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
Anthony Centore
after reading all of your stories i know i’m not alone with these feelings of guilt. I just want to move on. bad relationships, bad mistakes, bad decisions. It’s keep me down for so long i don’t know which way is up. i feel trapped, useless, worthless. last relationship i was in last for 6 yrs. we have 3 beautiful daughters and we still live together. more like roommates than anything else. I cant bear it knowing that our relationship is dead and she moved on to someone else. bad part about it is i found out that she was carrying on a relationship for almost 3 yrs before i found out. now i feel trapped in a house with a woman who enjoys the company of another man but comes home and talks to me like we’re best friends. which most certainly are not.
i know i have to leave. for my health, my sanity and my peace of mind. why do i still have these feeling for a woman that cant feel the same for me? the relationship was always contentious and we never really saw eye to eye about much. i just feel like ive made the worst mistake of my life and i will never recover from it. I just want to let go of these feelings, get my life in tact and move on to a happier life.
where does that happy life begin?
My husband died after horrible a year-long battle with brain cancer. After he died he was cremated and his remains buried in the cemetery where his family is. About 3 weeks after his memorial service (and obviously too late to change anything) I started having horrible condemning thoughts that he should not have been cremated. I have spent much time in prayer and have confessed my guilt and regret to God and have days where I feel God’s peace, but the thoughts still come back frequently and I have a very hard time making them stop when they begin, especially when I wake up in the middle of the night. I also feel guilty for the times I wasn’t as patient as I should have been when I was his caretaker. He has been gone for nine months now.
I want to let go of my negative actions that came from becoming to dependent on my health coach. I snapped at her based on her feedback sometimes on her responses and she ended our relationship in a short text. I regret getting so emotionally dependent on her even though she is also partially to blame. She did not have to completely drop me as a client and completely cut me out of her life. I feel like a bad person because she thinks I needed more from a coach than what she can offer. I did not reply to that because that is unfair to accuse me of especially after I tried explaining my actions and apologizing for a week. I want to let go of my calling her to many times because I felt bad for what i said. We did have a close relationship but severe co-dependency developed from her coaching style and I just feel she took no responsibility for her actions, and put the blame on me. She has not checked on me to see how I have been the last 5 months… It has been a big struggle forgiving myself since she ended things when I was more at fault. I know I apologized 100x, and told her many true, nice things about her as a coach and my mistakes as well.. I believe the entire process made me want her approval, validation and emotional support since I came to her to lift my moods or for anything for 3 years… every single day I would text her what I would eat but it was more than just food… food is tied to emotions and we had meetings once a week and it just developed into a close, health working relationship however there were many negative aspects towards the end. I just feel she blamed me because she said I needed more…. when in fact she instilled the dependency. She texted me an ending msg and I never replied and I walked past her when I saw her in public. I am just so hurt because I invested so much time, effort, myself, trust… its a more complicated story but it ended pretty bad and left me with a lot of confusion and self-worth issues. I forgive myself for snapping and thinking i needed more from her feedback in msgs, I thought I did because i was so use to getting it everyday… and I thought she didn’t want to be in my life if i was not a client. Its complicated but yeah… she split and i have not heard anything from her since. She was my health coach… how can a health coach drop a client after 3 years of supporting them every single day and with no concern as to how it would impact me. I am not angel but I have to forgive myself and trust that we can reconnect in time and just talk about why this whole thing unfolded the way it did. I know it sounds complicated but it really did impact my entire life. I wanted this person to want to be in my life as a friend but not forcefully. The working relationship we had was complicated but it meant something to me.. and her actions of just running off when it got really messy hurts me the most. do you think silence is really golden and makes the other person think more about their own actions?