Re-release: Episode 11 – Forgiving Yourself

Why is it often so much harder to forgive ourselves than it is to forgive someone else?

In this episode, we explore the challenging but deeply healing practice of self-forgiveness. Together, we'll look at the difference between guilt and shame, why understanding our past isn't the same as excusing it, and how self-compassion and accountability can coexist.

I'll also walk you through a powerful seven-step journaling exercise inspired by Eve Ensler's The Apology—a reflective process that can help you work through guilt, make peace with your past, and begin offering yourself the grace you've been withholding.

If you've been carrying regret, self-blame, or the belief that one mistake defines who you are, I hope this conversation reminds you of a simple truth: healing doesn't begin when you become perfect. It begins when you're finally willing to meet yourself with honesty, compassion, and forgiveness.

Transcript

Sabbatical Update And Re-Release

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome back to Roots of the Rise with me, Sarah Hope. As you may know, I have taken this summer to enjoy a sabbatical. I have been resting and reflecting and resetting, and it has been wonderful. But I didn't want to leave you guys hanging, so I've been using these months to re-release old episodes with some new thoughts and creating materials for my Patreon members.

Guilt Vs Shame In Healing

SPEAKER_00 0:28

The episode I want to revisit today is one about self-forgiveness. Listening back to the episode, I realized that I talked a lot about guilt. Guilt comes up a lot when we talk about forgiving ourselves. But I don't know that I emphasized enough that there is a profound difference between guilt and shame. There is a really important difference between saying, I made a mistake, and believing there is something wrong with me. I am the mistake. One invites growth, the other keeps us trapped. Forgiveness often isn't just about releasing guilt. It's about untangling shame. One of the greatest gifts healing has given me is the ability to look back at earlier versions of myself with far more compassion. Not because I think everything I did was okay. It wasn't. But because I've come to understand that so much of what we regret happened when we were doing the best we could with the nervous system, the emotional capacity, the level of awareness that we had at the time. When we are in survival mode, when we are simply doing the best we can to get through something, we very rarely show up as our highest and best selves. We don't act in the ways we want to, or the ways we wish we could, or the way we ways we dream of, or even the ways that we prepare for. We become who in that moment we believe we need to be in order to survive. That doesn't erase responsibility, but it can completely change the lens through which we view ourselves and others.

Why Triggers Derail Our Best Intentions

SPEAKER_00 2:30

What I hear so often with my clients was people who are really dedicated to trying to become, you know, the best version of themselves, who really want to be able to show up in a grounded, steady way when they're having difficult conversations. And they've done all this work. They listen to the podcast, they read the books, you know, they they they've heard all about nonviolent communication and all the other things that, you know, they know are supposed to help them, nervous system regulation and whatnot. You know, and then they get put in a position where they are being supremely challenged, you know, where they are dealing with someone who maybe they are having a big conflict with, or someone who there has been repeated conflict with. And all of a sudden they're flying off the handle, they're yelling, they're completely dysregulated. And then after the fact, they come to me and they feel so ashamed that they weren't able to, you know, hold their center. They feel like, oh gosh, what am I even doing? Have I even grown at all? You know, I kept on telling myself to heart center or that, you know, um, God was with me, or, you know, I am a being of light and love, and it just didn't work. You know, I couldn't hold on to it. I just slid back into that dysregulated, dysregulated, angry person I've been trying to not be. And I just want to take a moment to say that if you see yourself in that, if that's happened to you recently, please, please, please give yourself some compassion. You know, when we are simply dealing with, I don't know, somebody who cuts us off when we're driving, that's a lot easier to, you know, stay centered and think about three other reasons why that person might be speeding and cutting us off and, you know, sending them some love and light and compassion. It is so much easier to do it in that instance than when we are confronting maybe a parent who we have decades of pain with, or a boss who has been repeatedly undermining you or throwing you under the bus with the higher ups. I mean, there are molehills and then there are Mount Everests. And so I just want to encourage you to give yourself just some compassion, some understanding of why it might be challenging for you to show up as your best self in a situation. And, you know, understanding isn't excusing, it isn't the same thing as justifying. Compassion is not the same as avoiding responsibility. It's simply recognizing that punishment, self-flagellation is not what creates transformation. Awareness does, love does, accountability does. You know, healing often comes from recognizing that two seemingly opposite things can both be true and learning to hold them at the same time. I understand why I behaved that way, and I wish I hadn't. Those are not contradictory, they're maturity. You know, if this conversation resonates with you, I'd also encourage you to listen to episode 138 on regret. There are some beautiful through lines between the two that may deepen your understanding of both. And as you listen today, I invite you to notice where you're still carrying around the belief that you deserve to keep suffering for something you've already learned from. Sometimes the most loving and important apology we can ever receive is the one we finally give ourselves. And sometimes forgiving ourselves isn't the end of healing. It's the beginning of finally believing that we are worthy of healing. So, with that all said, I hope you enjoy this re-release.

Self-Forgiveness Meets Acceptance

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Hello, and welcome to Roots of the Rise with me, Sarah Hope. Forgiveness is not usually easy, but it can often be most difficult to forgive ourselves. So let's talk self-forgiveness today. Yesterday we spoke about acceptance, and forgiveness goes hand in hand. Often when we have deep resistance to something that's happened, when we believe it shouldn't have happened, we also can't forgive that it did. We can't get over it. Today, in particular, I want to talk about self-forgiveness, about how challenging it can be to accept our own actions.

Carrying Guilt From Family Pain

SPEAKER_00 7:41

I can admit that one of the most difficult aspects of my own healing journey was forgiving myself for how awful I was to my mother growing up. She might have been awful to me, and yes, she was the adult, and yes, she was the parent, and yes, that means she should have known better and done better. But I knew exactly what to say and how to say it to hurt her, and I did all the time. It came from a place of pain and of deep suffering. It was retaliatory, but that doesn't mean that I didn't carry around a tremendous amount of guilt, knowing that I had been repeatedly cruel to her. In fact, all it did was reinforce what my mother told me all the time, that I was indeed the source of all her pain, that I was a bad person. One of the few real benefits I got out of talk therapy in my early 20s was recognizing that part of the reason why I was so depressed was because of the guilt I was carrying around. Talk therapy didn't help me let it go, but it did help me acknowledge it. It wasn't until I started spiritual mentoring during my Ayurvedic training that I finally was able to really work through the guilt and release it. And I wanted to share one of the tools that helped me with you in case you find yourself carrying around self-blame and judgment.

The Apology Framework That Helps

SPEAKER_00 9:08

Eve Ensler wrote a book called The Apology. She was physically and sexually abused by her father and found herself waiting for years for an apology that was never going to happen because her father had died. So she wrote the book from his perspective, as though he was finally giving her the apology she longed for. She provides kind of an outline for what's necessary for a good apology. And I found it to be so useful. And you can follow it in three ways. So the first is kind of the original design of it, which is to write it from the perspective of the person who did you wrong. So in my case, I would write it as though my mother was following the prompts and writing it to me. The second way you can do it is to write it from your perspective to the person you have wronged. So in my case, I would be writing it to my mother. And then the third way you can do it is write it from your perspective to yourself, helping you find a way to apologize to yourself for something you haven't yet forgiven yourself for, from me to me kind of idea. Now, this is not something that you ever have to share with someone, especially if you're doing it from you to you. It is something that can be completely for yourself. You can also write it, you can type it. You know, the most important thing is that you be brutally honest and make sure you do it when you won't be disturbed, so that you can truly kind of sit with it and have the space to be honest with yourself. And also please make sure that you have some support. You know, depending on the severity of the situation that you're contemplating, this process could be very painful and very difficult. And we are not meant to do hard things by ourselves. We can, but it's not always as useful or as uh efficient as when we give ourselves a safe place to land after taking a leap. So depending on what you're dealing with, make sure you have someone to go to, whether it's, you know, simply a spouse or a friend or a trained professional, like a therapist or mentor. And one more thing, especially if you are writing this about yourself, about, you know, from the spec perspective of you have done something wrong either to another person or to yourself, then I really want to caution you that this should not be used as a tool to berate yourself. This isn't a tool to kind of send yourself deeper into a I'm an awful person place. That is not the point of this exercise. Uh so if you are someone who tends to really kind of go down that rabbit hole, first of all, maybe this isn't the best process for you. And secondly, um, it might be something that's best done, as I said, with a therapist, with someone who is going to be able to kind of stop you from just sinking into that I'm a bad person perspective and really help you get the most out of it. So I just wanted to give that caveat. Okay, so here we go. I'm going to give you examples as we move through from the perspective of me forgiving myself, but you can use this however feels most appropriate for you. So

Steps 1 And 2: Name It

SPEAKER_00 12:39

the first step is to describe in detail what you did. Now, this might be really hard to lay out the ways in which you've hurt someone else, to lay out the ways in which you've hurt yourself, but you gotta do it. So for me, I purposefully ignored her. I she would ask me questions, I would answer in monotone with as little information as possible. I would show my disdain and disgust if I had to touch her in any way. I made it clear that I did not want to be around her. I would say things to her that I knew would hurt her. Step two, explain why you did it. For me, because I was hurt. Because I wanted her to hurt as much as I did. Because sometimes if I used the right barb, it meant she would disappear for a while into her room and I would get a brief reprieve. Important note here: explaining why you did something is not you spending time justifying it. And that's a really important distinction because this is not you taking time saying, Well, I was right to act this way, with that undertone of like righteousness. No, this is more about you stepping into, okay, really, what why did I do it? What was I feeling? What was I thinking? What were my motivations? And that can be tricky. This is another place where sometimes we need someone to help us understand our underlying motivations because we can't always see it for ourselves.

Step 3: See The Suffering

SPEAKER_00 14:14

The third step is to open your heart to the suffering of your victim. I don't know that I was truly able to do that until I became a parent. If we're talking about, you know, me being able to recognize the way that I hurt my mom, you know, I don't think I really got that until I had a child. Because now when I think about how it would feel if my son treated me the way I did my mom, my heart breaks. I now really get how painful it must have been for her. You know, I got out of the house as soon as possible when I went to college. And I don't think I talked to her a single time from the day my dad dropped me off until I went home for Thanksgiving. You know, I know my mom loved me. It was toxic, it was dysfunctional, but I do know that she loved me. And therefore I know how deeply hurt she must have been to have me walk away and so rarely look back. And then also, you know, opening my heart to the suffering of myself, having a deep understanding for the reasons why I acted the way I did, being able to step into some compassion for the pain that, you know, little, I was gonna say 16, but I mean gosh, little 16, little 12, little eight, little five-year-old me felt. You know, when you look at it from that perspective, it's no wonder that I acted the way that I did. And I can offer myself some forgiveness from that place.

Step 4: Forgive With Support

SPEAKER_00 15:51

And that's the next step is to forgive yourself. I wish there was a magic bullet that made this possible, but truly you can't force forgiveness for anyone, for yourself or for anyone else. It happens when it happens. You can help it along, and doing energy work surrounding guilt and shame held in the chakras was the thing that finally did it for me. But for others, some forms of talk therapy, EMDR, there are modalities out there that can help you with this. But you might have to do some work to figure out which ones are most useful and work best for you. Often we have a lot of emotions we need to work through. And sadly, the cliche is true. You have to feel it to heal it. So again, having support, trained professional support to help you work through those difficult emotions that can feel totally overwhelming might be necessary in order for you to truly forgive yourself or anyone else. Okay, so step four,

Steps 5 To 7: Repair What You Can

SPEAKER_00 16:49

forgive yourself. Step five, take responsibility. You just have to own it. I did this thing. I fully accept and acknowledge that I was cruel to my mom. You don't have to like something in order to accept it. I don't like how I acted as a teenager to my mom, but I recognize it, I understand it, I own it, and I forgive myself for it. So take responsibility for your actions. The sixth step is to ask for forgiveness. Now, this isn't super applicable to self-forgiveness because you've really already covered that in step four, but I'll just touch on it in case you're choosing to do this journaling process in order to apologize to someone else or to get the apology you never received. This one can be tricky for two reasons. One, you can ask for forgiveness and you might not get it. And two, you might not be able to ask for it, as in my case, since my mother passed away almost 20 years ago. If you can ask for it, then do it. But know that you may get a whole lot of anger back. Too little, too late. What you've done is unforgivable. I will never forgive you, et cetera, et cetera. But on some level, I think most of us who have been wronged, who are waiting for an apology, part of what we want is to simply know that the person recognizes that they did something wrong. I mean, that was the entire basis behind Eve Vensler's book, to get the apology she never got. For ages, all I wanted was for my mother to sincerely apologize for how deeply she hurt me. It didn't mean I was ready to forgive her back then, but gosh, just to have her say, I recognize that the way I expressed my love for you was toxic and hurtful and created a tremendous amount of pain and suffering for you, that would have been healing in its own way. So give that healing to someone else. Whether or not they take you back, whether or not they give you the forgiveness you're seeking. And the second point, you might not be able to ask for forgiveness. You know, my mom's gone, at least on the physical level. I can't call her up and apologize. In some ways, this made forgiving myself and her, for that matter, a lot easier. But in some ways it added to the pain. And so this is just something that, you know, you have to work through. It's another element of making peace with it. The seventh and final step is to make amends. Now, sometimes this is possible, sometimes it's not. You can't really make amends with someone who has passed. Uh, sometimes it's a situation where there's no turning back. You know, you gambled away your child's college funds, the money is gone. How are you going to make amends for that? But if you took something that wasn't yours, maybe you can return it. Honestly, the best thing to do is simply ask the person, how can I make this up to you? Is there any way that I can make this right? But in the case of self-forgiveness, how do you make amends to yourself? Honestly, I don't know. I think that's a question only you can answer. For me, it was the solemn prolit promise that I would never pass on the abuse to my children. And at first it was just like, okay, I'm just not even going to have kids. Let's not even make this a possibility. But then I healed in ways I never thought possible, and having a child became my dearest wish. And I'm so lucky that I was able to have my son. I am not a perfect parent by any means, but I have a damn good one. And I know that I am only the best parts of my mother, not the worst.

Prompts For Self-Forgiveness Practice

SPEAKER_00 20:34

So, if you would like to play with this and you want a place to start, here are some questions that you can ask yourself. How are you judging yourself? How do you judge yourself on a daily basis? How easy is it for you to forgive yourself? What have you not forgiven yourself for? I'm gonna give you some examples on that one. Maybe you haven't forgiven yourself for having stayed for so long in a place that was toxic, staying in a relationship for so long that was toxic, doubting your worth and agreeing with whoever judged or rejected you. Apologizing for being who you are, for your dreams, your needs. This is one of my favorites. For trying to dim your light to please people who have no right to control your light switch. And another really good one is not being able to forgive, forgiving yourself for not being able to forgive. Whether it's not being able to forgive yourself or someone else, sometimes we're just not there yet. And that's okay. We need to offer compassion and forgiveness and grace to ourselves and just say, I forgive myself for not being able to forgive this situation yet. So that's our first conversation about forgiveness. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions by emailing roots of the rise at gmail.com. I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. And remember, know who you are, love who you've been, and be willing to do the work to become who you want to be.

Disclaimer And Closing Words

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Just a quick reminder this podcast is for educational and entertainment purposes only. I am not a licensed therapist, and nothing shared here is meant to replace the guidance of a physician, therapist, or any other qualified provider. That said, I hope it inspires you to grow, heal, and seek the support you need to thrive.