Blame-shifting
What it is
Making you feel responsible for the harm you're receiving. "You make me angry," "if you didn't do X, I wouldn't do Y." Inverts who's accountable, and freezes you in place.
Does this sound familiar?
How it gets justified
“You provoke me — if you didn't do X, I wouldn't do Y.”
Nobody provokes another person's violence. They went into threat mode and responded with attack. That's their regulation failing — not your behavior causing it.
“Look what you make me do.”
This flips accountability. Their nervous system dysregulated, and instead of owning that, they hand you the cause. It's a tactic, not an explanation.
Often escalates toward
When a behavior stays unnamed, the nervous system stops registering it as alarm — and the door opens to what comes next.
Related patterns
Something feels off but you can't name it?
An exercise to listen to what the body already knows.