with what Joley was saying about depressed people having excessive concern for other people's expectations of them.