If you’re human, you’ve made mistakes. A lot of them. Maybe even some really bad ones. It’s possible that you’ve even made mistakes that you feel ashamed of, that you wish you had a time machine so you could go back to the day and do it all over again differently. And then when we confide in someone that we are ruminating on our past mistake, some well-intentioned friend tells us, “you just need to let this go.” Sure, okay. Um… how? How do we let go of the bad, shameful, regrettable thing we did that hurt another person so we can finally get on with our life? Wouldn’t forgiving ourselves just be letting ourselves off the hook for bad behavior?
Not exactly, though self-forgiveness could lead to feeling free from our past behavior. What self-forgiveness can also do is open up the possibility of deepening our understanding of our behavior and ourselves so that we can learn from it and feel in control of our future actions. And wouldn’t it be nice to not feel at the mercy of our unconscious?
Forgiving Yourself 101
Most people think of themselves as good people who are kind and thoughtful, ethical and careful, who wouldn’t hurt another person. But then, we’re also human, and as such, sometimes we do hurt other people with our words or actions, purposely or thoughtlessly. When we, good people that we are, do something that causes another person pain, it doesn’t jibe with our beliefs about ourself. Living with evidence that is contrary to our beliefs about ourself can lead to denial or cognitive dissonance. Or, for many people, it could lead to constant self-criticism and a barrage of internal thoughts that may sound a lot like “I’m a terrible person, how could I do that? I’m so stupid. How could someone accept me after this? What is wrong with me?”
There could be some evolutionary or adaptive reason that we default to negative self-talk. Maybe it is because we think it will prevent us from committing the offense again (it probably won’t). Maybe we are trying to preempt or soften the blow of the criticism of the other party. It could also be that in a law driven culture such as ours, we believe the best way to deal with an offense is through punishment (it’s not). Whatever the reason we continue to beat ourselves up, the truth is, it’s not working. It’s just keeping us stuck.
The first step in self-forgiveness is to first consider what it means for you. Have you forgiven someone else in your life for something they have done that caused you pain? What did that look like for you? What had to happen in order for you to move to a place of forgiveness? I tend to forgive others pretty easily, usually just an apology will do. This is true for a lot of people, we accept an apology and move on, but forgiving ourselves is harder to come by? Why is that?
For starters, maybe it’s harder because we expect more from ourselves than we do from others. The rules we apply to others are different for ourselves. We may want to reconsider those rules and question why our standards for ourselves is higher than for others, and is that reasonable? Out of everyone in the world who have done regrettable things, is it true that we are the only ones who aren’t worthy of forgiveness? (the answer is of course we’re worthy of forgiveness!)
Next in the path to self forgiveness is to acknowledge what you’ve done. Why do apologies from others work? Because they are a heartfelt recognition of not just the act or words themselves, but recognition of the experience of the hurt party as well. When we accept someone’s apology we feel from them that they feel our pain. When we fully acknowledge what we have done to another person, and don’t try to hide it from ourselves, we can start the process of forgiveness. We can’t forgive what we don’t see, so as difficult as it is to believe ourselves to be good, thoughtful, kind people and still have said or done something hurtful to another person, the freedom will be worth the temporary dissonance.
When we can acknowledge what we’ve done, then we can also take a critical look at what we can learn from this and what we can do to prevent it from happening a second time. So our next step is just that: consider if there was a lesson in the mistake. Work backwards, if this thing fell apart, what would be a possible preventative action? What changes could I make in order to not repeat this mistake? Have a conversation with yourself about what transpired, what you were feeling when you did or said the regrettable thing, really give yourself the opportunity to understand what was driving the behavior. I think writing things down helps to solidify our thoughts. When we don’t write them down, we don’t have something to come back to, and frankly, as much as an epiphany we might have had, or as brilliant as our answers might be, if we only think them, we might actually forget them. Invest in a comfortable pen and a notebook. Your thoughts are life changing and brilliant, they’re way too good to be forgotten!
Then apologize to the offended party if you need to. This can be difficult, but it’s also important. We may be setting ourselves up for some backlash, or anger, or even rejection. It is hard to be face to face with the pain we’ve caused another human being. It is one of the hardest things for us to sit with our defenses down, and see the pain we caused on the face of someone else. We want to tell them we didn’t mean to, we want to share our reasons. But don’t. An apology is just that: I’m sorry. Can you tell me how you feel?
Maybe they will forgive, maybe they won’t, that part isn’t up to us. The last step in the self-forgiveness journey is to have compassion for yourself and the imperfect person you are. We are willing to extend compassion to others who make mistakes, we tell them they are still good people and that mistakes are just that and don’t change our feelings about the person… This is where we have the chance to do the same for ourselves. We’re not shrugging our shoulders and saying that it doesn’t matter and everything is fine. We’re saying that the love we have for ourselves does not hinge on perfection.
If we are holding on to the anger at ourselves for our mistake and we continue to beat ourselves up for it, we owe it to ourselves to try to understand why we might do that. Again, get out your pen and paper, and give yourself some time to find out if there is some reward or ulterior reason for remaining in the space of self-punishment. You might be surprised what you learn.
In the end, we have to live with ourselves and the choices we make in life. Until we invent a time machine, our best chance of finding peace with our imperfect selves is to learn from our mistakes, do what we can to make amends, and have loving compassion for our own humanity, just as we do for others. Like most things in life, it takes practice and mindfulness. It also takes willingness to see things about ourselves that we don’t like looking at with humility and compassion. Hard? Yes. But in the long run what we gain from insight and compassion will be worth the discomfort of the effort.
Warmly,
Noelle
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