Dr. Dawn-Elise Snipes breaks down self-forgiveness into four steps: review what happened and own your part, feel and express remorse, learn from it, and let go of the guilt. Self-forgiveness isn't about excusing yourself. It's about freeing yourself from the weight so you can move forward.
Welcome to this video on self forgiveness.
This is part of the Cognitive Behavioral.
Therapy Nuggets series and I'm your host, Dr. Donnelly Snipes.
Forgiveness, and even self forgiveness doesn't mean.
That you agree with or condone the situation. You may look back on it and go, what I did was not right.
But you're choosing to stop using your.
Energy to beat yourself up.
You did what you did.
It's in the past, okay?
The benefits of self forgiveness include improved health, improved mental health, and improved relationships.
If you are holding on to anger.
And resentments and guilt at yourself, you are carrying around a load of bricks, basically.
Think about it that way.
Every resentment and every guilt you have is like a brick in a backpack that you are carrying around with you every day. And it makes life harder and it.
Uses a lot of your energy that.
You could be using to work towards.
Your rich and meaningful life.
The four Rs of self forgiveness, number.
One, look at the situation that you feel guilty about.
Take responsibility only for those aspects that you are responsible for. Most of the time, you know, and.
We talked about this in perspective taking.
Most of the time, the onus is.
Not a hundred percent on you. Other things were going on.
So take responsibility for what parts were within your control.
But also recognize that there are some parts that other people may be responsible for.
Express remorse for what you did.
You know that that's going along with, you know, apologizing.
Apologize to yourself. Apologize to anybody that you hurt.
You know this.
In order to forgive yourself, it's important to express remorse.
And then a lot of times, because.
People feel guilty for things that they.
Did, it's important for them to rectify.
The situation if possible, or make amends when possible.
It's not always possible to do this, but doing things that can.
Help fix.
The situation are certainly helpful. If you can't rectify or make amends.
Then at least figure out how to.
Learn from the experience so you don't do it again. The fourth aspect, you've taken responsibility. You've expressed remorse. You've done what you can to rectify.
The situation and learn from it.
Now it's time to release past hurt.
And accept your imperfection.
Accept that you're lovable for who you are, imperfections and all.
And that can take a while to.
Wrap your head around because you probably hold yourself to a much higher standard than you hold other people to.
But it's important to forgive yourself for.
Mistakes you made, for things that you.
Didn'T do, for choices, whatever it is.
That you are still beating yourself up over, you know, is that.
Is beating yourself up helping you move.
Towards a rich and meaningful life?
What would happen if you decided to take these steps in order to let.
Go of that grief and that guilt over things that you did in the past that you wish you hadn't?
You know, think about that.
