Knowing how to forgive yourself is essential for a fulfilling life. Its positive effects on mental health and overall well-being are profound. Unresolved self-resentment, anger, and shame can lead to various health issues, strain relationships, and hinder spiritual growth.
Our emotions significantly influence our physical health. This connection, known as psychosomatics, is well-documented. Research from Johns Hopkins Medicine reveals that lingering feelings like anger, sadness, shame, and bitterness increase the risk of heart problems, anxiety, chronic pain, and depression.
Chronic anger, the emotion mostly correlated with resentment, triggers a fight-or-flight response, causing changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and immune function.
However, embracing self-forgiveness can liberate you from such harmful emotions. It paves the way for inspiration, meaningful spiritual connections, and a robust sense of confidence and self-esteem. Let’s delve into the nature of forgiveness, its benefits, and practical ways to incorporate it into our lives.
What Is Forgiveness?
Forgiveness is a journey of releasing deep-seated feelings of resentment or a desire for revenge, whether towards others or oneself, in the aftermath of a perceived wrongdoing. For the purposes of this post, we’re talking about self-hatred, resentment, and anger (such as at the choices we’ve made in life that we regret).
Forgiveness is a path towards achieving tranquility, comprehension, and, ultimately, acceptance of past events, ensuring they don’t overshadow your current life or future prospects.
Forgiveness’s Tie to Resentment
Indeed, at its core, learning how to forgive yourself seems to stand in stark contrast to resentment. Resentment is a potent mix of blame, anger, and a negative stance against someone or a circumstance that caused harm.
Yet forgiveness and resentment are two sides of the same coin. Resentment embodies the initial surge of displeasure towards something.
But that something reflects a deep-seated emotional need we have that has gone unmet. When we get in touch with this, we can lend ourselves compassion, try to meet that need in healthy ways, and let go of that toxic anger. We flip the coin on negativity so see a brighter side of things.
Examples of Why We May Harbor Resentment
It’s helpful to regularly check in with ourselves about any resentments we’re holding onto. I like to call this a “resentment dump”. Get out your journal, phone notes, or a notebook and make a list of stuck angry feelings you have about yourself. Here’s some common reasons people feel resentful:
- Lack of financial resources
- Romantic failures
- Unresolved issues with children or parents/a breach in primary family relationships
- Seeming inability to keep your weight/health in order
- Not having moved forward in life/career struggles
- Loss of friendships/social aloneness/lack of social success/having made social mistakes
- Unexpected life changes due to tragedy
- Unmet personal potential or lack of self-expression
- Having been harmed/wronged/cheated by another
- Having wronged another/out of alignment with our sense of identity/cognitive dissonance with who we believe we are
Changing our thinking around grudges can be like trying to push a heavy boulder uphill. Often, we cling to a story we’ve told ourselves about our life’s “failures” and let it become who we think we are.
But when we learn how to forgive our weakness and life hardships, we let in the lightness of being where shaping a new identity, and returning to inner love and grace, is possible. It allows us the emotional freedom to dream again- to reclaim a positive view of our lives and our story. So how do we learn how to forgive ourselves?
Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.
Nelson mandela
Steps for How to Forgive Yourself
According to social scientists, forgiveness takes the shape of the following structure, the 4 R’s: Responsibility, Remorse, Repair, and Renewal. This may seem like it applies to situations between two or more people, but it can be applied to self-forgiveness too.
For example, one poignant example of self-resentment I’ve battled is what I perceived as squandering my early 20s. Eschewing the traditional path of college and career development, I embarked on a journey from Ohio to California, immersing myself in a clothing-optional New Age spiritual resort.
There, I explored various facets of personal and spiritual growth, yet inadvertently overlooked planning for my future. Decades on, the financial repercussions of not having a strategic career plan are unmistakably felt.
This experience has been a significant obstacle in my journey towards self-forgiveness but through journaling the dark stuff of life, I’ve found where the light peaks through.
So, apply the following steps to your own life and do the work to restore dignity within by letting go of your anger and resentment at yourself.
The 4 R’s of How to Forgive Yourself
- Responsibility: Taking responsibility is the first and crucial step in self-forgiveness. It involves acknowledging your mistakes without justifications or excuses. This step is about being honest with yourself, recognizing the impact of your actions, and understanding that your choices have consequences. It’s not about self-blame, but rather about owning your part in a situation.
- Remorse: Feeling genuine remorse is key to meaningful forgiveness. This involves more than just acknowledging that you did something wrong; it’s about feeling a deep sense of regret for the harm caused. This emotional response is vital as it reflects a compassionate understanding of the impact of your actions on yourself and others. Remorse often leads to empathy, which is an essential component in healing and making amends.
- Repair: After acknowledging responsibility and feeling remorse, the next step is to repair the damage done. This can involve apologizing to those affected, making amends, or taking actions to correct your mistakes. In the context of self-forgiveness, repair might mean changing behaviors, making different choices in the future, or working to heal any harm you’ve caused yourself. It’s an active process that shows a commitment to do better.
- Renewal: The final step is renewal, which involves using the experience as a catalyst for personal growth. It’s about learning from your mistakes, developing new strategies for handling similar situations in the future, and committing to personal development. This step is crucial for breaking free from the past and moving forward with a renewed sense of purpose and improved self-awareness. Renewal is the positive outcome of the forgiveness process, leading to a stronger, more resilient self.
Knowing Your Role versus Others In Forgiveness
Understanding your role in a situation is vital to being able to finally let go of negative emotions. It means distinguishing between what was within your control and what wasn’t. Don’t take on wrongs of someone else but don’t avoid the wrongs you did.
This self-analysis helps in addressing personal mistakes while releasing undue guilt for things beyond your control. It can be hard to look in the mirror at our own reflection when we’re ashamed of actions, or even inactions, for which we’re responsible.
But the more unabashedly honest you can be about how you helped create the bad feelings within you will empower you to now transform them.
Healthy Guilt versus Unhealthy Shame in Forgiveness
Similarly to facing our role in hardship is deciphering whether we carry unhealthy shame about our past verses normal feelings of guilt.
Feeling guilty about something means you have the sense to recognize right from wrong. Healthy guilt acts as a moral compass, guiding us to recognize our faults and correct them. Unhealthy shame, however, is destructive, leading to a debilitating sense of worthlessness and self-loathing.
“I define shame as the intensely painful experience or believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging- something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection. I don’t believe shame is helpful or productive. In fact, I think shame is much more likely to be the source of destructive, hurtful behavior than the solution or cure. I think the fear of disconnection can make us dangerous.”
from “daring greatly”, by brene brown, vunerabiltiy and shame expert
When Forgiving Yourself is Actually Harmful
Self-forgiveness can be harmful when it lacks empathy and fails to consider others’ perspectives. It should not be an excuse to dismiss the impact of your actions on others or to evade accountability.
Moreover, if you’re jumping to forgiveness without having gone through the thicket of emotions tangled up in what is involved in it all and sorting them out, you’re bypassing great personal growth work. To truly grow and learn from your mistakes, you must feel the feels and examine the roots of what led you to the actions or behaviors that need forgiving.
Benefits of Learning How to Forgive Yourself
Then, with the proper inner work, learning to forgive yourself can lead to:
- Improved Mental Health: It reduces anxiety, depression, and stress because you’re letting go of anger and sadness- cortisol producing emotions. It’s good for your heart!
- Better Relationships: It fosters empathy, understanding, and healthier interactions. The self-knowledge one gains contributes to intimacy with others.
- Increased Self-Esteem: It cultivates a more positive self-image and confidence. Despite your mistakes, you’ve taken responsibility for them when means no one should be able to make you feel bad about them anymore- you’ve done the work to move forward with the integrity of apologizing when necessary and owning what made you act or think wrongly.
- Greater Well-being: It paves the way for emotional and spiritual growth and gives you back hope for your future.
Forgiveness is a Wonderful Thing
In conclusion, remember, you are worthy of love, connection, and forgiveness, regardless of your past actions or experiences. Embracing self-forgiveness is not just an act of self-love, but a powerful step towards healing and growth.
Understanding that shame, at its core, is a deep-seated fear of disconnection and unworthiness, is the key to self-forgiveness. It’s a painful and often debilitating feeling, grounded in the belief of our own inherent flaws.
However, it’s crucial to recognize that shame is neither constructive nor necessary. Far from being a catalyst for positive change, it often fuels destructive behaviors and perpetuates a cycle of hurt and fear.
Your journey towards self-forgiveness is a journey towards reclaiming your worthiness and building a life defined not by fear or shame, but by love and acceptance.