Self-Forgiveness

Self forgiveness isn’t about pretending the past didn’t happen, or letting ourselves off the hook. It’s about learning the difference between responsibility and punishment. Because you can’t hate yourself into becoming well.

Transcript

self-forgiveness 0:00

Happy Friday everyone. Today's bonus episode is a particularly useful one, especially if you're the sort of person who lies awake some nights replaying something you said or did years ago, like it's just been uploaded in high definition. 'cause today I want to talk about self forgiveness and not the fluffy fridge magnet version where someone tells you to just let it go. Because if you could just let it go, you'd have done that already, wouldn't you? Nobody carries shame because it's convenient. Nobody wakes up and thinks, do you know what's gonna improve my mood today? A bit of self-hatred with my cup of tea. So let's start with guilt, because guilt isn't automatically a bad thing. It's uncomfortable, yes, but uncomfortable doesn't mean harmful. Guilt has a job. It says, hang on, something happened here that doesn't line up with your values and It can push you to apologise, to repair, to do things differently next time. So that's useful, but shame is different. Guilt says, I did something wrong. Shame says I am something wrong. And that difference can shape a life. Guilt can move. Guilt can say, you need to put this right. But shame just freezes you. It makes you hold onto everything, hold onto the pain and just call it personal development, which it isn't. I like to think of guilt as a fire alarm. We need fire alarms, don't we? If something's burning, I want that thing making as much noise as possible actually. But once the fire is out, once everyone's safe and the windows are open and the, I dunno, the burnt toast is in the bin, you don't leave the alarm screaming for the next 20 years just to prove that fire is dangerous. You turn it off. But not because fire doesn't matter, but because the alarm has done its job. Now, I know some of what people carry isn't, I said something silly at party once. Some of it is a lot heavier. Times we were selfish or cruel or we let somebody down. And self-forgiveness isn't about pretending that didn't matter or saying, well, that's just how I am. It's something else entirely. Shame asks, how long can I suffer for this? Accountability asks what needs to happen now, and only one of those questions actually goes anywhere. One thing that really helps is getting specific. Because shame loves big, vague statements. I'm awful. I ruin everything. I'm a failure. And they just sit on your chest doing nothing. But, I avoided a difficult conversation or I snapped because I was overwhelmed. Well, that you can actually work with. That you can learn from, you can repair, you can understand. So ask yourself what was actually going on for you at the time. Not to excuse it, to understand it, because understanding is where choice lives. And watch out for the word should. I should have known better. Maybe. But hindsight stands at the end of the story with all the answers. Judging the version of you that was still on page two, who didn't have what you have now. So here's a little exercise that I think can help. Imagine someone you actually care about came to you with the exact same regret, same mistake, same circumstances, with the same feeling of remorse sat inside of them. Would you tell them they deserve to suffer forever? Probably not. You'd more likely say something like, Hey, what you did wasn't okay, but it doesn't have to define the rest of your life. You'd say, yeah, you do need to apologise, you need to learn from it, and I can still care about you. And if that would be true for them, why would it not be true for you? So if you are not ready to say, I forgive myself, that's fine. That might feel too big right now. Try something smaller instead. Try, I am allowed to learn from this. Not, it didn't matter, not I was right, just I am allowed to learn from this. Because you are. I go into all of this and a lot more over on my Patreon page, including I was talking about how to repair things when the person involved isn't around to hear it anymore and why your inner critic genuinely thinks it's protecting you. So if this sounds like your kind of thing, patreon.com/richardnicholls gets you the full episode of this one and another every week. Genuinely for less than a Starbucks coffee once a month. Anyway, time to go enjoy your weekend. I'll speak to you again soon. See ya.