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 am currently at the age of 14 and I am suffering strong anxiety and depression, it has sliced its way through my school holidays, so far leaving only about a week free of depression. Unlike some other comments I have read on here, my anxiety and depression only seems to come up every so often, it seems to come when I’m feeling happy about something and check to make sure nothing recently has gone wrong. It has happend in the past when I was around 10 years old and led to making me stay off school for a long while in my primary school. It then seemed to clear off itself with no serious therapy as I was younger. Now, however I am feeling a lot worse, I think about things I heavily regret and 99 percent of the time I am told they don’t matter or aren’t bad at all by many different people I explain it to, this makes me feel better for up to 3 hours or so however the worries about past thoughts come back to haunt me once again. The worries are normally about silly or stupid things I had done as a child and have learnt from and never done again. One f the first things I worried about was when I felt I had bullied someone when I was 11 in school, I had pretended to ask a girl if she liked me as a joke, she said yes, however I then told her that it was a joke it didn’t make her cry or seriously upset her and recently I have explained the problem to teachers and they said it was nothing to worry about, I also asked if I could apologise to make me feel like a better person so they brung the girl in and I said sorry, even though I ask her if it upset her and she couldn’t even remember what I was talking about. The next few worries were nothing major and don’t really need to be explained. These worries have very recently cleared off and I have forgotten about them, unfortunately these worries had appeared at the time of my birthday and ruined my birthday which I spent sobbing upstairs while family was downstairs. I had since seen friends and acted like a more normal person, doing things like hanging around with them and going out places. The worries have sadly found their way back into my mind (not the same ones) and this time I am mainly worrying about when I was chasing a girl slightly younger than me who wa with her friends around a local youth club I then for some reason said as a joke I had I knife (I was 11) I had no intention to really scare her however she did get scared and started crying I tried to explain to her that I didn’t really have a knife and tried to say sorry but she was scared and upset and didn’t listen. Recently (2 years later) I rode down to the youth club and told a member of staff that what I said wasn’t in any way meant to upset her, he remembered and agreed with me and shuk my hand without me having to explain too much he said it was fine, we all make mistakes and he said he hoped to see me again there soon, as I hadn’t been there since it happend
I am now a lot better person even though I wasn’t bad at all at the time these things happend. I have learnt and am now very responsible but just can’t get these worries out of my head
Foryears I’ve been suffering from depression, anxeity and being Paranoid. I just recently had found this out. I’m ashamed of the things I use to do as a kid. I beat myself up everyday behind it. I felt that as I child that no one cared about me. I hurt people that I love and was also hurt too, Physically & Emotionally. I was bullied by people who I use to call my friends. I went on with life thinking people are out to get me. I’ve never been in a relationship before, because I feel I’m not deserving of it. I feel like I’m not good enough for anyone.recentlyIforgave my brother for how he treated me as a child, because he asked for my forgiveness. Days after that. He brought a friend over to me and my mothers house. And I thought he was walking all over me when he told me not to tell her because she was on vacation. So I confronted him about him having a girl over and he went off on me about how I have a meserable life and that I’m jealous, because I have no one. You know, despite how he came off, the things he said aboutmeere true. I am mesrable, because I have no life, no car. I feel this way because I’ve been latching onto the past for so long now. I thought I had changed from all of that, but I recently had got a wake up call that told me that I hadn’t changed. I think most of it has to deal with hurting people that I care about. And I want god to forgive me for it. I want to change, I want a life. I don’t want to be stuck in this rut anymore. Somedays, I feel like I don’t deserve to live. I feel like all of the bullying that I had experienced had me thinking that. There were even days were I didn’t love myself. I feel like I need to get out of all the negative out my life. I cannot continue to go on like this anymore. I feel like I hit rock bottom. I have to make a change.
I wanna forigve myself for not trusting enough in man i love most in world,i wanna forgive myself for not being strong enough to keep our love,i wanna forgive myself for saying bad words and being stubborn and angry words i said even though inside i was keeping lot of love words. I wanna forgive myself for being sure we will always be together even though i didnt work on it enough. I wanna forgive myself for letting love of my life go away,for hurting someone who cared about me loved me for good and bad,i wanna forgive myself that i broke his heart and i wanna forgive myself that i cant hold his hand now and wont see ever his happy eyes when he looks at me.