RESPONSIBILITY
It may be difficult for me to discuss this topic without getting too heavy or sounding like I'm lecturing, but I'll do the best I can. In the "school of life", the failure to learn this lesson is a major liability.
One way of resolving the issue of taking personal responsibility for your life is to deeply understand that you alone are totally responsible to play the cards that your life has dealt you. Another way of saying this is that you are totally responsible to do your best to create your future, even though you will never have total control about how it turns out. No matter what your past or present circumstances may be, you can learn to understand and accept that you always have the freedom to make choices about your attitudes and behaviors, so that you can create more enjoyment for yourself, regardless of the circumstances of your life that you cannot control.
Perhaps you don't or cannot believe this right now. If that is true for you, do you feel like you have freedom or on the contrary do you feel that you are a victim of your life circumstances? Feeling like a person who has " free will" is directly related to your ability to understand and welcome the fact that you alone have the responsibility to make choices to create the future that you want for yourself.
Anyone with a long-term mental habit of feeling like a victim will probably be resisting my assertion. If this describes the way you are right now, I don't mean to judge you. Much more important is that you try not to judge yourself. At the most I am describing the consequences of your behavior. I'm not judging you. The more that you can learn to feel like the "captain of the ship of your life", the more it will feel like you have free will.
Let's consider a specific example to try to clarify this point. Suppose you are in jail. In that situation you obviously don't have total freedom of choice about your behavior. Nevertheless, you can choose your attitudes about these confining circumstances. You can choose what you do with your mind, and this can make a great deal of difference.
If you have been psychologically traumatized in your past, you may still experience very disturbing emotions from time to time, and at these times you may not have as much control over your moods as you would like. At those times it may help to try to remember that you are a “human being”, not a " human doing." The being that you are is deeper than any temporary emotions, which is the doingness that I'm referring to. There is a saying in the Bible the talks about this distinction; "hate the sin, not the sinner". The term sinner refers to the actions taken by the being. "Turning the other cheek" doesn't mean that you tolerate abuse. The suggestion means that you give a human being another chance to behave better, while at the same time you don’t allow them to perpetrate abusive behavior towards you; neither physical or verbal abuse.
If you are currently experiencing "emotional storms", whatever their cause may be, be patient, kind, and compassionate to yourself. Try not to be afraid when you feel out of control of your emotions. Give yourself permission to grieve your losses. Don't force yourself to forgive prematurely. Despite the emotional storms, you can begin to make choices to take "baby steps" to begin creating a more enjoyable future for yourself.
If you are having difficulty coming to terms with your past actions, remember that no one is perfect. Perhaps you need to make amends before you can learn to forgive yourself. If that's true, do so, as long as your amends don't harm others. Be honest with yourself about whether or not making amends would damage the people you have harmed. If so you could do a "symbolic equivalent", for example by doing volunteer work and making a connection in your mind between your past misdeeds and your current actions. I believe this is how doing penance works. Remember that no one is perfect.
If you find that your mind is full of excuses and justifications while you are reading this, you are probably resisting the possibility of accepting total responsibility in some areas of your life. If you're doing this, I'm not judging you and please don't judge yourself. I'm only trying to make you aware of cause and effect. You don't have to add punishment on top of that.
If you're still having difficulty with accepting full responsibility for creating your future, try the exercise of performing a cost-benefit analysis about maintaining a victim mentality about your life. One disadvantage of seeing yourself as a victim, is that you genuinely will not feel that you have much freedom of choice. Probably you can find other disadvantages. More difficult will be admitting to yourself the advantages associated with seeing yourself as a victim. For one thing it's a way to get a lot of sympathy.
Even though you are totally responsible for the choices that you consciously make about coping with your circumstances, you don't have to do it alone. If you are currently impaired or dysfunctional because of your psychological symptoms, why not get help. That's really taking more responsibility, then lying to yourself, by falsely believing that you can do it alone right now. You won't get any demerits from the universe, if you ask for help when you are stuck. You also don't get merit badges for doing things all by yourself. All of us can only do our best of the moment. We can't do our " lifetime best" all the time. Humans inevitably will make some bad mistakes despite the best intentions. You can learn to honestly acknowledge your errors, learn from them, and move on, without trivializing their importance. Many of us have been taught that guilt and shame are inevitable and even necessary when we make mistakes. I strongly disagree. Taking responsibility and making appropriate amends, if necessary, is a legitimate alternative.
As an example, if I were to loan you my car, so you could go to a grocery store, and you returned to the parking lot to find a dent caused by a hit-and-run driver, I'm much more interested in you paying to fix the damage, than I am in you feeling guilty or ashamed. I don't even really care that much whether or not you apologize. Just fix the car. I know it wasn't your fault. I take responsibility for having chosen to loan you my car, understanding the inevitable risk. I can recall several examples when American presidents have apologized without taking responsibility for their actions. Such apologies have no meaning for me. It's phony and irresponsible.