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
Let’s keep in touch! Sign up to receive our newsletter:
Anthony Centore
my guilt & regret for scewing the relationship with my husband and the divorce I agreed on.
I want to let go of this pain, regrets of past decisions I made. For 30 something years, I wasted most of my time being blind. I didn’t know what I was, what I had to do to be happy, how to take care of myself, what kind of people I needed to be around. I am in deep depression now. I have been depressed and broken many times before but this time is the hardest. All my life, I kept distance from people. I am introvert and don’t like people. Since I was a child, I didn’t have a desire to go out with other kids in school. Instead I return home after school to watch TV or to hang out with my family. I was never in the present moment. I was always dreaming of something else or the future or feel nostalgic to the past. This is taking a big tool on my life now after 30 something years. I do not know what to do with people. I don’t know how to protect myself from wrong crowds or to choose right people for me.
On top of it, I struggled entire life with the denial of my own culture and the country of birth. Since I was 10 years old, I knew I didn’t fit in my own country. So I left my country to find a place where I can be me and happy.
Since I started dating men, my life has been a big mess. I was with a same person for 10 years long distance relationship. Who does that? Me. So stupid. I stayed with him believing his word to marry me after he receive PHD, and he left me after 10 years. I almost died of pain and regrets. I had to find elsewhere to find my life. Then I found one place on earth where I could work and shine. Then I found love again. I was madly in love and left the place to follow him to his country. After some months passed, he wasn’t ready to commit. He left me for another girl he met during the summer during the time we were long distance. I was angry at myself for giving up the country and to believe him. It took 6 months but I found a way to go back to the same country again with another job. During this time, I still carried resentment and sadness. After 4 months, I was in love again. This time, I was careful. He was staying there for a short time and I knew he was leaving the country soon. I told him that I couldn’t do long distance, but he promised me to return to live with me. After he left to his country, he saw more potential to be successful there then told me he would not be coming back. Instead we agreed that I would be joining him in his country or somewhere closer. I got a job in a foreign country, which was not his country, but it was closer than where I was living. In my heart, I knew I was making a mistake to leave the place but he was telling me the place I was living was way too far and it was better for me to move closer. Before moving to this new country, I went to see him in his country. I told him that I don’t care about this job and move there alone, in my heart that I want to live with you right now. We talked about it and he agreed to live together in his city. Still, we agreed that I moved to the country anyway to see for 1 or 2 months to save salary to use for relocation to his city. I was in love excited to join him soon. As soon as I moved to this country again far from him, he ended our relationship over Facetime. He wasn’t ready and I was too old for him. That’s literally what he said. It was reasons only based on logical facts. He suddenly saw that he had to commit fully to this foreign girl with much age difference. He got scared and finally became realistic. And that was it for him. He wasted no time to think about it. He decided like that in 5 days.
Yes, how could I live my life this? That’s the question I’ve been asking myself. How could I be so blind and let others control my life like this? All my life (after I started dating men), I give all my power to them. I let them control me and I do absolutely everything. For such a long time? Always? Finally I found the one place on earth, then I didn’t see that I had everything while I was there. I was so desperate to be loved by a man that I gave it all up. I realized I m a person who is never happy at presence, always sad from the past or in the fear of the future. When I was in the country, I had everything to be blessed but I wasn’t happy. I was always complaining about tiny things. I didn’t even try to get to know people there. I didn’t go out, kept cancelling appointments with people because I was lazy and wanted to stay home to talk to him on video chat. I believed in love but they threw me like a tissue on the street. For them, it is just that they came to senses that it wouldn’t work. But for me, the end of relationship means end of my life. I lost everything when he quit me. A job, a permanent residency in the country, future happiness, close friends, a life I built and myself. How could I do this to me, right? I don’t know. I just believed in this man and followed my heart. That’s why. Since I am a foreign national to this country, I cannot go back. There is no job vacancy there. I am back in my country of birth, but I have no friends and this is not my home anymore. I have no connection with the society here. There is no therapist like in the US whom I can talk to about my problem. Home is not a place of birth but it can be a place that lives in your heart. For my case, home is the country I gave up for him. Not only I was betrayed by my boyfriend, I have to friends to talk to in a same town, my parents don’t understand me since I became a multi-cultural person and don’t share same beliefs anymore. I want to hate the man but I mostly hate what I did to myself. I let him. I made this all happen to my life by trusting him. How could I? Not only I am heartbroken, but I also lost one place I could be happy. After this terrible thing happening to me, I finally realized now that I chose wrong people in my life. I keep doing this to me for all my life. There were always right people I could trust or to love, but I always resented them all. I went for type of people who were attractive, tall, smart, sporty, confident, wealthy, bright future, social, emotionally unavailable. Yes, I was always in love with these guys. It hurts me to admit but I was not attracted to men who were right for me. There were men who could make me happy but I didn’t see it. They were kind, honest, simple, caring, want family, want commitment, like children, love me for who I am. And they are gone. I cannot bring back time and people.
I kept wondering why my life is a mess. Because I had no clue what I was. And I kept distance from people since I was a child. So by the time I was an adult, I didn’t know how to see people’s characters, how to protect myself from wrong people and all that. Until now, I had no idea that there are people called Manipulators exit. When people tell me to be careful with those kind of people, I had no idea what they are, how and what to do with them. I’ve been like this whole my life so of course I don’t choose a right partner either. When they say something, I believe their word and hold on to them. Then one day, they disappear and I wonder what I did wrong. What I did wrong was to choose them and to give all of my heart and life to them.
As mush as you think my life is pathetic, I know it. I am feeling it in my body. The way I lived my life is a joke to me. How can I forgive all this and keep going? Not only I hate my whole life decisions and actions, I m also deeply heartbroken at the same time. How do I continue now? Is there an end to this suffering? How I can help me to drag out from this darkness?
The past won’t come back. The place I lost won’t come back. I know I cannot be happy in this country of birth or elsewhere..
I hate what I did to my life. I hate that I trusted him, them. I always gave my heart to wrong people. I am lost. It is easier to end my life. But I cannot die. It’s painful.
I want to make up for a huge mistake I just made. I totaled my boyfriend’s nice, paid off SUV. We only had liability, so all of the expenses fall on me. This happened less than a week before his birthday, which is today.
It was a gift from his parents. Now, if you are set up with money, this is not a big deal. We aren’t. We both have full time jobs, and we basically go paycheck to paycheck. We don’t live beyond our means; it’s that we are both in entry-level positions and practically go paycheck to paycheck.
Now I just feel so bad to even look at him. The insurance will go up. It’s just a mess. It was an accident. I was not under the influence, speeding or distracted. I simply did not see this person at all.
I do not know how to forgive myself other than doing the best I can to clean up my mess. I can’t replace that exact vehicle because it is way too expensive and beyond my means. I’m applying for a second job. I’ve figured out ways to cut out some spending. I feel so terrible. Again, I think this is mostly due to us being in such a difficult financial position already. I find myself having to make choices about whether or not to buy cereal because it’s expensive. I am constantly checking my balance and juggling what bills to pay when. I don’t have a new phone. I don’t shop. I simply am not making much money at the new job I’ve had for less than six months. Now I’m hoping this situation is temporary and in a year I’ll hopefully be earning a bit more money. I’ll have found a part time job, and I’ll be on the path to making this a little better each day. My boyfriend will go from a very nice, fully loaded SUV to basically a beater. We just can’t afford two car payments right now, so he has to get something we can pay for on the spot. I had better credit when I was 23 than I do now that I’m in my early 30’s. I’ve made some poor choices. I was on the long journey of repairing my credit score by finally, three months ago, making a repayment plan for my student loans. This is life, though. She’s a beautiful bitch. Pardon my language. I’m fully aware how lucky I am to be alive and to not have hurt anyone else in the accident. It was terrifying, and I’m not fully recovered from just the stress of being in a very serious wreck.
I want to not feel so guilty. I want it to not hurt when I look at my boyfriend for the stress and sadness I’ve caused. When you struggle and go without, as he has, and then you finally get something nice, that means a lot to you. And that truck meant a lot to him because, for one thing, he had gone several years without a car. I can’t help but tear up every time I think about it.
We live in an area of have jobs that require us to each have a car. We spent the first three years of our relationship sharing a vehicle. Then his parents, about a year ago, gave him that car.