Self-Forgiveness (even if you don't deserve it)

You know, we've all done some things in our past that we really have a lot of shame and remorse about. In fact, you may even feel like it's impossible to forgive yourself. Now, if you're feeling that way, it may be because you feel like forgiving yourself means letting yourself off the hook and not holding yourself responsible for your behaviors and choices. But in reality, self forgiveness means just about the direct opposite of that. You see, self forgiveness means accepting responsibility for what you did. Accept it means learning from your mistakes, it means changing your behavior. And it's really important that we all learn how to forgive ourselves. Maybe you have this idea in your head that you don't deserve forgiveness, not even your own forgiveness. Does that mean you don't deserve to hold yourself accountable? Does that mean you don't deserve to learn from your mistakes? Nah, that doesn't make any sense, does it? In fact, I'm going to suggest that we start thinking about self forgiveness in a whole different way. Because you know what it really is. Forgiving yourself is nothing more than a decision to separate who you are from the mistakes that you've made. It's a recognition that you're human and that you're flawed and that you've done some things that you really regret. Now, Simon Sinek says it's always important to start with why? Why is this topic important? Why is it so necessary to forgive yourself? Why? Well, because if you're walking around, you've done some things and you're holding a grudge against yourself, it means that you're full of shame. And shame is a very toxic, corrosive emotion. In fact, it lowers our self esteem, it makes us defensive, and ultimately it makes us behave in ways that just reinforce the negative self image that we have. So basically, not forgiving yourself is a surefire way to keep making more mistakes that you then regret and are mad at yourself about. Now if this sounds like you and you feel really stuck, I'm going to give you a four step process to work on your own self forgiveness. Now, for those of you who are new here, welcome to Put the Shovel Down. I'm Amber Hollingsworth and this channel is all about helping you understand the science and psychology of addiction. It's my job to make sure you are always five steps ahead of addiction. If that sounds like something that might be important to you, consider subscribing. And if you are new here, let me know that down in the comments because I really love just to be able to welcome you to our little community. Alright now back to Our four step process. Now to make these easier to remember, I've made all of them start with an A. Now that very first step that starts with an A is acknowledge. The first step for self forgiveness is to acknowledge completely and fully what you've done. I mean, yeah, like what you did and the whole magnitude and ripple effect of the causes of that. If this is something that you've really struggled with, if you've got some big ghost back there that's been haunting you, you may want to consider writing this down. I want you to really go through what did you do that you really regret? Who did that affect? How did it affect them? And I want you to even think about what are all the situational circumstances in the past that were going on at the time that led to you making the decisions that you did. Now this isn't about giving you an excuse. This isn't about how to let yourself off the hook. This is about learning. Because we all are capable of doing bad things given certain situations. And it's really important for you to think through all the factors that led to the decisions that you made. Not because you're giving yourself an excuse, but so that you can learn from them. We're going to come back to that in just a second. Now step number two is apologize. Or as we say in recovery, it's making an amends. Essentially this is where you take responsibility for what you did to the person that you actually harmed whenever possible. Now that means a whole lot more than just saying I'm sorry. You really got to think this thing through. A good way to think about it might be to think about something that someone else did that hurt you and who's never sort of taken ownership for it or apologized to you for it. What would it take for you to feel better about that situation? Well, here's what it takes. For most people. You probably need them to acknowledge what they did like fully without blaming you, without blaming other situations but. But take responsibility for what they did. And you probably need them to express to you that they know how that affected you. And you probably need for them to express that they know just exactly how that affected you. And lastly, you probably want to know that they've made some changes and that they're not going to be doing that anymore. You know, I actually almost called this step acknowledge to. I was going to have both steps called acknowledge because the first one is acknowledge it to yourself and the second one is acknowledge it to the person. Whatever helps you remember it. Moving on to step number three. Step number Three is accepting responsibility. Now, in order to do that, this is where you really need to go back and look at some of the things you wrote down in step number one, where you talked about the situation and circumstance. Maybe you were running around with some people that weren't the greatest influence in your life. Maybe you were struggling with an addiction. Maybe you were really in a bad place in your life because something difficult had happened to you. Maybe something bad or terrible happened in your childhood. There are all kinds of factors that can contribute to why people make the decisions that they make. And yes, I'll say it again, we are all capable of making bad choices. We are all capable of doing bad things, and we have all been hurtful to others somewhere along the way. Step three is all about accepting what you did, why you did it, and learning. Because all of that leads us to step four, which is adjust. This is the step where you adjust your behavior based on what you've learned and what you've been through. Now, maybe that adjustment is not allowing yourself to get in those kinds of situations that cause you to make not great decisions. Or maybe that adjustment is being more compassionate towards yourself and generally more compassionate towards other people. Because you see, when we can have compassion for us, it's easier to have compassion for other people. And when we can acknowledge that we've done bad things that we regret, it's a lot easier for us to have empathy and understanding for the other people in our lives. Now, I know this whole process can seem intimidating and a little scary. Actually, probably the scariest part is that whole like apology part, that whole talking to the person part. Because when you think about that makes you feel real squirmy inside. And when you do it, it feels pretty yucky and humiliating at the time. But when you feel that bad feeling, here's what I want you to think about. It's like all that toxic shame coming out all at once, like you just threw up your lip shame all over. But guess what? Once you do that, it's out. And it doesn't follow you around and haunts you anymore. In fact, after you do that, after you do this four step process, you're gonna go from someone that has these little ghosts in their closet that are following around, making them feel crappy all the time, into a person that you respect. You're gonna get a lot of self respect from this process. Now, I know you're probably pretty nervous about that part, so I've included this video for you to watch next. It's all about making amends and you're gonna hear from two fellas who lot of experience with amends making.