I reckon this is a real basic, maybe essential, social psychological question.
I've been thinking about it lately because I've worked with troubled individuals who have serious mood swings, abuse alcohol and other people and basically live their life in disarray, lolling from one crisis to the next, always having a hand in creating them and never that aware or interested in the predictable consequences of their actions.
On one occasion one of them exploded at me about how they had been visiting a counsellor who had been working hard to convince them they where not responsible for other peoples emotional states or responses to their behaviour. This came as a shock to me because I had been trying to convince them of the contrary because their behaviour had serious implications for health and even survival chances of others around them and dependents.
As it turned out the counsellor described how they had spun them out a line about experiencing neurotic guilt about their wrong doing, should it have been responding to stress by getting totally rat arsed drunk and fighting or whatever, which then made for further drinking.
I suppose that's one way of looking at it, the counsellor was trying to relieve that guilt in the hope that they'd stop the cycle of abusing alcohol, in my own independent assessment it appeared like the individual involved had taken it as a green light, I'm not responsible for you feeling bad about my abuse of alcohol, being a misery and wrecking things so dont blame me.
There's perhaps a basic clash or perspectives there but it got me thinking, there's an awful lot of the time that people are inviting others to co-regulate their emotional responses, it all seems to be pretty unconscious most of the time, like the taxi driver who hears about a tax rise on the radio, switches it off and then turns to their fare and says, on a serious note, not just as conversation, "bloody politicians eh?".
Some people do it more than others possibly because of a personal hard luck story or possibly because of a culture or context which enables them to or has created that expectation on their part. My question is to what extent should that be an expectation? Should the expecation that others will co-regulate your emotional state be made conscious first of all and then made socially unacceptable or taboo?
I also ask because I know someone who was assaulted not too long ago and was called to a conference with the assailant before a community sentence would be passed, he told me about how the assailant admitted the offence but immediately minised and took a "but bother, you got to see it my way, my day was like this...". He came away shocked, not because he expected any sort of "act of contrition" but that there was so clearly stated the abdication of personal responsibility, "it wasnt me governor, it where the stress what done it".
Personally I reckon that a modern vogue for explanation or understanding could have crossed a rubicon into acceptance or condoning behaviour there was unambiguous criticism of in the past. Outbursts, anger, violence, they arent hurricanes, floods, tsunamis.
I've been thinking about it lately because I've worked with troubled individuals who have serious mood swings, abuse alcohol and other people and basically live their life in disarray, lolling from one crisis to the next, always having a hand in creating them and never that aware or interested in the predictable consequences of their actions.
On one occasion one of them exploded at me about how they had been visiting a counsellor who had been working hard to convince them they where not responsible for other peoples emotional states or responses to their behaviour. This came as a shock to me because I had been trying to convince them of the contrary because their behaviour had serious implications for health and even survival chances of others around them and dependents.
As it turned out the counsellor described how they had spun them out a line about experiencing neurotic guilt about their wrong doing, should it have been responding to stress by getting totally rat arsed drunk and fighting or whatever, which then made for further drinking.
I suppose that's one way of looking at it, the counsellor was trying to relieve that guilt in the hope that they'd stop the cycle of abusing alcohol, in my own independent assessment it appeared like the individual involved had taken it as a green light, I'm not responsible for you feeling bad about my abuse of alcohol, being a misery and wrecking things so dont blame me.
There's perhaps a basic clash or perspectives there but it got me thinking, there's an awful lot of the time that people are inviting others to co-regulate their emotional responses, it all seems to be pretty unconscious most of the time, like the taxi driver who hears about a tax rise on the radio, switches it off and then turns to their fare and says, on a serious note, not just as conversation, "bloody politicians eh?".
Some people do it more than others possibly because of a personal hard luck story or possibly because of a culture or context which enables them to or has created that expectation on their part. My question is to what extent should that be an expectation? Should the expecation that others will co-regulate your emotional state be made conscious first of all and then made socially unacceptable or taboo?
I also ask because I know someone who was assaulted not too long ago and was called to a conference with the assailant before a community sentence would be passed, he told me about how the assailant admitted the offence but immediately minised and took a "but bother, you got to see it my way, my day was like this...". He came away shocked, not because he expected any sort of "act of contrition" but that there was so clearly stated the abdication of personal responsibility, "it wasnt me governor, it where the stress what done it".
Personally I reckon that a modern vogue for explanation or understanding could have crossed a rubicon into acceptance or condoning behaviour there was unambiguous criticism of in the past. Outbursts, anger, violence, they arent hurricanes, floods, tsunamis.