Forgiving yourself for large or small things can feel overwhelming. Much like forgiving someone who has hurt you, forgiving yourself can take time.
I find I am someone who will beat herself up over the slightest thing, like not texting a friend back on time. I also have been working through the guilt of having not spoken with a dear friend for about a year before her untimely death. I should preface neither of us was mad at the another. We were both too busy to play phone tag as well as we could have. Nonetheless, the past year I have spent some time working through forgiving myself for not slowing down and picking up that phone.
My counselor, and most experts, all encourage forgiving yourself. Just as harboring the burden of unforgiveness toward another person can erode our health , so can our inability to forgiving ourselves. To our bodies the burden is the same. Plus, who likes beating themselves up all the time?
Some of the techniques used to help with self-forgiveness are identifying where one may have gone against their moral code or values, then start to act with in those values. Acknowledge that the past is the past. For me, it is also accepting that I did the best I could at the time. Move forward with new knowledge and self-awareness. Practice forgiving yourself and loving yourself like you do others.
For me, I went against how much I believed I valued my friend and our friendship by not calling her as often as I feel I should have. To change that practice, I have started reaching out to friends more often via text. I am still as busy as ever, so are my friends. Texting is still communication and communication actively lets them know that I value them.
Even though I have been going through this process for a while, there are days that I still need to remind myself that the past is the past. I cannot change the fact that we did not talk on the phone for some time. However, I was doing the best I could at that time in my history. I didn’t Facebook often, but when I did, I made sure I communicated with her via her page. The week and day of her death, we communicated over Facebook.
I am moving forward in the new things I have learned about myself and this situation. Going forward I make it appoint to communicate with the people I care about, even if it is by text. Letting others know they are important to me. I remind myself that I am a work in progress and these are the small steps in my journey. Each day and week I try to do better.
Forgiving myself is an active practice. When the gremlin of guilt tries to creep up, I remind myself that I am actively working to do better, I am not going to beat myself up anymore, my friend would not want me too.
Loving myself and giving myself, grace is an important part of this journey. There is a popular scripture that says, “love your neighbor as you love yourself”. There is also “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. Basically, treat others as you want to be treated. What if you are someone that treats others BETTER than you treat yourself? Then you and I have a lot in common! For people like us, when we are learning to love and care for ourselves, it can be helpful to think of ourselves as the neighbor or our best friends. Speaking to ourselves with the same respect, love, patience, and kindness we would give them. We do this to help build our self-esteem and to help us complete our healing process. It reminds us that we are valued and worth forgiving.
We all screw up. We always will in some way or another. The most important thing is to learn and grow from the experience. Try not to repeat our mistakes again. Forgiving ourselves is one of the big steps in that process.