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
I had an affair. I carried on an emotional affair for nearly four years with a man I thought I loved deeply. He was a born again Christian and I think deep down I resented him for that, for not truly loving me back because of his beliefs and because of his wife. I never wanted him to leave her for me, nor did I ever want to leave mine for him. I wanted to have a separate understanding friendship with him that filled in the holes of what we were both missing at home. But over and over, he made me feel dismissed, a distant second. I never knew whether he was going to talk to me, not talk to me, confide in me, hit on me, tell me how much he valued me, ignored me. I hated his wife. I was jealous of her as well. She stood for everything I resented; all the gleeful perfection and godliness I could never achieve. And she had him. All her happy family status updates made me cringe. Then he and I slept together. After that, he wanted to keep talking, pretend like nothing happened, like we had a secret that had to stay that way but he thought it humanly possible we could otherwise go on. Then, small talk. Chatting. He ignored my attempts to talk about it and when I finally forced the issue, told me that basically, he just doesn’t do “the feels.” I couldn’t let go of my feelings of being dismissed, dumped, and jealous of her. I wanted to hurt him, and I wanted to hurt her. So I did. I sent an anonymous email to her telling her that her husband is a cheater. I have no idea what has happened yet. I stood there fo 15 minutes, thinking about whether to hit send, and finally I hit it. I regret it so much. I wish I did not want to hurt her. I don’t know what will happen now. This could be a hornet’s nest. I know it likely signals the end of him and me and possibly that she will fuck up my life, because she was already suspicious and knows who I am. I didn’t do it to do the right thing, even if it was the truth. I did it to hurt her, to spread out my pain. I feel so horrible now that in ways I feel like I don’t even want to live. I have no idea how to fix this mess I have made of my life. All I can do now is sit and wait. She has not responded, nor logged on to Facebook. If I know her, she is making his life miserable at home tonight. I am scared. And I feel like a bad person. I have no idea how to keep a secret nor to move on from the hurtful and unfixable things I have done. I need to forgive myself for doing these awful hurtful things, because I am lashing out because I feel hurt. I know I am not a bad person because I feel guilty. But I can’t fix this. It has happened. I have to find a way to forgive him for not treating me the way I wanted, and to forgive myself for acting needy and desperate for him and lashing out when I felt dismissed. I know why I did it. It’s insecurity and sadness and a profound unhappiness that drove me to cause pain in someone’s live who I perceive in genuinely happy. I am sorry for that. But the truth is, he did cheat. So from that standpoint, at least what I did say to her is the truth, and what he does with it at home now is his concern. My concern is my homelife, how to fix it, how to make myself whole again. My family deserves me to be whole. I need to do whatever I can to make that happen. I don’t have the luxury of falling apart, nor of going away. I forgive myself for making horrible mistakes, and I Let go of the fact that I cannot undo the things that have happened over the past four years and particularly over the past month, less than a month. I pray that I have the strength to do what is right from here on out, even if I can’t right the wrongs of the past.
Dear Friend,
I’m so sorry. I don’t even feel right calling you a friend. In fact we haven’t spooke face to face for over a year now and we never will. In fact you don’t exist in my reality anymore and it sucks because we used to be so close and I know it’s hard to believe me but I loved you and I had a problem with alcohol 2013 and that’s when everything in my life went upside down. I pushed away the person who loved me the most and the last time I saw you was in court and I won. I know what you did was wrong but I still feel guilt beaches maybe if I didn’t have a substance abuse and diagnosed depression we would of been alright but we’re not. I still think about you every day and wished that the relationship we had was still there beacuse honestly I really liked having you around. I think you would be proud of me if we still where friends. My depression is almost gone now. And the last thing that’s holding me back is holding on to the tought of you and I have to let you go. I no longer have a substance a use problem and I’ve been clean for a year and a half. I still wish things didn’t go down the way they did but I still have to fucking let you go I can’t keep you in my heart anymore beacuse honestly the tought of you is killing me. It’s was never find to lose you.
I have the most incredible boyfriend and have been going out with him for some time, but it took me so long to let myself trust him and for almost a year I thought I couldn’t be sure he wouldn’t turn out to be a conceited horrible guy who would break my heart, and I couldn’t let go of the totally unfounded belief that actually he loved his best friend’s girlfriend and not me. I guess I was just used to not being loved, not really, by boyfriends and lovers, even though I do have an incredible amount of love shared with friends and family in my life which I am so lucky for. I was sexually assaulted by various guys too before my boyfriend. My trust issues and anxiety and stress over my imagined problems in my relationship built and built and I just feel I’ve made so many silly mistakes and wasted so much time worrying and resenting my boyfriend for my imagined fears when I could have just talked to him so much earlier- at one stage I nearly even cheated on him!- and resolved my worries and prevented my mistakes and maladaptive behaviours. Talking really is the best thing in relationships. So yeah I guess I just wish I had been braver, sooner, less damn scared of nothing. I wish I could wind back the clock to times when I wanted to say things to my boyfriend, but let them slide and build; things that ranged from “I feel like you like her more” to things like “I know we still don’t know each other very well, but it would be awesome if you came with me on holiday to my country, if you want.” Uhhhh I don’t know. So many regrets.