George Costanza uses “It’s not you, it’s me” to end a relationship, then faces the same phrase when his girlfriend breaks up first. The narrator connects this to a day of irritability after a doctor’s appointment, noticing that many people seemed irritating. The narrator questions whether irritability comes from personal state or from others’ rude, insensitive, thoughtless behavior. A simple “a little bit of both” explanation feels inadequate because the feelings are intense. The narrator frames the issue as a blame game: whether to assume responsibility for feelings or search for outside causes. The narrator references a concept about how people tend to describe irritation as caused by things rather than recognizing internal factors.
"Do you assume responsibility for how you feel or look for the outside cause of a feeling? Is it you, or them? This is the blame game. In my book, Frontal Fatigue. The Impact of Modern Life and Technology on Mental Illness, I talk about the -ed to -able problem. This is part of a larger discussion about how to deal with modern stress. The point here is we are likely to say we are irritated by things rather than irritable, even when the second choice is more likely."
#blame-and-responsibility #irritability-and-mood #stress-and-mental-health #modern-life-and-technology #psychology-of-attribution
Read at Psychology Today
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