Search results
Dec 5, 2023 · Forgiving yourself is about more than just putting the past behind you and moving on. It is about accepting what has happened and showing compassion to yourself. Facing what you have done or what has happened is the first step toward self-forgiveness. It's also the hardest step.
How to Forgive Yourself. Many roads to contentment begin with self-forgiveness. It is among the most difficult—and most important—steps one can take. By Psychology Today Contributors published...
- Focus on your emotions. One of the first steps in learning how to forgive yourself is to focus on your emotions. Before you can move forward, you need to acknowledge and process your emotions.
- Acknowledge the mistake out loud. If you make a mistake and continue to struggle with letting it go, acknowledge out loud what you learned from the mistake, says Jordan Pickell, MCP, RCC.
- Think of each mistake as a learning experience. Englander says to think of each “mistake” as a learning experience that holds the key to moving forward faster and more consistently in the future.
- Give yourself permission to put this process on hold. If you make a mistake but have a hard time putting it out of your mind, Pickell says to visualize your thoughts and feelings about the mistake going into a container, such as a mason jar or box.
- Reframe the way you think about your mistakes. The first step toward self-forgiveness is shifting the way you think about your mistakes. Namely, Page says, we tend to think of things in terms of polarities—like success versus failure, or strength versus weakness—when they can actually exist together.
- Stop "shoulding" on yourself. As aforementioned, one common way we resist forgiving ourselves is by berating ourselves, and "shoulding" on yourself is one of the big ways this manifests.
- Take responsibility for your actions. As you start to reframe the way you think about your mistakes or regrets, you can work with "the four R's of forgiveness," with the first one being responsibility.
- Don't deny your remorse or regret. The second R of the "4 R's of forgiveness" is remorse. Once you've taken responsibility for your role in the situation you're in, remorse is a natural recourse to move toward integrating the situation in a healthy way.
- Accepting guilt as an emotion. Humans experience emotions, and guilt is one of those. According to Albert Nguyen, a clinical social worker from Palo Alto, California, guilt is just as important as any other emotion humans feel.
- Self-compassion techniques. By definition, self-compassion refers to the process of treating yourself with the same care as you would someone you love.
- Letting the wound heal. When you get a scratch, your body immediately starts the healing process. Eventually, that scratch develops a scab to help the tissue underneath mend.
- Considering the opposite point of view. When you’re overwhelmed with guilt, it’s natural to assume the other party involved is also fixated on what happened in the same way.
Dec 9, 2021 · 7 Steps to Self-Forgiveness. Guilt is too heavy a burden to carry. Posted December 9, 2021 | Reviewed by Michelle Quirk. Key points. Forgiveness turns even more transformative when you add...
Jul 5, 2021 · Whatever it is, how do you forgive yourself? When we self-forgive, we do not take the easy way out. We own our actions and gradually move to a place of self-compassion and growth. In this article, we break down the self-forgiveness process and outline steps you can take to foster self-forgiveness.
People also ask
What does it mean to 'forgive' yourself?
How do you forgive yourself?
How do you use self-forgiveness?
What is the road to self-forgiveness?
