🦚Stop spiraling into "what did I do wrong?"

A few weeks back, one of my clients (let’s call her Sarah*) went into full-on panic mode Her ex had just fired off another email accusing her of ruining their son by being ok with him wanting to quit karate. She was spiraling hard.

“Maybe he’s right,” she said. “Maybe I’m too soft on him. Maybe I should have forced him to stick with it. What if I’m damaging him? What if the judge sees this and thinks I’m a bad parent?”

We’d been working together for three months, and I'd watched her transform from someone paralyzed by fear into a woman who could laugh at her ex’s manipulation tactics. But this email had knocked her right back into that old familiar space where everything felt like her fault.

“Sarah,” I said, “what's actually happening here?”

Long pause.

“What do you mean?”

“Not what you did wrong. Not what you should have done differently. What’s the actual situation?”

Another pause. Then I could almost hear the gears shifting.

“My son told his dad he hates karate. His dad didn’t like that answer, so he’s blaming me for it.”

Bingo.

The responsibility trap

When you’re dealing with a manipulative ex, they frame everything as your responsibility, because it can never be theirs. Everything becomes about what you did wrong, what you failed to do, what you should have done differently.

Your child is anxious? Your fault for leaving the marriage and destroying the family.

Your child is struggling in school? Your fault that you haven’t been doing homework with kiddo on your ex’s time.

Your child doesn’t want to go to their other parent’s house? Obviously, you’ve been poisoning their minds.

It’s relentless, and it works because protective parents (especially mothers) are already primed to take on responsibility. We left the relationship. We “broke up the family.” We’re used to doing all the household, administrative, and emotional labor. We’re constantly second-guessing ourselves because we know our kids are hurting and we’d do anything to fix it.

Why we fall for it

There are three reasons the responsibility trap works so devastatingly well on protective parents.

First, society has already handed us a massive guilt complex. Mothers especially get bombarded with messages that we’re responsible for everything our children experience and feel. If they’re not thriving, clearly we’ve failed somehow. Thank you, Freud. 🙄

Second, we’ve spent years being gaslit by someone who twisted every situation to make us the problem. That voice doesn’t just disappear when the relationship ends. It echoes in our heads, making us doubt our own judgment and perception.

Third, we genuinely care about our kids. When they’re struggling, our first instinct is to look at what we could have done differently. That's a sign that you’re a thoughtful, engaged parent with more than a modicum of self-insight. But manipulative exes exploit this quality ruthlessly.

The result is that you end up carrying responsibility for problems your ex actually created.

Try this reframing technique

When I asked Sarah “what’s actually happening here?” she shifted out of the responsibility frame and into what conflict experts call the situations frame.

Instead of asking “what did I do wrong?” (responsibility frame), she started asking herself “what's going on in this situation?” (situations frame). Just changing the words she used completely shifted her perspective, so she could see patterns instead of personal failures.

The situations frame asks you to step back and look at the context, the circumstances, and the actual sequence of events. It’s like watching security camera footage instead of being interrogated about your actions.

When Sarah made that shift, she could suddenly see clearly: her son expressed a preference, his father didn't like it, so his father blamed her. That's the situation. That's what's actually happening.

Nothing in that situation called for Sarah to feel guilty or question her parenting. Her son felt safe enough to tell his father something honest. That’s actually a sign of healthy development, even if the information wasn’t what dad wanted to hear.

How to shift to the situations frame yourself

The next time your ex sends you a message that’s packed with blame and accusation from the first word to the last, try this:

Pause before you respond. Take a breath, even though every fiber of your being wants to defend yourself or explain or fix it. Then ask yourself: “What's the actual situation here?” Not what you did or you should have done, and certainly not how to fix it. Just ask yourself “What’s really, really happening?”

Write it down like you're describing it to a neutral observer. Use simple, factual language. “Ex is angry that our child expressed a preference. Ex is blaming me for our child’s preference.”

This short-circuits that spiral of self-blame your amygdala wants to send you into. It also gives you documentation of patterns that matter for court. Instead of making your assumed parenting decisions the focus, it puts the spotlight on your ex’s pattern of blaming you for things you didn’t cause or even contribute to.

You might notice that your ex consistently blames you when your child expresses a feeling they don’t like, when something doesn’t go their way, when they have to take responsibility, when you set a boundary, or your child shows signs of seeing through their manipulation.

You start noting the patterns that inevitably show up. And patterns matter way more in family court than individual incidents when you’re dealing with coercive control.

What this looks like in practice

Sarah started using this reframe every time her ex sent one of those accusatory messages. Within two weeks, she noticed something fascinating.

“He literally cycles through the same five accusations,” she told me. “It’s like he has a script. School, activities, my parenting choices, my new partner, and how I'm supposedly alienating the kids. Over and over.”

Once she could see the pattern, she was less emotionally charged. She stopped drowning in guilt and started using this reframe as she documented evidence of his manipulation tactics.

More importantly, she stopped compensating for his failures. When he forgot to pack their son's lunch for school, she didn't scramble to fix it. She let the natural consequence happen and documented the pattern.

“I used to think I had to be perfect because he was always watching for me to mess up,” she said. "Now I realize he’s going to blame me no matter what I do. So I might as well stop trying to be perfect for him and just focus on being present for my kids.”

*I’ve changed other details about “Sarah’s” situation, too.

Want help seeing the patterns your ex is using?

If you’re stuck in the responsibility spiral and can’t tell anymore what's actually your fault versus what you’re being blamed for, you’re not alone (as you’ll also see from the academic review below). Book a 30-minute consultation, free of charge, and we can talk about this. We’ll look at what’s happening in your situation, and I’ll help you start seeing the patterns instead of just feeling the guilt.

Want to know more about what I do?

Resources

It’s not often that academic reviews are available to read online in their entirety, and I’m glad this one, entitled Post-separation abuse: A literature review connecting tactics to harm is, because it explicitly identifies blame-shifting as a documented abuse tactic. It also notes that self-blame is a common consequence for protective parents, so if you’re spiraling into self-blame about your self-blame, this is the read you need.

I was blown away by Figure 1, which uses Maslow’s hierarchy of needs to illustrate how post-separation abuse isn't random isolated incidents, but a systematic pattern of tactics designed to target every level of your fundamental needs. Click here or on the image to access the whole article. This is one that you can also send to your legislator, your lawyer, and your social worker.

To help you start shifting from self-blaming to a situations frame, I’ve created this worksheet in Google Docs for you to download or make a copy of. It has space for five entries to get you started. As you experience more situations like this, just copy and paste the last empty entry. You’ll soon start seeing your ex’s abusive patterns more clearly, and you’ll have documentation you can use for court.