Am I the Problem?

Someone in your life, maybe several someones, has told you that you are the problem. The difficult one. The one who causes all the conflict. The one who needs to change, apologize, accommodate, submit. And you've heard it so many times that you've started to believe it.

So you Googled it. "Am I the problem?" And now you're here, bracing yourself for confirmation of what they told you.

Two Possibilities

There are two possibilities and they look completely different from the inside.

Possibility one: you have genuinely harmful patterns, anger, control, dishonesty, and the people around you are responding to real behavior that needs to change. In this case, the feedback is accurate and the work is on you.

Possibility two: you've been assigned the scapegoat role in a dysfunctional system, and the system has convinced you that its dysfunction is your fault. In this case, the feedback is manipulation and the work is on the system.

Here's how to tell the difference.

Signs You're the Problem

Multiple unconnected people in different areas of your life give you similar feedback. Your boss, your friend, your spouse, and your sibling all independently tell you the same thing. That's signal, not conspiracy.

You can see the specific behavior they're describing. You recognize it. You've done it. You might not want to admit it, but the evidence is there. Accountability doesn't feel unfair; it feels uncomfortable but accurate.

When you change the behavior, the relationship improves. Real feedback produces real results when acted on.

Signs You're the Scapegoat

The feedback comes from one system, one family, one group, and other people in your life don't see it. Your coworkers respect you. Your friends trust you. But your family says you're impossible.

The goalposts move. You apologize and it's not enough. You change the behavior and they find a new problem. You do exactly what they asked and the rules change. Nothing you do is ever sufficient because the system doesn't actually want resolution. It wants compliance.

When you set a boundary, you're punished. Healthy systems respect boundaries. Dysfunctional systems treat them as betrayal. If saying "no" causes the same reaction as saying something hateful, you're dealing with a system, not a relationship.

You feel crazy. You walk out of conversations questioning your own memory, your own motives, your own sanity. That's not self-awareness. That's gaslighting. Self-aware people feel uncomfortable. Gaslit people feel insane.

What to Do

Get outside the system. Find one person, a coach, a counselor, a trusted friend who is not connected to the system, and describe what's happening. Not your interpretation. The facts. What was said, what was done, what happened when you tried to address it. An outside perspective will cut through the fog faster than any amount of internal processing.

The Dark Room Assessment was built for exactly this moment. The moment a man finally asks: is it me?