The elusive art of taking partial responsibility
As an MFT who works often with families, couples, and individuals focused on improving their relationships, I am noticing that taking responsibility for that over which you have influence - not more, not less - is proving really difficult for folks to endorse and execute. With all the polarized political background noise of 2025, it can feel like the normal or only thing to do in conflict is to find a way to blame others for all difficulties or, conversely, take in and take on blame or responsibility for things we can’t actually control. These processes of blaming others or blaming oneself are actually reflecting a perspective-taking issue.
Perspective-taking is the ability to gather data with awareness of the strengths and limitations of the position from which you gather it. Furthermore, it requires awareness that there may be things within your own perspective that you are unaware of. For example, in observing an interaction, you have a visual position (ie, what you see is altered by where you stand), hold a background foundation of knowledge, have a certain way you prefer to communicate, and have a host of beliefs and values, often culturally bound or delivered via implicit family rules, that may or may not be held by the observed or others observing. Someone good at perspective-taking is always aware that they carry bias and might be missing something, and assumes that others’ perspective have valuable data to offer.
In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), perspective-taking is a key process towards improving psychological flexibility, and thereby satisfaction, in relationships and life pursuits. A person can lose perspective when they overly personalize and obsess over a dilemma as if they are the only one holding it, just as they can lose perspective if they refuse to take it in and instead blame it on others. For example, a miscommunication with a partner that results in a lost opportunity (ie, we met at the wrong place and missed the show) can be taken in a couple of ways that are reactive:
Why am I always messing things up?
Why is my partner so bad at communicating?
Or with a dose of perspective:
What might have been my part in this miscommunication? I’m curious to talk to my partner and figure this out with them.
The key here might be how we relate to the feelings generated by the problem. If missing a show is disappointing, and I feel that I can handle and work through that difficult feeling, I might be less likely to react in blame or self-flagellation. If, however, I cannot tolerate that feeling, I might try to discharge it by pushing it away or jumping to a simple explanation. Put another way, if I feel skilled enough to work with my feelings, I feel responsible for them and do the work within my power to do; whereas if I feel unskilled or unable, I might not feel responsible for those feelings, and I might put them on others or divert to a mental process instead.
At a system level, a perspective-taking problem or difficulty with holding partial responsibility looks like passing blame back and forth. The exchanges become battle ground about who’s responsible. Sometimes someone “wins” by pegging responsibility on someone else, but the relationship suffers and the energy is depleated. It is true that people can make mistakes or behave badly, and may be mostly if not solely responsible for certain problems. But most mishaps between people (who want to be together) at some level are communal problems - they exist in the pockets of perspective difference, and as such need to be worked out communally. (By the way, if you don’t want to be with the person you are struggling with, that is a subject for a different post.) Another person is generally ill-equipped to manage feelings they don’t house in their own body - at best they can support with regulation, but they can’t make feelings go away. They also can’t undo what just happened by telling you you’re right or reassuring you that you aren’t a horrible person.
There’s an invitation for some hard work here, and I would suggest a procedure to try the next time you are feeling like you might be shirking or assuming too much responsibility. This procedure combines some wisdom from ACT, the Gottmans and Relational Life Therapy:
What just happened, from my perspective?
How am I feeling about it?
What thoughts and stories are coming up (and probably distracting me from feelings)?
Going back to the feelings - what do I need right now to work through these feelings?
When I am feeling more regulated, what is my request of others?
What might be my part or responsibility in this shared problem?
