Forgiving Ourselves

Some of the reason we find it difficult to forgive ourselves include:

Exceptionalism: You hold yourself accountable or blameworthy in ways that you would never hold others. You hold yourself to a standard that is far higher than the one you use for others. This is a cousin to perfectionism. You expect yourself to be perfect, and anything less than perfection is an abject failure. You believe you control the outcomes of your actions. If those actions go awry, you can only assume it is your fault.

Expansionism: You expand the realm of your responsibility to just about everything. You significantly overestimate your zone of responsibility, thereby assuming responsibility for acts or situations that are not yours. If you see yourself as responsible for everything, you will always encounter your failures and mistakes.

Confirmation Bias: You operate with the assumption that someone like you (insert all negative judgments here) can only bring about harms or injuries to others. Every act confirms your inadequacy or culpability, which exacerbates shame. You believe everything you do and everything about you is bad or wrong or hurtful, and this reinforces your view that someone like you doesn’t deserve forgiveness.

These forms of self-deception are notoriously difficult to identify and interrupt, because they are so familiar. More accurately, they are normal to those who operate under them; they mediate how people see themselves and others. This has very real consequences. Consider Tina. If Tina believes everything bad that happens in a relationship is her fault, her partner may reinforce that belief along with the belief that he has no responsibility for what happens. Tina takes his blame and directs her own at herself. This may make a relationship go from bad to toxic and dangerous.

Let’s imagine Tina finally leaves her partner after many years. She feels as if she has really let herself down by having stayed for so long. She’s wasted too many years with someone who not only didn’t make her a better person but also tore her down. Why is self-forgiveness appropriate, and what might it look like for her? Self-forgiveness is appropriate, because it is a way to restore dignity, which is often damaged in toxic relationships. Self-forgiveness is a step in rebuilding—if not building for the first time—the sense that a person matters.

The Importance of Forgiveness

What might the acknowledgment, repair, and commitment that are crucial for self-forgiveness look like for Tina? She needs to acknowledge the history of the relationship and what patterns developed anew or continued from past relationships. She needs to acknowledge her feelings and reasons for staying, along with her reasons for leaving. She needs to acknowledge what was beyond her control and what were her partner’s responsibilities. This is a very hard thing to do.

The repair work takes several forms. To repair is to restore, rejuvenate, heal, and redeem oneself. One important step is to reframe. Tina may have a tape running through her head that she did all of this to herself; she chose to stay for so long. She sees her harms as self-inflicted. If she were to reframe particular decisions, that may help to reframe the broader picture. For example, she may come to see that she had very few options—each of them bad—to choose between. While rocks and hard places are both options, neither is a good one. She may reframe her actions in light of those choices and realize she did the best she could in difficult situations. In fact, she may see she was rather clever in coming up with third options in many situations. Something like this may help Tina to see herself as having a little more worth than she thought she had. This can be a huge achievement in healing and redeeming Tina’s sense of worth.

On Being Prepared to "Spontaneously" Forgive the Unexpected

The commitment to a better present and future self builds off the acknowledgment and repair work. The commitment to being a better person in the future must involve the commitment to treat yourself better by valuing and respecting yourself. It is a commitment to break old patterns of self-deprecation and denigration that aid and abet self-deception. When Tina does this, she is less likely to tolerate others who are trying to define her value and worth for her. Self-forgiveness does not happen quickly and easily. It can be scary for sure, but it can also be uplifting and liberating.