How to forgive yourself and get rid of negative emotions towards yourself forever

How to forgive yourself? Understand that at that particular moment you could not have done anything differently. Your knowledge and skills, internal resources were only enough for what you did. However, all this is already a thing of the past, now you are a different person who has different tools to solve the same problem, which means you will no longer make that mistake. Now let’s look in more detail at why it is so important and difficult to forgive yourself, why unforgiveness is dangerous, and how to get rid of the burden of grievances from the past.

Why is it difficult to forgive yourself

We know ourselves better than anyone. Subjectivity and awareness of all the reasons for an action prevent you from forgiving yourself. It could have been committed out of envy, revenge or hatred. And these, as you know, are bad qualities. But no one wants to be bad. A person does not want to believe that he is bad. His psyche resists this. Therefore, he comes up with other explanations for his actions or tries to pretend that nothing happened. But at the unconscious level it continues to influence.

This is what prevents you from forgiving and accepting yourself, and getting rid of guilt for the past:

• excessive demands;
• self-hatred and the “I’m bad” attitude;
• tendency to self-destruction, self-punishment;
• lack of understanding of the value of mistakes (they are lessons, without them you cannot develop, become better);
• the role of the victim (unforgiveness has hidden benefits - attention, compassion from other people).

All these features, as a rule, are formed in childhood. At first, the parents demanded a lot from the child, scolded and punished him for every offense, and told him that he was bad. And then the child himself began to treat himself this way. Often, forgiving yourself goes hand in hand with forgiving parents and other people from the past.

What does not forgiving yourself lead to?

Focusing on the mistakes of the past leads to being stuck there. A person cannot move forward and develop. In addition, he constantly goes into self-flagellation, trying to punish himself everywhere and in everything. Chronic feelings of guilt and shame prevent him from enjoying and living a full life. It constantly seems to him that he is not worthy of better, more. As well as grievances and all the resulting conditions lead to psychosomatic disorders: body pain, problems with the gastrointestinal tract, etc.

Important! Self-resentment leads to problems in your personal and work life. A person lives in the past and does not notice the possibilities of the present.

How to forgive yourself - effective ways

Universal ways to help forgive yourself:

1. Love yourself. This means that you need to accept all your characteristics, advantages and disadvantages. And also accept the past.
2. Make a list of all grievances and irritants. What in the present reminds you of the past again and again and prevents you from getting out of it? How can you change this. Make a step-by-step plan for getting rid of each grievance and act.
3. Change the direction of your thinking. Learn to reframe your thoughts and focus on the positive instead of the negative. For example: replace the thought “I am a bad mother because I did not pay enough attention to my child” with the belief “I am a good mother because now I spend a lot of time with my child.” The same goes for other self-analysis: concentrate on your strengths, victories, reasons for pride and respect.
4. Use the writing method. Write down the whole situation in detail. Identify what you scold yourself for and what you praise yourself for. Determine your share of responsibility and the share of responsibility of other participants. Express everything that has accumulated, and then ask for forgiveness. And write: “I forgive myself.” After that, reread the letter out loud and destroy it.
5. Talk to someone you feel embarrassed about. It is not necessary to call and meet with this person. You can imagine him sitting in front of you. Close the problem situation. Finish it the way you would like it.

Why do this?

You can't change the past. Returning to unpleasant memories, reproaching and blaming yourself for the actions of days gone by is a meaningless, irrational activity.

Not only is such reflection a waste of time. Emotional strength and energy are spent on torments of conscience and self-pity. As a result of self-flagellation, a person becomes irritable, tired, and depressed.

This has an almost immediate impact on work and interpersonal relationships.

Absent-mindedness and thoughts distracting from work activities worsen results and performance.

And irritation, emotionality and temper can shake even close ties between close people. A few more reasons to motivate you to learn to forgive yourself:

1. Setting expectations. We often tend to expect champion results from life. We build Napoleonic plans and dream of their implementation. Mistakes help you “land.” This does not mean giving up. This is just a reason to look at the world more pragmatically and realistically.
2. Accept and love yourself.
   You will be able to admit that you are not perfect - and you will gain enormous freedom. Being a superman is not the best goal in life, since it requires making enormous efforts to control yourself. And the benefit from one’s “goodness” often does not pay off. Allow yourself to relax, realize that there are shortcomings in your character, but they do not cover up your advantages and do not make you bad.
3. Improving relationships with people. When you forbid yourself to make mistakes, you automatically demand that others follow this principle. Sometimes unconsciously, without realizing it. This can manifest itself in criticism, intrusive advice, and lectures. And naturally, such behavior will meet with resistance and discontent. By accepting yourself as you are, you will learn to live in harmony with people, appreciating their virtues and putting up with negative character traits.

Often the inability to forgive oneself is associated with low self-esteem and lack of love and self-care.

In addition to the tips below on how to forgive yourself for past mistakes, it is recommended to look for information on increasing your confidence in your abilities and bringing your self-esteem to an adequate state.

Recommendations from a psychologist: how to learn to forgive yourself

How to forgive yourself for past mistakes - advice from a psychologist:

1. Realize that you are the only person you will spend your entire life with. You are the only one you can always rely on. Any other person can leave your life. Make friends with yourself. And for this you need to forgive, love and accept yourself.
2. Replace self-flagellation with healthy introspection. Instead of drowning in guilt and shame and simply reliving the past over and over again, learn to analyze traumatic situations and learn from them.
3. Learn to love yourself unconditionally. You are valuable and deserving of love for the mere fact of your existence. Stop trying to earn good treatment for yourself. You deserve it for nothing.
4. Study the life stories of famous people. In interviews, media personalities willingly share their problems and methods for solving them. Many openly tell what they were once ashamed of, what they scolded themselves for and how they eventually forgave. For example, the famous actress and TV presenter Larisa Guzeeva for a long time could not forgive herself for her cold attitude towards her own children, as well as for alcoholism, indecent behavior, disruption of performances, etc. But the woman found the strength to take the path of correction, let go of the past and prove to herself and others that she could live differently.
5. Consult books. For example, read the book by M. Mikhailova and M. Arkhipova “Forgiveness. How to make peace with yourself and others.”

Group psychotherapy is very helpful in forgiving yourself. If you cannot yet contact a psychologist, then find a support group on the Internet. For example, on psychological forums people actively share their experiences of forgiveness. And some psychologists conduct free consultations via chat and answer user questions.

Important! Understand that everyone makes mistakes. This is fine. And life doesn't end there.

AntiLoh.info

Photo from the site horoshev.ru

Many people who have done something not very worthy or become a hostage to difficult life circumstances with a tragic end often ask themselves the question - “How to forgive yourself?”, because guilt and self-flagellation do not allow them to live in peace.

Indeed, sometimes forgiving another turns out to be much easier than forgiving yourself. Most people don’t even imagine how important it is to learn to forgive yourself, to learn to give yourself the right to make mistakes, because very often without this a person cannot change his life and move forward one step!

I myself was the same and could not forgive myself at all, because of this I went through many difficult circumstances in life until I learned to forgive myself. That’s why I’m writing about this, because I learned the meaning of forgiving myself through my own bitter experience, and believe me, it’s not necessary for everyone to go through this, it’s better to change and develop voluntarily, through awareness and work on yourself, than through blows of fate, deprivation, pain and constant kicks from behind.

What is not forgiving yourself?

Not forgiving yourself works in a person when he:

1. Treat yourself incorrectly - when a person does not have a positive attitude towards himself and his Soul (he is used to condemning himself, if something goes wrong, destroying, etc.).

2. When he does not give himself the right to make mistakes , that is, he does not understand the very essence and meaning of life on Earth (life is a school, fate is a sequence of lessons. meaning is the constant development of the soul through trial and error, among others).

3. Does not understand the essence of forgiveness. That forgiveness is not indulgence, but the essence of recognizing one’s sin (mistake) and having a positive attitude towards oneself. After all, without real forgiveness, a person cannot change, cannot get rid of the shortcoming (vice, evil) that was the cause of the mistake made.

4. I am used to judging myself (and, as a consequence, other people too). Condemnation is not the best quality; it does not lead to anything good or worthy. Condemnation is a consequence of pride, when a person takes on the role of God and gives himself the right to judge and pass sentences. The heart of such people becomes callous, and the person becomes dry and cruel.

Not forgiving yourself creates a negative attitude towards yourself, which always destroys a person and his soul. And the feeling of guilt always weakens a person - it kills his joy and inner light.

If a person cannot forgive himself or does not want to forgive himself, this means that he does not accept his sin as a mistake that needs to be admitted and corrected, and if it cannot be corrected, then he can never repeat it again. Although most often a mistake can be corrected by making an appropriate apology, sometimes it is necessary to compensate for the mistake.

Thus, if a person cannot forgive himself, he does not cleanse himself of sin, does not fully correct the mistakes he has made, accumulates guilt, and, accordingly, negative energy that destroys his soul.

In general, a negative attitude towards oneself is a very deeply rooted syndrome, a terrible habit of a post-Soviet person, which urgently needs to be gotten rid of.

After all, when a person does not forgive himself, he essentially preserves negativity in himself, accumulates it in his soul. Not forgiveness is essentially Resentment, only in this case Resentment against Oneself!

If a person accumulates resentment towards himself (soul-destroying negativity), sooner or later this will turn into an incurable disease; often this unforgiveness of oneself results in oncology, that is, cancer.

So choose for yourself, learn to forgive yourself or accumulate resentment against yourself all your life and die painfully from cancer!

So how do you forgive yourself?

1. You need to start with the essence of your relationship to yourself and your Soul. We must accept that life is a big 24-hour school in which a person (his Soul) learns many, many life lessons. And mistakes are just part of learning, because how else can you understand what is right and what is wrong, where is good and where is evil, and what leads to what.

And, ideally, you need to learn to treat yourself as your dearest and most beloved friend - this means accepting yourself as you are (with all your advantages and disadvantages), always caring and being able to forgive yourself for almost everything. But this does not imply complacency, justification and indulgence in one’s own vices and weaknesses.

2. Direct your energy not at your own self-destruction, but at analyzing the mistakes you have made and eliminating their causes. Guilt is replaced by actions: analysis, elimination of causes (weaknesses, vices), apology and compensation for the mistake made.

3. Formation of true love for your Soul, which involves:

• A merciless attitude towards internal evil (vices, weaknesses, any shortcomings - find and eliminate, replace with positive ones).
• Unconditional love for your Soul - take for yourself the rule: “Only Light, only support, protection, love and strengthening!”, “Never be your own enemy - do not destroy, never allow evil and self-hatred! »

4. Understand what true Self-Forgiveness is! Forgiving oneself is always a change in oneself, the development and growth of the Soul , the required formula of self-hypnosis: “I forgive myself and change - I eliminate all the evil in myself that led me to commit sins and mistakes...”, “I forgive myself and strengthen the strengths in myself.” and worthy qualities that will help me avoid repeating mistakes in the future..."

God, if a person repents and wants to change, is always ready to forgive him for any sin. A person should strive to form the same attitude towards himself!

©

How to forgive yourself: my experience

Forgiving offenses was an integral part of the work of self-acceptance and developing self-love. The first thing I did was make a list of all the situations that were bothering me at that time (from least serious to most serious). After that, I worked on each grievance according to this plan:

1. Identification of the problem. You need to be as specific as possible about what you did and when. Who else participated in this, what preceded it, what happened next, etc. I tried to name objective facts, separating it from my emotions.
2. Accepting what can no longer be fixed. This happened. I can't go back there, I don't have a magic wand. This means that it remains to draw some conclusions so as not to repeat this mistake.
3. Search for reasons. Here I smoothly moved from objective to subjective and vice versa. At the same stage, I made a list of feelings and emotions of that time and now.
4. Analysis “What should have been done?” That is, I played out the desired outcome of the situation, and then thought about what tools I would need for this.
5. Making a plan to replace old tools with new ones.
6. Practice, practice and more practice.

What stages should a person go through?

If you are determined to get rid of intrusive memories and stop mental torment, follow a simple step-by-step algorithm:

1. Remember the details. At the very beginning, you need to go back in time and reconstruct events in detail.
2. Analyze behavior. Identify cause-and-effect relationships. For example, you were rude to your girlfriend, and this was the last straw - the relationship broke up.
   Your task is to understand the underlying reason, your emotional state at that moment.

   All this is done in order to identify errors in behavior and negative aspects of character.

3. Record errors . You can use your personal diary for this.
4. Make a plan for change and development. For example, you realized that you were rude because you are a quick-tempered person and have difficulty controlling your anger. This means we need to change in this direction - learn to be calm, learn constructive communication. The goal is to avoid a repeat of the situation. Often people do not analyze experience, reflecting purely emotionally, with experiences. And in the end they step on the same rake again and again.
5. To apologize. If you cannot forgive yourself in a situation where you hurt another person, try getting in touch with him.
   The format depends on how much time has passed and how strong the resentment is. If a person is seriously offended by your behavior, you should not insist on a personal meeting - just write a message on a social network or via SMS. The main thing is to make it clear that you sincerely repent. It is better to make one call or send an SMS than to leave everything as is.
6. Let go of the past. After an apology or in a situation where you cannot forgive yourself for mistakes or missed opportunities (you harmed yourself, not others), accept and let go of the past. After all, you have worked on your mistakes, drawn conclusions, and now you are unlikely to repeat the traumatic experience.
7. Take the path of development. Take corrective action. Read books on aggression control (this applies to the example with a guy and a girl) and apply techniques in interpersonal communication. It is important not only to remember the essence of errors, but also to correct them in reality, observing a tangible result.

Additional factors that ease the period of worry are work and friends. There is no time to be distracted at work, due to responsibility and discipline. And friends charge you with positive emotions and can help with advice and provide psychological support.

Another option is training or playing sports . They not only strengthen the body and develop certain skills and endurance.

In addition to increasing strength, training is physically exhausting, and a tired person has no time to torment himself with pangs of conscience.