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Accepting what you have done or what has happened is the first step, and often the hardest.
It means that you must come to terms without making excuses, rationalizing, or justifying your actions to make them seem acceptable.
It’s about accepting what’s happened in the past, being willing to move past it, and not ruining your life by ruminating on it.
One framework surrounding the practice of self-forgiveness is the four Rs. These are responsibility, remorse, restoration, and renewal.
Self-forgiveness is not just letting yourself off the hook or taking the easy way out. It’s about acceptance.
The next stage focuses on renewal. This often requires the ability to learn from the experience to be able to move on from it.
The next stage of self-forgiveness aims to repair and restore trust. Making amends is an important part. It makes it easier to forgive yourself after another person has forgiven you.
As a result of taking responsibility, you may begin to feel a range of negative emotions. Common ones are guilt and shame.
Accepting responsibility means that you come to accept what’s happened and begin to feel compassion for yourself.
To move past the guilt, apologies are called for. Not only is it usually the best thing to hear for the person who has been wronged, but it is also comforting to know that you tried.
These feelings are what will springboard you into becoming a better person. Learning from your mistakes allows you to avoid making the same ones again.
Categorizing your offense means breaking down exactly what you did wrong. This means getting specific. It may be useful to put pen to paper.
Understanding what you want allows you to know when you’ve gone as far as you can go with the process. By doing this, you may be able to come to terms with someone never forgiving you.
This is one of the main reasons why self-forgiveness is so important. We instinctively know that feeling bad about something doesn’t make the person who was hurt by us feel better.
Hitting the stop button can be useful. It’s of no benefit to anyone to replay the offense over and over in your head. It just causes more hurt, and doesn’t change anything other than make you feel worse.
There are other useful and more specific steps that you can take to practice self-forgiveness outside of the four Rs, too. One of them is categorizing your offense.
Try to replace guilt with gratitude. Give thanks for the things you have in your life and the relationships that are going well.
People who have suffered abuse, for example, may feel shame or guilt although they haven’t done anything wrong.
The process of self-forgiveness can be as hurtful a process as the guilt, shame, and sorrow that it attempts to banish.
Another is articulating exactly how you feel about it with someone. Speaking to other people is one of the most useful things we can do when it comes to our feelings.
Until we can articulate how we feel, we will have a weak grasp on it. We think in words as human beings. If we don’t have words for our feelings, they remain clouds of negative thoughts rather than specific ones like “guilt,” which can be addressed.
It should be mentioned that there are a lot of cases where someone hasn’t done anything wrong and might be trying to take unfair blame for something.
Despite these tips, learning to forgive yourself won't fit into a one-size-fits-all approach. It’s a messy process, and steps may have to be revisited.
Sources: (Verywell Mind) (Prevention.com)
See also: Everyday things you didn’t realize are harming your mental health
However, it should be acknowledged that some people are more prone to rumination, which makes the process more of an uphill battle.
For those who have done something wrong, practicing self-forgiveness has been proven to reduce stress, anxiety, and depression. Similarly, it’s also associated with success, productivity, and concentration.
Also, like with any form of change, people need to be willing and ready to forgive themselves. People also tend to engage in a sort of pseudo self-forgiveness by overlooking the issue and making excuses for it.
This requires an understanding of why you did what you did and how you can take steps to not let it happen again in the future.
To live a life that isn’t full of shame, we must forgive ourselves for our mistakes. Often, we would sooner forgive a stranger for their wrongdoings rather than ourselves for our own, even if they made the same mistake as we did. Self-forgiveness can be a difficult thing to wrap our heads around. Often it’s referred to in a way that makes us imagine that we are supposed to very deliberately and consciously let go of our anger and sorrow. In reality, it’s a little more complex than that. Learning how to let go, move on, and forgive yourself may be one of the most beneficial things you learn to do in life.
To begin to understand how you can, click through this gallery.
A helpful guide to self-forgiveness
Today is Global Forgiveness Day
LIFESTYLE Wellness
To live a life that isn’t full of shame, we must forgive ourselves for our mistakes. Often, we would sooner forgive a stranger for their wrongdoings rather than ourselves for our own, even if they made the same mistake as we did. Self-forgiveness can be a difficult thing to wrap our heads around. Often it’s referred to in a way that makes us imagine that we are supposed to very deliberately and consciously let go of our anger and sorrow. In reality, it’s a little more complex than that. Learning how to let go, move on, and forgive yourself may be one of the most beneficial things you learn to do in life.
To begin to understand how you can, click through this gallery.