Author Archives: Shervan K Shahhian, LIBERTY PSYCHOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION, The Most Comprehensive Online Library Regarding Mental Health, Psychology and Parapsychology in the World.

A blame shifter is someone who habitually avoids responsibility for their actions by redirecting fault onto other people, circumstances, or external events.

Instead of asking, “What part did I play?”,

The blame shifter tends to ask, “Who can I make responsible for this?”

Common signs:

• Deflects responsibility: “It wasn’t my fault.”
• Counterattacks: When confronted, they bring up your mistakes instead.
• Externalizes problems: “You made me do it.”
• Changes the subject: Avoids the original issue by introducing unrelated accusations.
• Minimizes their behavior: “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
• Reverses victim and offender roles: They portray themselves as the injured party.
• Rarely apologizes genuinely: Apologies may contain conditions, “I’m sorry, but you…”
• Rewrites events: Their account changes to avoid responsibility.

Blame shifting vs. healthy accountability

Healthy accountability:

“I was wrong. I understand how my behavior affected you. Here’s what I’ll do differently.”

Blame shifting:

“I only did that because you pushed me into it. If you hadn’t acted that way, none of this would have happened.”

Why some people blame shift

Blame shifting may serve as a psychological defense mechanism. It may protect someone from shame, guilt, embarrassment, loss of status, or the discomfort of acknowledging mistakes. It may also become a learned interpersonal pattern.

Importantly, one instance of blaming someone else doesn’t make a person a “blame shifter.” The meaningful distinction is a persistent pattern of avoiding appropriate responsibility.

A useful response

Don’t get pulled into an endless argument about who’s “really” at fault. Try:

“We may discuss my part separately. Right now, I’m addressing what happened and your responsibility for your part.”

That keeps the conversation focused on behavior, evidence, responsibility, and repair rather than accusation and counteraccusation.

Shervan K Shahhian

Staying unpredictable may be useful when it means not allowing other people to easily manipulate, control, or anticipate your every move.

Why stay unpredictable?

• Protects your boundaries: People may not assume you will always say yes, explain yourself, or tolerate the negative behavior.

• Prevents manipulation: Predictability may sometimes make it easier for someone to exploit your routines or emotional reactions.

• Encourages adaptability: You become more comfortable responding to circumstances rather than following a rigid script.

• Maintains independence: You make choices based on your values rather than on what others expect from you.

• Creates psychological flexibility: You may change your approach when the situation changes.

• Reduces people pleasing: Others learn that their expectations may not automatically determine your behavior.

But there’s an important distinction

Healthy unpredictability vs being unreliable:

Healthy:

“I don’t have to react the way you expect me to. Because, you don’t own me.”

Unhealthy:

“You never know what version of me you’re going to get.”

In most professional and therapeutic relationships especially, predictability, consistency, and reliability are generally strengths. You may be predictable in your ethics and boundaries while remaining flexible in your tactics.

A useful principle is:

“Be predictable in your values; be flexible in your responses.”

That gives you stability without becoming easy to control.

Shervan K Shahhian

Mastering the Art of Timing means learning when to act, when to wait, and when to stop. It is the ability to recognize the right moment rather than simply reacting to events.

The core principles

1.Observe before acting

Don’t rush to respond. Read the situation, the people involved, and the emotional climate.

2.Know when to speak

The right message delivered at the wrong moment may fail. Timing includes knowing when someone is actually ready to listen.

3.Know when to wait

Patience may not passivity. Sometimes waiting allows information, emotions, or circumstances to develop in your favor.

4.Recognize windows of opportunity

Opportunities may not be a limited window. Good timing means noticing when conditions are unusually favorable and acting decisively.

5.Control emotional impulses

Ask yourself: “Do I need to respond now, or do I merely feel compelled to respond now?”

6.Understand pacing

Whether you’re negotiating, teaching, building rapport, leading, or communicating, the pace matters. Too fast may overwhelm; too slow may lose momentum.

7.Use strategic silence

Silence may give another person space to think, reveal more information, or regulate emotionally. You don’t have to fill every pause.

8.Know when to leave

Timing may not be only about entering at the right moment. It’s also knowing when an interaction, argument, opportunity, or relationship has reached its natural stopping point.

A useful mental model

Observe, Assess, Wait, Act, Reassess

The goal may not be to become slow or calculating. It’s to become deliberate rather than impulsive.

Good timing is the intersection of readiness, opportunity, and action.

In psychology and interpersonal communication, this is closely related to emotional regulation, situational awareness, social attunement, impulse control, and judgment.

Shervan K Shahhian

Please, don’t chase meaning in the wrong places: means don’t look for purpose, fulfillment, identity, or validation in things that May not sustainably provide them.

What it may mean

Sometimes we try to fill an inner need through external sources:

• Status: believing achievement will finally make you feel worthy.
• Money: assuming more wealth will give your life meaning.
• Romantic attention: using another person’s love to prove your value.
• Fame or recognition: needing others to admire you to feel significant.
• Power or control: trying to feel secure by controlling everything.
• Constant stimulation: confusing excitement with fulfillment.
• Fantasy or grandiosity: creating an extraordinary identity to escape ordinary dissatisfaction.
• Other people’s approval: allowing their opinions to determine your self-worth.

The problem may not be that these things are inherently bad. The problem is expecting them to answer a deeper question they were never designed to answer.

A better question

Instead of asking:

“What will make me feel important?”

ask:

“What is genuinely worth investing my life in?”

Meaning may come more reliably from values, relationships, contribution, learning, responsibility, creativity, service, and living consistently with what matters to you.

A useful principle

Don’t confuse intensity with meaning.

Something may feel powerful, exciting, mystical, romantic, or important without actually being meaningful.

Real meaning may look surprisingly ordinary:

Doing worthwhile things repeatedly, developing your abilities, caring about people, accepting difficulty, and contributing something beyond yourself.

In short:

Stop searching for meaning in places that merely provide temporary validation. Build meaning through what you value and how you live.

Shervan K Shahhian

Sadism is a psychological term describing a tendency to derive pleasure, satisfaction, excitement, or a sense of power from causing pain, humiliation, distress, or suffering to another person.

The term is used in several contexts:

• Sexual Sadism: Sexual arousal or gratification associated with another person’s suffering, humiliation, or pain. When this involves non-consenting people or causes significant impairment/distress, it may meet criteria for a mental disorder and criminal violence.

• Non-sexual Sadism: Enjoyment of dominating, humiliating, frightening, or deliberately hurting others outside a sexual context.
• Everyday use: Someone may be called “sadistic” simply because they appear unusually cruel or enjoy seeing others suffer; this may not necessarily mean they have a psychiatric disorder.

Sadism vs. Masochism

An important distinction is consent. Consensual BDSM activities may involve pain, dominance, or humiliation without automatically indicating psychopathology. The clinical concern is more about lack of consent, significant distress/impairment, or harm. Intimacy Should Not Include Violence.

Shervan K Shahhian

Sadomasochism is a psychological and behavioral concept describing the combination of two tendencies:

• Sadism: deriving pleasure (often emotional, psychological, or sexual) from inflicting pain, humiliation, or control over others.

• Masochism: deriving pleasure from experiencing pain, submission, or humiliation.

When combined, sadomasochism refers to a dynamic where one person takes a dominant (sadistic) role and another takes a submissive (masochistic) role, often in a mutually agreed context.

In mental health:

• It may refer to personality traits, not just sexual behavior.
• Historically, it could have been classified as a disorder, but modern frameworks (like the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, distinguish between:
  • Consensual behaviors: not considered pathological
  • Non-consensual or harmful patterns: may be classified as a disorder/ pathological

1. BDSM Context (Modern Understanding)

In contemporary culture, sadomasochism may be part of BDSM (Bondage, Discipline, Dominance, Submission, Sadism, Masochism).

Key features:

• Consent (explicit and ongoing)
• Boundaries and safety
• Mutual trust
• May be guided by principles like “safe, sane, and consensual”

In this context, it is not inherently unhealthy and may be part of normal adult sexuality?

2. Non-Sexual Sadomasochism

Sadomasochistic dynamics may also appear outside sexuality:

• In relationships (emotional domination/submission)
• In workplace or authority structures
• In self-defeating or self-punishing behaviors

3. When It Becomes Problematic

It may be considered harmful when:

• There is lack of consent
• It causes distress or impairment
• It involves coercion, abuse, or injury
• It becomes compulsive or uncontrollable

4. Psychological Interpretation

From a deeper lens:

• It may relate to power regulation
• Attachment dynamics (control vs. surrender)
• Affect regulation (using pain or intensity to manage emotional states)
• In some theories, it may reflect attempts to integrate aggression and vulnerability

Shervan K Shahhian

A Masochist may be a person who experiences pleasure, satisfaction, or emotional relief from pain, discomfort, or humiliation.

There are a few ways to understand Masochism:

1. Psychological meaning

• A person may seek out difficult or painful situations.
• This isn’t always physical, it may be emotional (staying in hurtful relationships, self-sabotage).
• In clinical mental health, extreme forms may relate to patterns like self-defeating behavior.

2. Sexual context

• In sexuality, Masochism refers to arousal from pain or submission.
• It may often be discussed alongside sadism (enjoyment of giving pain), and together they form sadomasochism (BDSM).
• When practiced consensually and safely, some may considered it as a normal variation of human sexuality?

3. Everyday usage

• People sometimes may use it casually, like:
  • “I must be a Masochist for doing this workout”
• In this sense, it just means choosing something difficult or uncomfortable.

Important distinction

Being a Masochist may not automatically mean something is wrong. It depends on:

• Whether it’s consensual and controlled
• Whether it causes distress or harm

Shervan K Shahhian