Taking responsibility versus being hard on yourself

[ElizabethZott1961]

I started counselling and the counsellor told me I'm very hard on myself. I see that as taking responsibility for where I've mucked up.

I got married to a chap even though there were hundreds of red flags 🚩🚩🚩🚩 in fact they were glittering and on fire. It ended in great acrimony. I then had a ONS with a man 12 years younger and tried to turn it into a relationship and was a sobbing mess when he didn't want the same.

Then flirting with the window cleaner and hairdresser followed by going out with a married chap and then a long relationship with an emotional bully.

All over now and lessons learned. I didn't know about these: 🚩🚩🚩 I thought problems would iron themselves out but they didn't. I can see I was the architect of my own destruction. Very obvious.

No intention of dating again. All this happened before my 40th birthday, happy birthday to me. My present 🎁 to myself is freedom from idiots.

Where do you think taking responsibility blurs into being hard on yourself?

I understand your POV OP. After the relationship with my dds dad broke down and left me financially ruined (he drained me literally) I took a really long look at how I enabled my own ruin, made excuses, glossed over my own observations, and more. Friends have said 'I couldn't have known' etc and reckon that I'm hard on myself, but for a start I wasn't literally blind. I worked hard at wearing blinders! And it was the only way I managed to actually trust myself not to do the same thing again. After 3 years single I started dating and it was a riotous learning process where I sort of wrangled with my own habits of glossing over and needing validation until I met the thoroughly decent man im now with. Hard or not, I'm glad I learned the lesson.

No it's not but if I don't face up to it then I am indeed sweeping things under the carpet

When, instead, you should be..?