Guiding Process Personal Responsibility
Personal responsibility is one of the eight guiding processes of psychodynamics. The question to be decided is this: ‘Do I exert influence (or not)?’
Each person permanently decides which paradigm he constructs. In truth, nothing has clear meaning. That which disconcerts one person aggravates another, that to which one person responds with rage, another takes with humour. Everyone is responsible for their thoughts, feelings, intentions, actions and omissions and makes their own decisions: – What meaning do I give to that which I have experienced? Do I try to influence the situation? Or do I feel defined by it and become a ‘victim’?
To a large extent this process is built upon unconscious habits. To feel responsible for everything in equal measure would not be functional. The majority could also be different and the least of it can be changed (freely quoted from N. Luhmann). It is, therefore, a question of choosing where to act internally or externally, when to allow oneself to be influenced, and where to experience oneself as affected by external factors without being churned up inside by them.