Fault vs. Responsibility

An important distinction to me is the difference between fault and responsibility.  Fault is about the cause of a problem and responsibility is about the solution to a problem.  What makes this important from an emotional perspective is when we look inside ourselves and see a mess, it is helpful to know how it got there and how it's going to get fixed. Commonly, that means our internal messes are our parent's fault, but our responsibility. They caused the mess, usually with their less than ideal parenting.  But it's our responsibility, as adults, to clean up the mess.  So, when I hear someone complaining about how their parents screwed them up, I'm always interested to hear if they recognize that they have to be the one to take responsibility and fix themselves.  And, on the other hand, I'm also always interested to hear if people who talk about responsibility are able to recognize the root of the problem.  It's very important to see both and recognize that they are different.