Everyone Wants To Be The Hero, Until The Mirror Shows Up

Ever notice how easy it is to replay what they did to you—and how hard it is to face what you did to them? We go straight at that tension with a candid blend of faith, psychology, and lived experience, inviting you to trade self-justification for honest change. The heart of the conversation is simple and demanding: empathy grows when we remember our own capacity to fail, and healing accelerates when we own our impact, not just our intentions.

We unpack self-serving bias and the subtle ways we rewrite our stories to look better in the mirror. From Romans 12:3 to James 2:13 and Psalm 139, we anchor humility and repentance in Scripture without sliding into self-hate. You’ll hear how accountability becomes the bridge between conviction and transformation, and why correction isn’t rejection—behaviorally, it rewires shame; spiritually, it aligns with faithful wounds that heal. We also spotlight pride’s many disguises—defensiveness, needing to be right, hiding behind that’s just how I am—and show how these patterns block intimacy with God and the people who love us.

Coach Tara shares vulnerable lessons from surviving trauma and reclaiming identity, emphasizing that while much pain wasn’t our fault, healing is still our responsibility. Some apologies never arrive. Freedom comes when we stop waiting for permission to heal, lay down pride, consider our ways, and offer the apology that unlocks peace. We close with practical questions to examine your part, extend grace to others and yourself, and walk forward with courage and authenticity.

If this resonated, share it with a friend, subscribe for more, and leave a review to help others find the show. Your reflection might be the nudge someone needs to take their next honest step.

Transcript

Faith, Empathy, And Self-Honesty

Speaker 0:00

Hey hey, it's your favorite shift your story coach, Coach Tara, and you're listening to the Her Authentic Voice podcast. This is where faith meets real life, where shame gets silenced, and where your story becomes your strategy. On this podcast, we talk about faith and healing and identity. We talk about how to actually live what you believe, what you say you believe. Amen. So let's get into it. This episode today is about confronting ourselves. Because if we're honest, people think way more of themselves than they should. We're living in a world that's lost its empathy. We've grown numb to other people's pain while staying so obsessed with our own. We literally remember all these wounds, every wound we've ever received, but we rarely recall the wounds we've inflicted on others. We replay what someone did to us. But how often do we review what we've done to others? We've all let people down. We've all failed to keep our word. We've all been careless with someone's heart or careless with their time. When we forget that, when we forget how we show up in someone's life, we lose compassion. We have to remember that we also do those same things we complain about. Romans 12 3 talks about this. It says that to every man that is among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think. God is telling us to stay human, to stay humble, to stay honest. He's not telling us to hate ourselves. So when I talk about people thinking of themselves more than they should, it's not about you hating yourself. It's not about not having self-love, because of course you want that. So here what I'm saying in its entirety and in its context, there is a gap with empathy in the world right now. And you can't walk in this mercy. We need it, right? These new mercies and this forgiveness. If you've forgotten your own need for said mercy and forgiveness. Empathy has become so rare because we're so self-righteous. Everybody wants to be seen as the victim, but nobody wants to admit when they've been the villain. We can easily justify our actions. We justify our reactions. This is why I did that. We can over-spiritualize our anger, you know, all these things we hide behind discernment when we're really judging. So there's a lot of different things going on, but being honest is at the forefront and self-reflecting. From a behavior science perspective, it's called self-serving bias. It means your mind naturally protects your ego by rewriting the story in your favor. Do you do that? I bet you've done it. You rewrite the story. That's why you can list every reason why someone was wrong. They was wrong because they did this, they did it that way, they said that. You can list everything someone else did, but you struggle when it comes to admitting what you did. In James 2.13, it talks about for judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy. But to the one who has shown mercy, mercy triumphs over judgment. Mercy triumphs when you remember that you're just as capable of messing up as someone else. So you have to stop seeing people as enemies and start seeing them as mirrors. Because that's what I've seen in my life that the Lord will literally put a mirror, the same thing you measure out to someone, it comes right back. Like, oh wow, I do that too. If you consider yourself, when was the last time you considered yourself? Not your intentions, not talking about what you intended to do and not your excuses, but your actual impact on what you did. Have you ever overpromised and underdelivered? Ever? Have you ever used someone's vulnerability against them or even as a talking point? Have you ever gossip about something, labeling it as, this is just concern, I'm just concerned, it's not gossip. Have you ever envied somebody because they've had a breakthrough or they've elevated? This is just something for data, for information, just a checkpoint. Check yourself. Because when you are mature, you're not just examining other people. You are examining yourself. That's what a mature believer does. And your brain resists that kind of honesty because it often activates shame. And shame feels like pain. Really, it does. I know it. And that same region of the brain that light up from physical pain, it lights up when you feel exposed. But when you repent, it's really coming from a pure place. It's like giving permission to heal and to grow. It's not punishing yourself, it's not shaming yourself. In Psalm 139, it says, Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts. That's a freeing prayer. It is so vulnerable. That is such a vulnerable prayer. Search me, oh God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts when he knows your thoughts even more than you do. And he can show you something that may shock you. But the thing is, he will also show you who you can become. Amen. The part that most people miss is accountability. You don't want to just avoid something that isn't healing. You have to be accountable. You can't pray your way out of everything. You got to face some stuff. You gotta face it. You can't just, oh yeah, hallelujah. That's wonderful. I love praise. But you can't just worship your way out of what you won't even own. You gotta own your story. You must own your story. That accountability is like a bridge. It's a bridge between conviction and change. It's the moment when you stop just rehearsing the story of what was done to you and you start rewriting the story of what you will do differently. Amen. What are you gonna do differently? Because condemnation will tell you you're worthless. It will. But God doesn't condemn you. But he does want you to be accountable. And accountability says you're worth more than the way you've been living. You're worth more than the way you're seeing yourself. You're worth more than what you've been allowing. You're worth more. And behaviorally, accountability rewires the brain's association between shame and responsibility. So when handled correctly, it teaches the nervous system that correction isn't rejection. It's not. And spiritually, accountability aligns with Proverbs 27:6, where it says, faithful are the wounds of a friend. If no one can tell you the truth about you, you better tell you the truth about you. Amen. Don't keep lying to yourself. Because the more you lie to yourself, the harder your heart becomes. I've lived this. I'm talking about what I know. You know I'm a survivor of childhood trauma, sexual and physical. I've walked through shame. I've walked through low self-worth. I've walked through pain so deep that it distorted my own reflection when I looked at myself. I didn't know who I was for a long time. And I thought that my healing depended on someone else's apology, someone else's validation of me. But I learned something that even though a lot of pain came my way, a lot of hurt came my way, and things that was not my fault, but I learned that it was my responsibility to heal. No matter what I've gone through, no matter what was done to me, it was still my responsibility to heal and not to just constantly rehearse what someone said or what someone did. I had to choose healing. I had to do the work. Because guess what? Some people will never say they're sorry. Some people can't. They just won't even rise to the occasion. They don't know how. And some do know how, but they won't. So what do you do when the apology never comes? You grow, you release, you move on. You give yourself permission to become that healed version of the person that they broke, or at least they thought they broke. You give yourself permission of the healed version of the person you were always meant to be because guess what? Nothing is wasted with God. Absolutely nothing. He uses it all. And in Philippians, it tells us to forget those things which are behind and reach forth towards those things that are before us. Press toward the mark. You can't press forward if you're still looking backwards. How are you gonna move forward if your focus is on what's behind? You're not, you can't. What you'll be in is stuck. You'll be in a place of stuck. And one thing that keeps us in a space of thinking that we're so much more than we are, much more of ourselves than we should, is pride. And pride is sneaky, it has a lot of disguises. It's not just, we think of pride as, yeah, arrogant. It is arrogance, but it's not just arrogance, it's defensiveness. It's needing to be right all the time. Like you just always gotta be right. It's hiding behind, this is just how I am. That's just how I am. Like, no, God is trying to transform you, He's trying to change you. That's not just how you are. Pride will convince you that any type of reflection is an attack on you when people are giving you feedback, even constructive feedback that is an insult to you, that growth is optional for you. Pride will have you in a fixed mindset. But pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall. So be careful with that. Pride blocks that intimacy that you can have with the Lord. Pride's job is to protect the ego. And you can't protect your ego and experience deep connection at the same time. It just doesn't work like that. You gotta be vulnerable, but pride will block that intimacy, not only with the Lord, but with other people. Check yourself. You gotta be humble. It's a challenge. It's a challenge to change. When was the last time you truly considered your ways? What if the peace that you've been praying for is waiting on the apology that you need to give, not the one you're waiting for? What if the breakthrough that you've been asking for is sitting behind humility? You gotta lay that pride down. If you want to live free, you must look within. It's not outside of you. It's not what someone else has done. How are you contributing? Look within. Pray about it. Lord, where am I contributing to the pain that I keep praying about? What part am I playing in this? Start asking those questions. Start praying like that. Because you're not going to be able to heal what you won't even acknowledge. And you keep trying to justify. Well, I did this because they did that. Two things can be true, but you can't become who you're supposed to be or who you're called to be while you're pretending you're already there. Because pride will tell you that you're there. And it's not your issue, it's someone else's issue. But growth is gonna come from a constant place of self-reflection. Point blank period. You're not gonna get around that. So stop looking like you're all that in a bag of chips. Everybody kneeling ain't praying. We all need grace, we all need mercy, we all need forgiveness because we all mess up. So think about who have you hurt? Who have you ignored? Who have you dismissed? Who do you need to forgive so you can live free? And maybe you need to forgive yourself. Maybe forgiveness needs to start with you. And that can be the hardest part. Sometimes it's easy to forgive others and harder to forgive yourself. Because you know all the things. You know your thoughts, you know what you said, what you did, more than anyone else outside of the Lord. Give yourself grace. You're human. But so is everyone else. So using I'm human is not an excuse. Because we're all human, so we all need mercy, right? And that same grace that you're praying for, there is literally someone else praying for the same grace. So you can extend it. You can be a person that walks around as this container of grace and mercy and forgiveness and extend it to others. Because healing doesn't just change your story, it changes how you treat the people in your story. Amen. Think about it like that. Not just what's going on in your life, but there are things going on all around you, in your neighbors' homes, and the person standing in the grocery store in front of you. Everyone has a story. Don't think so much of yours as if it's greater than anyone else's. Amen. Amen. Well, I want to remind you to support the show. I thank you for listening. I do have a few supporters, and I'm so grateful. Continue to support with as little as $3 a month. And also share. Share and follow, subscribe, all the things. I am really grateful to be able to come on here and speak with you. I am grateful for the feedback that I'm receiving, that people are really starting to self-reflect and implement some changes in their lives based on this podcast. So I'm excited. I want you to live your best life and be your best self. I want you to live, love, and be authentic because you're called to be that way. That's how the Lord created you. You're an individual, you're beautiful and wonderfully made. But you must walk in your confidence, walk in your grace, walk in your entire being, remembering your humanity. Amen. Amen. All the links are in the show notes, and I'll see you next week. All right. This has been another episode of Her Authentic Voice Podcast. And I'm your favorite Shift your Story Coach, Coach Tara. I'll see you later.