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
-For watching porn and eating lots of food to cope with my anxiety and issues with myself.
(Continuing) and that means we’re all trying to do better today than yesterday and though I have been ashamed of my past for what I wanted or i felt it should have been but wasn’t, for what I have done to myself, others, verbally, sexually, etc. That I recognize that i would change those things if I could, but that I know I want to be a better man. I want to be happy and I used to write in a journal and then my writing would get so long winded that I stopped, but it did help and just writing here helped. So thank you. I can try and do the best I can today, tomorrow and the days that follow. Just because the whole world is not writing on this forum, doesn’t mean they aren’t ashamed and guilty etc too. We all have made mistakes and we can’t always fix them, but we can move forward. Hopefully we can move forward leaving this behind us as it is very much behind us.
I just feel so upset with myself and my life. Nothing I have done has brought me the happiness I had hoped it would, I also ruin practically anything I meddle in.
Some main things that upset me are that I hold on to things and don’t let them go, as though I am not able to redirect my upsetness or anger and so i bottle it up over years and decades. I have such bad anxiety and I just exacerbate all my problems because I don’t know how to deal with them.
-I hurt a friend 7 years ago by laughing when something happened that wasn’t really my fault of what I can remember, but it wasn’t okay because thats mean and though I didn’t make her do what she did, It shouldn’t have happened.
-I feel like when growing up I should have been a better brother to my sister, to be nicer.
-I feel guilty for things that I did when I was a child (when I was around the ages of 5), exploring sexuality
-I feel awful that watch porn and that I have for 13 years now and because I watch porn I don’t need to find a man (as I am gay) to be sexual with, which derail my plans of dating and being with someone, at first my excuse for watching porn was that at least I wasn’t contracting diseases.
-I feel guilty for somethings I have done that would come off bad, but I didn’t mean them to come off bad, I just wasn’t thinking.
-I feel guilty and ashamed about so much of me and my life. Some of the things that happened could of hurt other people too and I am just not proud.
-I am ashamed to be gay, though i love the idea of having a partner or husband and being with a man, I feel like I grew up with family that were not accepting, and it was clear in ways they verbalized it that I felt guilty for being true to myself.
-It’s like I have known so much of this stuff for 13 plus years and I never make any progress and its just so upsetting.
-I had a brief sexual relationship with a married man who was much older than me and I knew he was married and i didn’t plan it, but he came over to look at our house without his wife and realtor one day when it was for sale and he claimed he wanted to check out the house again and then he seduced me and it felt good to be wanted and to be touched and when we were doing stuff I felt so guilty and upset. I’ve had anxiety about that.
-I don’t like my body shape, despite that I have only a couple times been able to lose weight and be proud of my progress (hardly eating) I hate my body, I have body hair all over and it makes me disgusted with myself. I feel so uncomfortable in me, I don’t know how other people feel, but everything I have ever done seems to have only made sex and me off the table. My mom is pretty tight on religion and growing up with that and wanting to be sexual just left me feeling ashamed and totally upset. By just being human I was screwed.
-I have a lot of upsetness with my family, my parents got divorced and I miss having a safe place to call home. Though I am safe and living with a roof over my head, my innocence was taken.
-I have an auditory processing disorder and so the symptoms that I experience from that makes me feel like a worthless piece of garbage because I feel incapable of keeping or excelling in a job.
-Life isn’t easy to make your dreams happen and I guess I needed it to be because I am weak and not successful.
-I have anger issues, i take out my anger on other people, not always, but sometimes I channel my anger at people who don’t deserve it.
-Men that I have found attractive have never professed their love for me and that in it self is wrecking to one’s self esteem.
-I always say that I am gonna be a better man and I don’t follow through.
-There is a lot of things I just feel bad about, things I did when I was a kid from not eating a food we had on the table when we were broke, to slamming my moms arm in the car door, for peeing in public and vandalizing school property in kindergarten and 1st grade.
Things that I really didn’t mean to do, I am still harvesting so much guilt from.
-For blaming friends and being angry at them when they have let me down or hurt me, or when I have hurt them
-for having a big mouth, for not keeping promises and telling other peoples secrets
-for upsetting my mom at anytime, just the mere idea or thought of breaking her heart kills me.
-for stealing money from my uncle and grandpa when i was 6 years old.
-for not being the person I could be
-for continuously expecting a pity party when I mess up as if its ok that I keep messing up
-for blaming my biological problems from some of my problems, which though he may have been the reason or a contribution to the problems, I feel guilty for saying it to him.
-for hating my dad, a man i don’t really know but have called dad for 25 years of my life.
-for wishing that my parents were stronger and made a better effort at making our lives fun and happy, for wishing that we did more adventures and movie nights and game nights
-for not getting to do sports when i was younger when my single mother was working to provide food on the table and me giving her a hard time all the time.
-for disappointing my mother
-for hooking up and acting sexual with men in my high school, the things were not that bad, but I feel ashamed and not proud for doing them.
-for wanting to move away to a far distant city or state and restart because I am so disappointed in who I’ve been.
-for still thinking of men that I had crushes on 8 years ago and trying to make them like me. Remember, they did stuff with their lives and i stayed in the same city and just went to the local college and did retail. not exactly adventurous.
-for thinking about killing myself when I have gotten really low.
-for not letting myself forgive myself
The good thing that I have learned from reading other peoples posts is that “we’re human” and we’re not perfect