Mistakes of the past make it difficult to sleep peacefully at night. A feeling of guilt for actions taken in the past constantly swirls in my head. It does not allow you to sleep and live peacefully. How to forgive yourself? In order to fix the problem, you need to do something. The causes of past grievances could be any event. At that moment, all actions seemed reasonable and correct. Nobody thought about what they would lead to.
The girl is sad
Wrong actions are part of life
Life is not permanently smooth; on the path of every person there are bumps that he has to overcome in order to improve himself. What we have gone through tempers us and makes us stronger. The most important thing is to admit: “I’m guilty” (if this is really the case), draw conclusions and move on.
If you made a mistake, caused harm to others, became a victim of deception or false misconceptions, the first thing you should do is try to correct the situation created. However, this is not always possible. Sometimes people suffer because of the final result of their own actions. The soul is aggravated by sad thoughts and the desire to return everything back, to do differently.
In this case, the church, and simply common sense, suggests that you repent, forgive yourself, and forget all the bad experiences associated with this incident. In such situations, it is very important not to move completely and irrevocably into the sphere of emotions, not to lose your head.
Answer your questions
The feeling of guilt is not a natural human quality. He is shaped by his environment, often his parents, even in childhood. The child is scolded for an undesirable act, causing anxiety and sometimes suffering. This is how a conscience is formed, which over the years will hurt for bad deeds automatically, without interference or censure from the outside. Normally, it should push a person to find the right solutions, a decent way out of the situation, and protect him from committing rash actions. But for some, conscience becomes hypertrophied (excessive).
If you cannot forgive yourself for past mistakes, answer the following questions:
- What did I do wrong?
- Why did I do this?
- Could I have acted differently at that moment?
- Is there anything I can do to fix it now?
- Why can't I forget this situation?
You must formulate your answers clearly. It’s best to write them down in a notepad or just on a piece of paper.
Rely on a sober mind
You should be guided by logic, reassure yourself with the thought that your actions were wrong and led to bad consequences, but in the future you will not do this again because you have gained invaluable experience. As they say, only those who do nothing make no mistakes.
If you made this or that decision before, you saw the meaning in it. A person does not always have adequate and truthful information about everything that happens around him. He may become a victim of deception or misinterpretation of facts. The good news is that the mistakes of the past will most likely teach you to be more careful in the future, to carefully think through every step, and to plan your own actions wisely. Very few people manage to realize this in theory, and only a select few learn from the failures of others. But it is better to gain knowledge this way than not to gain it at all.
Practical tasks
Psychological self-help is not an easy task. A person can scroll through the same thoughts in his head for a long time. To break the vicious circle, it is important to move from theory to practice. Modern psychology offers many techniques for solving problems. Some of them can be practiced independently, without the help of a specialist. Next we will describe several practices for forgiving yourself.
3 letters
Sometimes our emotions are beyond our control. Writing helps to structure thoughts. The following practice will allow you to throw out all the accumulated negativity, take control of your emotions and even learn a little more about yourself. So let's get started:
- Seclude yourself in an empty room, dim the lights, turn off extraneous sounds. Prepare paper and pen. Take a comfortable position and close your eyes. Recreate in detail the situation for which you cannot forgive yourself. Concentrate on your emotions as much as possible. Start writing down everything you think. You can tell it chaotically, in fragments, or in a sequential story, as is convenient. Keep writing until you feel empty.
- The next day, repeat the session. You may remember new details. It is important to pour out everything negative on paper, without leaving a trace.
- Day three, final. Find the positive aspects of your action or situation. What positive changes have they brought? Write down every little thing, even if it’s not significant in your opinion.
Now it's time to say goodbye to the past. Fold 3 sheets of paper and burn them. This kind of ritual on a subconscious level will help you cleanse yourself and stop going through a bunch of old problems in your memory.
Return to childhood
What is the difference between adults and children? An adult must be responsible for his actions, must predict, prevent, correct, be able to. The child does not have to do this at all. I messed up, I couldn’t handle it - well, okay, the main thing is that the parents don’t quarrel. Until a certain age, children are not tormented by feelings of guilt. So, to forgive yourself, try turning to your inner child.
Take a break from household chores, turn off disturbing sounds, sit comfortably and be in silence for 5-10 minutes. Imagine that you are near an extraordinary, ancient temple. Its gates are open and invite you to enter. You walk in and in the center is a boy or girl about 4-5 years old. If you look closely, you will recognize yourself in the child. The baby is scared, he realizes that he has made a mistake and is waiting for punishment. Try to feel sorry for him and forgive him. Imagine how the baby calms down. Now you can leave the temple. You are forgiven.
Self-hypnosis method
The practice is ideal for people who cannot get rid of feelings of guilt for many years. In this case, self-flagellation already becomes a habit. To get rid of obsessive thoughts and finally forgive yourself, you should:
- Write a text whose meaning will be to forgive yourself. Sample content: “I completely forgive myself for past mistakes. I forgive myself without any conditions. I refuse to carry the weight of guilt in my heart. I refuse to think negatively. I feel that as I let go of the guilt for past mistakes, I become joyful and at ease. I'm ready to be happy again."
- Repeat the text in a semi-relaxed state every day, maybe several times. It is especially important to do this at moments when painful thoughts enter your head.
Regardless of whether you believe in what is written or not, relief will come with daily repetitions. Self-hypnosis works on a subconscious level.
Forgiveness according to S. Gawain
Very often, the feeling of one’s own guilt is intertwined with grievances towards other people who unwittingly became witnesses or participants in a painful situation. This practice allows you to forgive not only yourself, but also your environment. How to do it:
- Take a piece of paper and a pen and list the names of all the people who make you feel bad. Opposite each property, indicate why you are angry with it, offended, or perhaps condemned. Next, take a comfortable position, relax and imagine these people in front of you one by one. Talk to everyone, explain that you were angry or offended by them, but now you are ready to do everything possible to forgive. You must say: “I forgive and release you. Go your way and be happy." Write these words in red at the bottom of the list.
- Now list the people you think you have ever hurt. Next to the names, write what you did. Next, close your eyes and visualize these people one by one. Explain to everyone, ask for forgiveness. Imagine that they all say words of forgiveness and bless you. Finally, write at the bottom of the list: “I forgive myself completely, now and forever!”
Place both sheets of paper together, tear them up and burn them. Try not to return to past problems or grievances.
How can you forgive yourself for past mistakes? You can listen to the advice from the article, consult a psychologist, find support in your faith, or have a heart-to-heart talk with a person you trust. Everyone has his own path. The main thing is not to dwell on the negative for too long. “For everything there is a season, and a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up what is planted; a time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to destroy, and a time to build; a time to cry, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance..." (Ecclesiastes).
Julia, Blagoveshchensk
Everything happens as it should
Life is like wandering in a dark room with porcelain dishes on the shelves. Whether you want it or not, if you don’t turn on the light, you’ll hit something. Every mistake encourages us to light a new light on our path, thanks to which the truth opens before our eyes.
How to forgive yourself if after a while you notice how stupid and logically unjustified your own actions were? It’s worth calming down and realizing that in the past your knowledge base was much more modest and it increased precisely thanks to the failure for which you reproach yourself so much. So isn’t it more rational, on the contrary, to praise and thank yourself for not sitting idly by, but trying to do at least something?
Many people completely limit their activities because they are too unsure of themselves and are afraid of making mistakes. Although they still develop feelings of guilt and shame due to their own tightness. So both action and inaction are good in place and time. Few people are born with an intuitive sense of this subtle harmony. You can figure out what to do with experience, after you step on a couple of rakes.
Forgiving yourself is the most difficult type of forgiveness.
Why forgive? It is necessary to forgive yourself. A person who cannot forgive and forget past mistakes carries a burden of worries and grievances, not allowing himself to move forward. Looks back, blocks the channels for new arrivals.
To pour clean water into a glass, you need to empty it, wash it, dry it, and only then pour new, clean, spring water. And then she will be clean. Imagine, if you pour clean water into a dirty glass, what will happen to the water? And if there is already water in this glass, then we will not be able to pour anything into it at all. Likewise, our soul is a vessel that we simply need to regularly clean, dry and refill with clean, spring water. The only way! The question is often asked: “I can’t forgive, what should I do? ", "It's hard to forgive, what should I do? I want to answer with the words of my respected teacher Radislav Gandapas: “don’t do anything, stay in the ass! That's how it works. People come for advice, ask for help, and when you say: forgive yourself, let go of this mistake, forget that period, whining begins. So why do you come and ask for help? Continue to solve your problems the same way you solved them before. There is no other way to move forward. There is no happiness without love, and there is no love without forgiveness! No one said that forgiving, especially yourself and your mistakes, was easy. I didn't promise you this. Forgiving is hard, difficult, sometimes even too much. But. If you suffer for a long time, everything will definitely work out! So go ahead, suffer! As they say: “through thorns to the stars!” How to forgive. In order to learn to forgive yourself or any other person, you need to learn to understand others. To understand means to forgive! You need to memorize it, get it into your head and notch it on your nose: at that moment you did everything you could! At that moment you were in exactly this state and in this spiritual disposition, and you did everything possible! You didn’t want to harm anyone, and even if you did, you couldn’t do it any other way. Well, you didn’t have enough knowledge and understanding at that time, understand this! This is the most important understanding on the PATH to forgiveness. What is important is the desire, the burning desire to forgive yourself, to get rid of resentment towards yourself. When there is a desire, you will use all methods, all possibilities and all resources, just to forgive yourself. And you will learn to forgive. The main thing is to learn this! Write yourself a letter. I won't go into detail. I already wrote about this. Let me just say that a letter can be written in any form, the main thing is that you write by hand and not on a computer. Reread, or better yet, rewrite it until you feel relief throughout your body. Listen to self-forgiveness meditations! You can find it on the Internet, or you can write it down yourself. A small audio file, duration 20-25 minutes, calm music and words that promote forgiveness. You also need to listen to it until relief comes and the aching sensation in your soul goes away. Conversation with yourself. Every day, when you experience discomfort in your chest, tell yourself the words I wrote above. Your task is to convince your inner critic that you did your best at that moment. You are not to blame for anything, everything happened the way it happened. Everything happened for the better, because it was that situation that could teach you this, show you this and give you this. Hoponopono. This technique is universal and very effective. When remembering any unpleasant event for which you cannot forgive yourself, repeat four phrases: “I’m very sorry! ""I'm sorry! ""I thank you! ""I love you! I also added these phrases on my own, because it was important for me to forget and let go of the situations of my past life: “I forgive myself! ""I accept myself! ""I approve of myself! ""I'm letting myself go! ""I love myself! There were moments when this phrase did not just fall from my lips, but screamed with my entire inner state. After these phrases and repeating them 10-20-50 times at a time, I felt much better, and then I realized that there was no more nagging feeling in my soul in relation to this situation. Resentment! Forget grievances! cleanse yourself of grievances! forward with a pure heart, a light spirit and an open soul!
Free yourself
There is nothing worse than living with a heavy weight on your soul, not knowing how to forgive yourself. People who accept this kind of thinking poison their own lives. If there is an opportunity to correct what you have done, do it; if not, apologize.
If you can’t even apologize, all that remains is to analyze the situation and develop a model of action for further similar cases. But this is already a lot.
Human experience is extremely important. As we go through individual situations, we become wiser. Thinking that everything could have turned out much better, we should not forget that, most likely, there were simply no proper conditions for this. Just as it is impossible to build a durable house on a poor foundation, it is also impossible to achieve a good result under poor preconditions.
Consequences of Unforgiveness
Awareness of one's own guilt allows unforgiveness to take root deeply in the soul, reminding us of mistakes every minute. Sometimes the inability to forgive oneself turns life into something that religious leaders scare the foolish flock with. If we could see other people's thoughts, a frightening picture would appear before our eyes. Here and here, contrasting with positive, floating mental clots of energy, gray, gloomy, disgusting ethereal masses pull people down.
There the girl is reproaching herself for her mistake: she didn’t look after the dog, didn’t notice the symptoms in time, didn’t contact the veterinarian. A little further away sits a boy, in his unchildish good-heartedness, exhausting himself with thoughts about a broken toy, on which his mother “took a bite” from her modest salary. A man passes nearby, ready to do anything to turn back time - many years of infidelities, a broken family, unhappy children... But here is a very difficult picture: a young man is bitterly experiencing the loss of his mother, whom he brought to an incurable disease with his reckless life.
How can you forgive yourself when you are responsible for a mistake that seems impossible to correct? How to live with a heavy load that does not allow you to rise in the present and completely erases any bright prospects? We sometimes torture ourselves even for reasons that are not at all as significant as some of those described in the paragraph above. What can we say about a destructive feeling, which is based on objective huge mistakes.
Fortunately, for any action (thanks to Newton and others) there is a reaction. One wise man expressed the formula of his happiness in the words: “Forgetting the past, I stretch forward.” He was deeply aware of his mistakes, but he had the wisdom to understand that there was no point in shackling himself in the shackles of the past. He learned not to react to mistakes, small or even huge, preferring a healthy desire for self-improvement to self-criticism. He learned from his mistakes and moved forward. It is within your power to follow his example.
The problem needs to be sorted out
In any case, it is worth trying to justify yourself. But this does not mean simply giving up on the situation. Only unscrupulous people who always put their interests first can do this. The main argument for forgiveness can be that you pursued false ideas and did not have enough information.
Few people can see the future, so they often have to go through life in the dark. Someone explores the road carefully, but even he is not immune from embarrassment. Not to mention impulsive and impressionable people. This is not to say that these are bad traits. They can play a pretty good role in a number of other situations. Finding the right path, such individuals direct all their passion in a good direction. But if such a person, essentially a maximalist, stumbles, he will repeat to himself hundreds of times: “It’s my fault, how could I make such a mistake?” And bite your own elbows with bitterness. In essence, it is a waste of energy. Sooner or later, when emotions do subside, they have to draw conclusions and move on with their lives.
Find a reason why you need to forgive yourself
Sometimes the feeling of guilt for past mistakes becomes so habitual that you don’t want to change anything. Even to some extent, this plays into a person’s hands: “I am suffering so much, I am unhappy, I am not capable of more, have pity on me.” This attitude, as it were, removes responsibility. At the same time, it destroys a person’s personality, stops his development, and prevents him from experiencing happiness.
To get rid of habitual negative feelings and thoughts, you need motivation. Why should you forgive yourself? Try to find a reason that is really compelling to you:
- Every person can make a mistake; there are no perfect people.
- I have earned forgiveness through good deeds.
- I was forgiven by the person I harmed.
- God forgave and commanded us to.
- If I don't forgive myself, I might get sick.
- Feelings of guilt only make matters worse.
- I need forgiveness in order to move forward, achieve my goal, fulfill my dream.
If you believe in God, you can confess. For many, this is the only thing that helps them throw off a heavy stone from their souls.
Relapses of self-flagellation
A person cannot suffer forever. The world around him is constantly changing and does not stand still. New goals will appear, and the experience gained will serve well in achieving them. However, many people suffer from the fact that periodically (it happens once a week, a month - it’s different for everyone) they are tingled by a sharp sting of conscience. How to forgive yourself in such a situation?
If you suffer from such relapses, it means that you did not understand the situation earlier. It’s not enough to just run away from a problem; you need to comprehend it, analyze it perfectly and draw conclusions. Nowadays, people have little time and a lot of unnecessary information around. Getting a headache is not a problem. But left alone with yourself, you will feel that an old guest - the past - is knocking on the door.
In such situations it can even lead to depression. It’s as if you killed someone, fled the scene of the crime and suddenly came across the empty gaze of a skull gaping from under the half-decomposed flesh. Unpleasant sensations. At such moments the soul experiences real tossing and depression. A person convinces himself of his own stupidity, depravity and worthlessness. It is very important in such situations to learn to forgive yourself. Then the terrible obsession that comes from time to time into your heart will dissipate, as if under the rays of the dawn sun, driving away the darkness from the dank and chilled streets during the night.
Causes of self-resentment
The reasons for self-resentment are quite varied. This could be absolutely any event from the past that entailed a lot of negative consequences. The most common causes of grievances are:
- The fact that her husband cheated on his beloved woman. This is a standard situation after which a man cannot forgive himself. Conscience gnaws a hole from the inside and gives no peace.
- Wrong attitude towards your own child and the process of raising him. This kind of anxiety is more common among women. To avoid such situations, you need to think about your behavior when communicating with your child.
- A grudge against an old acquaintance, after which the relationship was completely destroyed. This happens from an uncontrolled outburst of emotions.
- A big financial loss due to your own stupidity. Anything can happen in a person’s life; you shouldn’t blame yourself for everything.
- Abandoned studies in youth. This is often done by impulsive young people who believe that they can achieve everything without a diploma.
- Missing your first love. At a young age, people tend to idealize other people, whose image remains in their memory for a long time.
- Desire to change profession. It’s never too late to go to study and change jobs, the main thing is desire and aspiration.
- Decisions made in the past that have a major impact on the future. The worldview of the past will always be different from the present.
Important! Any grievances and bad memories need to be left in the past, forgive yourself in order to fully enjoy the present and future.
Defensive reaction
Our well-being directly depends on our level of self-esteem. A person cannot live in peace with the knowledge that he is bad. Everyone wants to know that they are doing the right thing; deep down, everyone wants the same thing: harmony and happiness for themselves and those around them.
In our society it often happens that people’s souls become covered with a crust of cynicism, which has always been in strange fashion. Outwardly, it seems that the individual has no principles, he does not feel sorry for anyone or anything. But the truth is that, as a rule, this equanimity is only a defensive reaction used in order not to receive an emotional wound from society. This phenomenon manifests itself even more strongly in the case when the reason is not so much in society as in one’s own deepest experiences.
How to forgive yourself for a bad deed. Where does the feeling of guilt for one's own actions come from?
Everyone has an ideal idea of society and themselves. This image is an impeccable picture that says what a person should be. The ideal determines what is permissible and what is not allowed, what qualities a “good” person should have and what qualities a “bad” person should have. He paints images of a respectable family man, a successful worker, a loving mother, and a skillful lover. Sigmund Freud called this part of a person’s personality the “Super-Ego”: shame, conscience, morality and the inner inquisitor, a merciless judge who punishes without investigation or trial.
The “Ideal-I” hides in the depths of the subconscious and is formed from childhood. First by parents, then by educators and teachers, and by the social environment. The feeling of guilt, which was supposed to help a person get comfortable in society, destroys the personality from the inside:
It punishes, but not for “bad” or “good” actions. Conscience pronounces a verdict for the discrepancy between reality and the ideal idea. Feeling guilty is unreasonable. It does not allow you to think and analyze the situation, but only corrodes from the inside, sweeping aside all justificatory arguments. Internal conflict gives rise to aggression. Negative emotions come out, allowing conscience to continue its execution for new “misdeeds.”
Unsolved problems
Not knowing how to forgive oneself, a person becomes convinced of his own depravity, and at the same time the sinfulness of the entire world around him. Of course, in practice it often happens that people act badly to achieve their own interests or, again, due to lack of information. But this cannot be considered the norm. We can admit that this is happening, but at the same time there is a need to work to ensure that the situation improves.
This can be achieved through self-analysis and the ability to understand the world around you. A person should not give up on everything, fill his head with unnecessary information and drag himself behind consumer values, with the help of which, as we are assured, any mental wound can be healed.
Forgive yourself. Stop cutting sawdust!
Today we would like to talk about how to forgive yourself. Where to find the very forces that will help you get out of a vicious circle, where to find the strength to accept your past. After all, if a person accepts everything that happened to him, he accepts himself, he accepts his Fate and his Experience, even if the meaning (negative, not positive) of it is not entirely to his liking.
By forgiving ourselves, we accept ourselves. We accept as we are. Year after year, no matter how “righteously” we live, a huge number of mistakes, large and small, still accumulate, which we, like a heavy bag, pull on our own back. You can't get far with such luggage. So wouldn't it be easier to sit down, untie your burden and look into the bag? Isn’t it easier to take out of it everything that has already happened a long time ago and what has happened cannot be changed? Isn’t it easier to look all your fears, resentments and guilt in the eye, telling them: “I see you. I know about you. I accept you. I thank you."
Experience. Our whole life is an experience. NLPists say: “There is nothing uniquely bad and nothing uniquely good, but everything is experience.” If you think about this phrase, we will agree with it, because it is so.
Living with your head turned back, trying to move forward in this position, a person does not go far. In his life, at a minimum, nothing simply happens. Absolutely nothing, as if he doesn’t live at all, but just exists, simply dragging out his days, in painful anticipation of that very last day, which, as it seems to him, will become a deliverance from everything and everyone.
Guilt blocks the flow of life. It's like dirt is eating away from the inside. Slowly but surely. And only a person can decide whether to continue to live with guilt or by working on mistakes to gain freedom and a chance for happiness.
Those who suffer, or even those who suffer, who adore to suffer forever, raising their hands to the sky, every now and then theatrically say: “How? How can I forgive myself? I can't! No, I can't do this! This is beyond my strength! I don’t even know what to do!”
When a person who eats himself is told, “You need to forgive yourself,” he immediately says, “Ohhhh, no, I can’t! This is not for me at all! you need to understand it something like this: “No, what are you saying, it’s so nice for me to feel poor, it’s so nice to feel sorry for myself, it’s so nice to be a victim of circumstances, and in general to be unhappy.”
Well, all those who do not want to forgive themselves, who do not want to work on themselves, remain, as Radislav Gapdapas says, “in the ass.” Sorry in advance for his French.
For those who are tired of sadly wandering through life with a backpack of unnecessary junk on their back, everything that will be discussed below is dedicated to them.
A fool is not the one who makes mistakes, but the one who does not learn from them
When people eat themselves from the inside, people around them often tell them something like: “You think too much. Take a break." Will not help. More precisely, only for a while. In order for relief, spiritual purity, and comprehensive freedom to finally come, you need to carefully understand your motives, realize what exactly led to the undesirable result, and promise yourself to avoid similar situations in the future.
After such internal cleaning, you will begin to respect yourself much more and, finally, forgive. There is nothing unusual or deadly about being wrong. You should take such things as a chance to become wiser and increase your experience. Real stupidity is running away from a problem and falling into the same trap again.
