How to Forgive Yourself?
Let it go. Forget about it. Move on.
Forgive yourself. It’s easy to say, but so much harder to actually do! We all mess up sometimes, whether it’s lashing out at a friend, engaging in a self-destructive behavior or cutting corners at work.
And with those mistakes often come overwhelming feelings of guilt. Shame. Self-condemnation. Humiliation.
Counselors and life coaches have found that these emotions can lead to stress, depression, anxiety disorders and even heart disease, if ignored.[1] Not exactly the formula for a happy life!
Forgive. We’ve all heard the word before, but what does it mean? And why is it so important?
Dr. Frederic Luskin at Stanford University reports that “learning to forgive helps people hurt less, experience less anger, feel less stress and suffer less depression. People who learn to forgive report significantly fewer symptoms of stress such as backache, muscle tension, dizziness, headaches and upset stomachs. In addition people report improvements in appetite, sleep patterns, energy and general well being.”[2]
If self-forgiveness is such a good thing, why is it so hard?
Too often, we punish ourselves for past mistakes, as if we could somehow “make up” the wrong that we’ve done. We walk through each day feeling less-than. We call ourselves losers. No good. We live chained to our past, holding on to hurts and grudges. And though no one else may know about our secret pain, the negative emotions we feel gnaw away at our joy and satisfaction in life.
Counselors and life coaches report that the hardest person to forgive is yourself. Not the friend who backstabbed you. Or the dad that wasn’t there for you. Or even the ex who broke your heart.
Why? Because you know yourself and you live with yourself every day. Go figure.
If you feel stuck in the rut of your past failures, try these tips for embracing forgiveness.
1. Talk about it.
When it comes to the past, silence can be deadly. So stop pretending. Free yourself from the bondage of holding it all in. Talk about what’s tearing you apart inside. Express the emotions you feel to a counselor, mentor, or friend you can trust. Forgiveness starts with being honest and vulnerable about who you are…the good and the bad. So say what you need to say.
2. Be honest with yourself.
“If I just pretend it never happened, maybe it will all go away,” we tend to think. Sounds nice…but not true. Choose to break out of denial. Be honest about how you’ve messed up and the consequences of your behavior. Journal out the specific behaviors and actions that are causing you angst.
3. Accept it for what it is.
As an imperfect person, you will make mistakes in life. Face it. You will hurt people sometimes. Youwill have regrets. It’s part of living in a less-than-perfect world. But you have a choice.
Either your past will keep you in a rut of guilt and shame…or you will accept it for what it is and experience the freedom to move on and enjoy the now. Self-acceptance is critical to your emotional health, so don’t miss out!
4. Let go.
Don’t hold on to guilt. You don’t need to justify your past actions or try to prove yourself. Letting go of the past means burying it and giving up your right to engage in self-condemnation. Forgiveness is a choice, but also a process. It’s choosing to stop hating yourself and cutting yourself down, but instead, seeing yourself as a valuable human being.
One of the first steps of letting go, is to just get it out there. Please feel free to use the form below to let it go, or apologize for something that has been on your chest for years.
You can use an anonymous name (and the email will NEVER be shown). Your post will be added to the wall below.
It’s okay. You can let go.
Develop realistic expectations.
Evaluate the expectations you (and others) set for you. Are they healthy? Or unrealistic? If you find yourself never being able to measure up—no matter how hard you try—you may just need to change a few things in your approach to life. Healthy expectations are achievable and fulfilling, not draining and overwhelming.
Forgiving yourself is tough. It means striking a deal with yourself …
- to let the past be past and live in the present
- to stop beating yourself up about something that happened two or five or ten years ago
- to banish guilt and shame from controlling your thoughts and behaviors
- to accept and respect yourself as you are…in spite of your screw-ups
Counselors and life coaches tell us that “to forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”[3]
Tired of living as a prisoner? Click below to download our free forgiveness ebook.
Notes:
[1]Dr. Frederick Luskin, Research from Standford University, learningtoforgive.com/ [2]Ibid. [3]Lewis B. Smedes
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Anthony Centore
There’s a lot of things I feel guilty for. I never did my best in life, and I know if I did I would be able to have a fulfilling life, the kind of life many people would desire. I never fully appreciated my life or anything in it, which is my first regret. I could have an beautiful life but I want to kill myself sometimes, I feel guilty just for that. When I was young I would get in fights with my sisters. Once I kicked my younger sister in the crotch, I also scared her with a knife, waving it between the bottom of the locked bathroom door and the floor so she wouldn’t leave the bathroom until my parents got home, it was over something stupid like who got to watch tv, I was probably like 10 or 11 and she’s a year younger than me so she would’ve been 9 or 10. She had a pet horse that died and I wouldn’t stop bringing it up once, telling her that the horse was dead and never coming back until she cried. The worst thing was that later, I was sixteen she was 15, I let my friend who 17 take her virginity, she never brought it up , never said he taped her or anything, but I feel like I let him take her virginity so that I would have a friend. Turns out he was never a good friend and later stole a pound of pot from me. I’ve peer pressured people into smoking pot, not many but some, including my younger sister, she never continued smoking though. I used to get my cat really high with my friends and I know it didn’t enjoy the experience at all. Once my mothers cats went missing, eaten by wolfs maybe or just ran away, but she wouldn’t shut up about it so I told her I tied bricks to them and threw them in a lake, I didn’t but still feel guilty and horrified that I would ever think of such a thing. I feel greatly responsible for my family falling apart, I feel like I was born on a mission to help them all and love them and heal them emotionally but failed and did them a lot if harm instead. I loved a girl once, or as close as I’ve ever really come to loving anyone, but I didn’t tell her until it was too late, I had really low self esteem and didn’t think she’d like me, I didn’t want to get hurt but that fear caused me so much more suffering. What’s worse is that she probably had low self esteem at the time and ended up dating a lot of guys who all came and went, I feel like I could have showed her how beautiful she was and taught her how to really love herself by loving her, but I was a coward. When I was 14 one of my closest friends drowned at a waterfall of a river, it was summer and a bunch if us went to jump into the river from like 40 ft up, but the river was obviously to rough that day because it had been raining earlier that week. I didn’t jump in, but my a couple of my friends did and the current of the waterfall pulled one of them under and he drowned. We went to someone’s house to call 911 but it was too late. Within a couple hours his father showed up and he asked me what happened so I told him and he hugged me and just cried. I could have stopped everyone that day and saved a life but I didn’t. I was to afraid to speak up or maybe just didn’t think anyone would listen or something, I don’t really know wtf I was thinking. I was addicted to pornography since I was like twelve. Some classmates of mine introduced me to it, and also told me it’s not weird to masturbate imagining girls you know, so I did that as well but it was very weird I thought because it made seeing them weird and kept me from actually trying to have girlfriends. Porn became a serious addiction, as bad as heroin probably, it played a huge role in destroying my promising life. On several occasions I watched porn on my mothers laptop because that’s the only access to technology I had at the time. Addictions build tolerances so you need a higher dose and same with porn. I eventually would watch weird shit, bondage and shit like that. It fucked with my self esteem badly. There are jerk off instructions where women encourage you to masturbate, some tell you to do weird shit, and out of curiosity I started experimenting with my uh, back door. This was really shameful to me and was a very short phase but left me questioning my sexuality more often than the average guy probably. I’m not sexually attracted to men but just curious about my own body, that’s my conclusion to that confusion. I once tried to suck my own dick and could get the head in and came in my own mouth, that was weird as fuck too and I regret it, I was just curious I guess but would never suck someone else’s dick. I had a girlfriend for a couple months and we fucked a lot, my relationship with her was emotionally damaging to me. Worse, she had a kid who was like 18 months old and she’d put him to bed in his crib in her room then chill with me downstairs for about an hour, and then once he was well asleep we would go up to her room and have sex in her bed, for a long time sometimes and relatively loudly for her child being in the same room. Once I started having sex with her while her infant son was asleep in the other side of her queen size bed, only for a couple minutes then we moved to the opposite side if the room on the floor, out of sight were he to wake up. That was strange and I feel like it was wrong to do and I feel guilty. That relationship didn’t end well, and I still miss her because being with her was the closest I’ve ever been to someone, the closest I’ve ever been I think to feeling loved by someone or being in love, and yet I really don’t think it was either of those things. I slept with this one chick who was like three years older than me, and woke up naked next to her in the morning. She was still asleep and I put my dick in her and came in her before she was fully awake. She actually wasn’t to bothered by it but it felt like rape and I felt guilty about it. This other chick who was four years older than me and had a four year old daughter had me babysit her daughter while she went to an aa meeting. She came back way later than expected and with some dude who was nodding out like he was doped up. She put her daughter to bed, he slept downstairs on the couch and I slept with her in her room and had short and awkward sex with her. I think she fucked him for drugs and then fucked me for babysitting her child for her. I heard from people later that she had hpv, found out it was true and was worried because I didn’t wear a condom. I think I was alright though because it didn’t last very long. I had a drinking problem for four years and could really fuck shit up when I was drunk, this mostly hurt myself I think but also anyone who might have cared about me and it’s hard to forgive myself. I abused drugs to but never had a serious addiction to any substance besides cigarettes. I held a grudge against all of my family and friends and blamed them for my suffering event though I brought a lot if it upon myself. I have had very little respect for my father and mostly focused in his failure as a human being instead if his success, and often had little sympathy for him. I think my mother is in a relationship that is bad for her and can’t help her out if it, but feel responsible for the divorce that got both my parents into unhealthy relationships, if I did my best I could have healed my family but I was spiteful and reckless and didn’t give a fuck. I’ve smashed mailboxes for fun and stolen scrap metal and a trailer to mice it to the scrap yard with to buy pot. I kicked the shit out if one of my closest friends once because I was hitting on his girlfriend and feeling her up and it turned into a fight between him and I. I broke my right hand and had a fight with him the next day too, with a splint on my right hand I tried to fight him with my left, then threatened him with a knife and he fit in his car and left. I once stole petty shit from people who were trying to help me get my life together, petty shit like a 3 ft 12 plug power strip, professional studio headphones and guitar stands, rugs and an old wooden table. Two men have tried to pay me to let them suck my dick but I refused both, I’m guilty of putting myself in shitty situations like that though, I would have never been in those situations if I didn’t fuck up my life and end up homeless. I stole a winter work jacket from a guy who was living off the side if an exit ramp to the highway, he wasn’t around and I really didn’t let myself realize it as theft, just taking what I needed in my eyes, but I came back and he was there and really pissed off but I was far enough away that I could just leave, no harm to me, thankfully he didn’t have a gun because I swear he would have shot me. I never really cut myself much but did take some joy in pain when u happened to get cut, always figured if I was gonna cut myself it would be just to die, except for one time I cut up my whole left arm and wrote the words “I suck at life” down the length of it, also I would sometimes burn myself intentionally with cigarette butts or picking up things that were on fire like coals, logs, or heated metal. I stole beer from some people at a party and went into the woods in the dark to drink by myself once, also felt up this chick at a party who really wasn’t into it and I stopped but felt bad about it. When I was 16 I was kinda short and skinny, and I was drunk and high at a party in the woods when these redneck guys in their mid twenties probably, told me they thought I was gay and they were gonna kick my ass unless I kissed one of their boots, and fucked up and confused I did then left the situation. Wish I had stood up for myself, or not put myself in such a shitty situation. Also when I was like 5 I killed a dragonfly with a bad mitten racket and felt really bad when I realized I killed it, they were beautiful they filled an open yard and were harmless but I killed one, I guess I just wanted to play with them, but I realized that particular dragonfly was not going to get better, it was dead and wasn’t going back to the way it was. That was my first taste of regret and I was so sad, it was very difficult event then to move on and forgive myself. Now I’ve fucked up my whole life making poor decisions and it’s not going back to the way it was before, it’s extremely difficult to forgive myself and I have thoughts of suicide from time to time still. Forgiving myself for all of this is probably one of the most difficult things I’ve ever had to do in my life and I don’t entirely feel like I deserve forgiveness. I wish I could know that I deserve forgiveness and that forgiving myself is the right thing to do, I suppose I’ll do my best and move forward day by day and try not to think about it to much.
I was with the girl of my dreams and we were deeply in love, I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her but I have a past with drug addiction… I had almost 3 years cleans when we approached our 6 months together mark and I made the worse decision of my life and relapsed on heroin. I lied to her about it for months and then came clean she helped me get better and was an angel… she truly loved me. And then I relapsed again, and again, and again and lied again and again and again.. and she gave me chance after chance to help me… but I kept hurting her so badly… and I was selfish in my addiction and put her second to it and I lost myself so much that I staged a break in at her apartment so that the things I stole from her would not be pinned on me… she has the worst anxiety attack of her life and I just sat by in silence knowing it was all my fault… the guilt I felt.. I kept using, it was the only way to live with myself and well… as with all lies the truth came out and it destroyed her… to know all that I had done and lied about… I lost the love of my life and hurt her when she was just trying to love me, she never did a single wrong thing to me and I just ripped her apart… I’m a fucking monster and don’t deserve to forgive myself .
I cheated on my boyfriend with my bestfriends boyfriend. It was about a year ago & both of our couples broke up and she still doesnt know. The guilt is killing me, I love her so much and shes the closest thing ive got. I know I messed up and I would give anything to change what I did. Im so tired of lying to her but if i tell her ill be alone & i need her 🙁