Are you always self-blaming? Do you somehow never feel like you measure up? Are you wary of getting involved in a loving relationship because a voice inside says you don't deserve to be in one? A long overlooked Scottish therapist in wartime Scotland figured out why you might feel that way.
It’s 1940. The Second World War is underway, and Britain is under threat of invasion. In Edinburgh, a well-regarded but rather isolated middle-aged psychoanalyst has begun working on a series of papers that will be amongst the first to develop, remodel and in some respects radically challenge the principles of psychoanalysis handed down by the only recently-dead Freud. Ronald Fairbairn wasn’t particularly popular within the stuffy London-based psychoanalytic community. Some of his ideas – chief amongst them that when we are born we are driven not by a set of raw, pre-installed drives that command our actions and development, as Freud suggested, but by the need to be in relationship with others (starting with the key relationship with our mothers - we might say primary caregivers these days) – did not land well with those for whom Freud was already almost a God. Nevertheless, Fairbairn pursued his thinking though the 1940s and 1950s, developing ideas that these days seem mainstream. He speculated that the quality of our relationships, from the earliest days, has a profound influence on us; how we grow up and how we see the world; themes that were separately taken up by a whole number of major figures within the world of psychology in their different ways. Ronald Fairbairn wrote a group of papers in the 1940s and published them together in 1952. For his efforts he was politely ignored, until the 1980s, when some enterprising American therapists unpacked his thinking, realising its genius and how it chimed with a whole lot of other thought that had developed elsewhere. Fairbairn’s work was rightly acknowledged as brilliant. Though his name still remains relatively unknown, some of his ideas have subsequently become a cornerstone of certain approaches to therapy. Some of it seems blindingly obvious now – as many breakthrough moments often do after the fact. 'The Burden of Badness'
One glittering moment in Fairbairn’s work was his description of a concept called the Burden of Badness. And if you’ve grown up feeling somehow inwardly worthless, feeling that everything in your relationship is your fault, perhaps feeling that you don’t even deserve to be loved at all, his ideas might just have something to say to you.
Fairbairn had worked with neglected and abused children from poor backgrounds in Scotland in the 1930s and had been struck by just how consistently the kids had explained their situation by blaming themselves. Fairbairn wondered how this self-perception – often fully at odds with the observable facts, as these children had been badly treated, let down or abandoned by their parents – had got started. When a child is born, he surmised, they are entirely dependent on their caregivers for survival. During early childhood, his thinking went on (and many have subsequently agreed), young children are not capable of fully understanding the world as anything other than a place that revolves entirely around them - as anyone who has seen a tired toddler in full flow in a supermarket, or how children need to be taught how to share, or can even remember feeling it themselves, will know. When we are very young we are really only capable of thinking about ourselves. That's probably a feature of evolution - we are born that way to put all the focus on getting our basic needs met, (things like milk, food, shelter, warmth etc...even if it means screaming the place down). If something bad happens to us in this biologically-determined and completely self-centred worldview we've created —like neglect, emotional coldness, or outright abuse—we might instinctively reach the rather hazy but seemingly sensible conclusion that we are somehow responsible. Our immature brains think only of ourselves - so who else could it be?
In addition, Fairbairn noticed that children are deeply attached to their parents and cannot easily accept the idea that their caregivers might be flawed, neglectful, or even harmful to them. When bad things happen to us as young children - when we are ignored, neglected, mistreated, or worse by our parents, we are forced to somehow make sense of what's happened. But the last thing we might feel able to do is to hold our parents responsible. At a deep level its really important that they are right, loving, perhaps even infallible. We have to understand them that way to make ourselves feel safe and protected. In such a situation, it might feel impossible to contemplate that they are in reality neglectful, abusive or dangerous to us. What would such an admission produce in us, who depends on them for so much? Vulnerability and fear. To avoid having to face such a dreadful feeling, we may internalise the idea that we, ourselves are at fault, that we are bad. Paradoxically, this self-blame is much easier for the child to accept than the painful truth that their parents might not be safe or loving. ‘It must be me’ the child gradually learns to feel – avoiding the much worse, possibility that it’s actually not. Further, at some level, we might sense within that we are stuck; if we do try and resist taking the blame and speculating that our parents really should not be acting this way, then where does that take us? To the terrifying idea that we can't rely on them after all, that they are going to abandon us - at which point we would need them even more! Overlaid on all this is of course the experience that many will recognise from childhood of not having any idea that our upbringing could be any different. It is simply what it is. Our young selves have usually only ever lived in this family, we have nothing to draw upon to help us understand that parents could be any other way; another layer of the cement that might hold us in self-blame.
All this can start a pattern, each year sinking deeper into who we are, until it can take the shape of an unexamined, unconscious inward assumption. Later in life it can surface in shame and self-hatred. And how 'bad' you are, how much sense of being at fault you carry, can, unsurprisingly, be driven by just how much pain you've had to take on and ingest. Some of this thinking has informed how therapists might work with victims of child sexual abuse years later. It can also be a part of the inner story for those who face domestic violence in adult life and can't shake the terrible and shame-filled feeling that they have somehow brought it on themselves. But it can show up in all sorts of ways, including an inner sense of worthlessness or an inner voice that simply says "I'll never be good enough, I'll never be lovable".
Let's take a look at a couple of hypothetical examples of how this experience can play out...and how therapy might help
Sarah and emotional neglect
Sarah* is 35 and seeking therapy for low self-esteem and anxiety. Throughout her life, she has felt a vague sense of guilt and self-blame, often thinking, “I’m not good enough” or “There’s something wrong with me.”
As a child, Sarah's parents were emotionally distant. They provided for her physical needs—she had food, clothes, and shelter—but they were cold and unresponsive to her emotions. Whenever she cried or tried to express herself, they would say, "Stop being so dramatic," or "You’ll get over it." As a result, Sarah learned to suppress her feelings, believing that her emotions were wrong or bothersome.
In therapy, Sarah begins to explore her childhood, realising for the first time that her parents' emotional unavailability affected her deeply. Still, she struggles to let go of the idea that the problem lies within her. Even as she recognises that her parents weren’t emotionally supportive, part of her clings to the belief, “If only I had been a better, more well-behaved daughter, maybe they would have loved me more.”
Sarah is carrying the Burden of Badness. Rather than making her parents responsible for their emotional neglect, she takes on the blame herself. This allows her to preserve an idealised image of her parents, protecting her from the painful realisation that they couldn’t meet her emotional needs. Gently, the therapist might help her to see the origins of the pattern she is in, help her to express some of the buried feelings about what it was like to grow up in that setting and to let them go as she turns her attention to her life now - a situation where she likely does not need to rely on her parents in the same way and has choices about how she sees her self worth.
Jason and Physical Abuse
Jason* is 49 and has struggled with anger and relationship difficulties for years. As a child, Jason was physically abused by his father, who would hit him whenever he thought Jason had done something wrong. Despite the abuse, Jason idolised his father, longing for his approval and affection.
Even into adulthood, Jason finds himself justifying his father’s behaviour. He thinks, “Maybe I deserved it. I shouldn’t have been so difficult,” or “Dad was just trying to teach me a lesson; I wasn’t good enough.” Jason’s inner voice constantly tells him that he was to blame for his father’s actions.
That's the Burden of Badness again. Instead of accepting the painful reality that his father was abusive, Jason blames himself. For Jason, it is easier to carry the guilt than to face the devastating truth that the person he loved and depended on was the source of harm. In therapy Jason might be able to talk more about his emotions as he grew up with his Dad, his fear, sadness and confusion, or his sense of unjustness. He might gradually be able to understand that his Dad was flawed, that what happened to him was wrong, that it was not his fault that it happened to him. Perhaps that the anger he finds himself displaying in relationships is actually anger at his father that's been kept inside all these years and that it's possible to accept it, to feel it, and to then let it go.
Other ways it can get started
Growing up in a household with emotionally volatile and unpredictable parents might saddle us with the Burden of Badness too. Perhaps our parents were struggling with mental health problems of their own? Or perhaps they were just like that? If we found ourselves infringing rules that were never properly explained, getting yelled at and punished but not understanding why, we might well have learned to make sense of it by concluding that "It must be me". As we puzzled in our distress about exactly what we were doing wrong but could find no useful answer, we might have ended up thinking, "There must be something inside me that causes all this, maybe something deep down that I can't do anything about because it just keeps happening, no matter how hard I try". And if those parents, in their moments of anger or rage or violence, actually tell us that it is us, up comes that inner voice. "They must be right" it says. And it can keep coming up, in various forms and places, for years, damaging relationships or even stopping us from trying to be close to others at all lest we go through all that again in some way. Lest we end up upsetting another person we love, for reasons that we can't figure out, other than our baked-in, intrinsic 'badness'...just like we seemed to unaccountably upset our parents who we loved, years ago. Lest we end up just re-experiencing that sense of confused worthlessness all over.
In each case, gently unpacking those childhood experiences, talking about them, allowing the hurt that has been turned inwards all these years - the self-loathing, anger, confusion or shame - out into the light within the safety of a session with a trusted therapist, is a major step towards finally making peace with what was really going on. Seeing the origin of it all for what it was. Hearing a new voice that says, "Not my fault. I was just a kid".
Ronald Fairbairn died in 1964 after a last flourish in which he published pretty much his entire theory as a set of 17 one-line points. It got more or less ignored too. But over 80 years after he started developing his thinking, much of it continues to resonate - anticipating a lot of the later understanding around how our early lives and the bonds and attachments we learn to form shape us. His thinking has helped many see that they can finally put down the Burden of Badness. That it's not a life sentence. That it wasn't theirs to carry in the first place. That they can start a journey to discover the true self-worth that they fully deserve. If any of this feels like part of your story, why not reach out to a therapist or counsellor and make that start?
*Examples and names are fictitious
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Jo Shaw is qualified psychotherapist seeing clients in London, Tunbridge Wells, Kent and online. She can be reached on +44 (0)7551 152067 or jo@jjstherapy.com