Self-Forgiveness | Set Yourself Free
We have all done ourselves and someone else a disservice at one point or another in our lives. Some were accidents, some not.
I myself have not only let down my peers, but friends and family. I have also let down myself… a lot.
When it comes to self-forgiveness, I have learned that it takes time and some serious backtracking. Being a writer of memoir and an active journaler has come in handy.
For example, before I left my marriage, I sat down to write it out. I needed to make sure. I needed to fully understand why and how I had gotten to the point that I was leaving a relationship I have vowed to stay in forever. Who was I to break that vow? How could I have ever gotten to the point that I was not only willing but hopeful to leave my marriage and our family life?
That was the beginning of my self-forgiveness journey.
I sat down and put pen to paper asking myself questions like, “How do I feel around him?, Why do I feel this way?, “When did it start?” He wasnt a bad man and he wasnt necessarily bad to me. But I was unhappy, and had been for well over a decade. I realized — once I finally confronted my truth, that I had been unhappy in my relationship long before I ever even married him. So, why did I do it!? Why did I marry someone that I knew wasn’t what I wanted or needed?
It had all stemmed from fear. Just as many of my decisions in my life. How is it though that I became so fearful and so controlled by those fears when I had always thought of myself and even been seen as brave and courageous?
It has never bothered me to be the one to jump up and squash the spider, to rush to another’s aid through the dark, to go to war. The only thing that has ever scared me, was myself.
My fear was all focused on my own sense of self-worth.
As I wrote, I found that I had lost myself long ago. My self-esteem had been slowly deteriorated over years and years of dogmatic and engrained ways of thinking set into place generations back, and without anyone noticing, they had been applied and subscribed to me as a newborn child.
Give yourself a moment to think of yourself as a newborn baby. Innocent, needy, fully susceptible to the world around you, vulnerable and in need of protection and parenting. Everything is new, every experience fresh and imprinting itself upon you. You take in what you are taught.
The world takes you in and teaches you everything one day after the next and one of the biggest lessons you learn is how to feel and live by fear.
My self-doubt (fear) had taken almost full control of me as early as the second grade. I had a mean teacher that told me I was stupid because I was struggling with subtraction. That was when I stopped believing in my ability to improve in math and just accepted myself as bad at it. I never even gave myself the chance to try again until I joined the military almost a decade later.
But sadly, it started much earlier than that. It started at home with the people who loved me the most in the world. They never meant to put their fears on me; they never wanted to inflict harm — only to love and nurture and keep me safe and protected.
I understand this because now, as a mother of three beautiful children, I know and feel and see exactly what my parents went through. I have empathy and compassion for their struggles with a new sense of understanding. I forgive them.
But forgiving yourself is another story.
The Pathway to Self-Forgiveness
It took me until just recently to discover the truth of why I was so afraid of every little decision I made. I was stuck — afraid to move forward with any decision for fear of regret. Paralyzed by my fears and wallowing in self-hatred, I turned to writing to help me through it. I wrote my story. Discovering what I had done to get myself in such a painful situation.
Embrace your past. Let your story teach you something. Let it guide you to your truth. Use it to identify your fears and list them out.
You cannot do this in your head. If you do, you will loop your thoughts around and around and around in your mind and never see the full picture, never understand yourself and the others involved. So, I get it for those of you who ‘just don’t like to write’, but please, do yourself and your loved ones a favor, and do it anyway.
Once you have listed and identified your fears and where they are stemming from, it’s time to take notice of how they are controlling you currently.
Pay attention to your daily patterns and the thoughts attached. Embrace your feelings but then discover what thoughts are connected to those feeling — what FEARS are present. And here’s where the internal work really kicks in… Separate yourself from them. You are not your fears.
Your fears are something attached to you that needs to become unattached. They may be and stay and stick by your side forever, but that doesn’t mean they get to sit in the drivers seat.
Once you remove your fears from the core of yourself and see yourself separate from them, you will be able to work towards giving yourself the same sort of forgiveness that you gave others.
Seeing your fears is hard enough, separating them from your core self is even harder. So, let me help you get started.
Your fears are not only engrained into your mind but into your body. It can be easier then to start by controlling your body first.
For many of us, we hold the same exact morning patterns. You wake up, you unconsciously reach for your phone, you scroll and then finally you force yourself up to brush your teeth and get your coffee.
I challenge you to change it.
Wake up. Do NOT look at your phone. Brush your teeth and then immediately stretch, go outside, do yoga, move your body and activate your brain and body in a new way.
Try to hold off looking at any technology for as long as possible. Journal. Meditate. Exercise. This physical shift will make the mental shift easier!
With my parents, I was able to empathize and show compassion for what they had endured, now its time to give yourself that same compassion and understanding by seeing that each time you have done yourself or someone else wrong, it was done out of fear instead of love and honor for yourself. You had unconsciously chosen fear over honoring the love-filled truth within you.
Daily reminders and deeper understanding. If you are still feeling stuck on the past and the things you have done or continue to do, it’s time to break it down even further and become a habitual affirmation nerd.
As a young child, we start comparing ourselves to others, mimicking others, trying to morph and change ourselves in order to fit in or be liked, or get attention. As we do this, we actively make decisions that betray who we really are. That unconscious betrayal leads to the feeling of immorality and sin. We have broken our own trust, and that betrayal of ourselves leads to what? More fear. And the cycle continues. But you have the power to break it.
It starts with self-awareness but requires a positive mindset and a determination to change old patterns and break free from ingrained ways of thinking.
You are the Master of Your Mind
Healthier habits don’t start and end with eating clean and exercising. (Though those things are an absolute must — and also much easier to do when you are in charge of the way you let yourself think.) We have to rewire the hard-wiring that was done without us being conscious.
Start with your journal and then hone the skill of meditation. There are many ways to meditate. I have my own person way of practicing and if you would like to learn more, please join me at on my website or instagram to learn more.
Affirmations are a huge help for me. I say them continually and constantly. I put them on my bathroom mirror, on sticky notes at my desk and on my computer; I have one as my phone’s wallpaper and repeat them to myself whenever I feel overwhelmed.
Self-forgiveness is just as hard and just as easy as any other mental health practice.
- Gain self-awareness to better understand why you acted or said something that you now feel is unforgivable.
- Separate yourself from the fears that caused the behavior.
- Give yourself grace and love for not knowing any better and acting out of fear.
- Begin the practice of facing the fears head on and actively telling them that they are no longer in charge. You are, and you are love.
I needed to be able to forgive myself for leaving my marriage and ended up forgiving myself for a whole lot more simply by sitting down and writing out my personal history. I witnessed myself in a new way and found new and deeper understanding of myself.
From there, I gained more control through meditative practices and actively shutting down negative thoughts and replacing them with positive ones. Even when it felt weird, even when it felt stupid, even when it felt like I didn’t really believe it.
What it really all comes down to is choosing differently. You want to find self-forgiveness. Start with that. “I want to forgive myself.” From there its believing that you CAN. “I can find self-forgiveness.”
The world has brain-washed you — now you get to re-do it.
