Part 7 of 8: Forgiving Myself? I just can’t and I shouldn’t : Tell Yourself the TRUTH

I mentioned in earlier posts about our tendency to lie to ourselves. As we grow up we often interpret messages that people say or events that we’ve experienced in a way that causes us to believe that we are not worthy or we are not good enough or we are defective. We also make decisions that we loathe and feel the need to hide from others and we beat ourselves up with statements of how messed up we are. Those are all lies that keep us from moving forward in our journey’s and keep us stuck in shame and unprocessed guilt. Part of working through our past regrets and coming out on a healthy side is combating those lies and telling ourselves the truth. Here are some basic truths that apply to everyone and it is important to remind yourself of them throughout every single day.

·         You are human.  Humans do good things and they do bad things. Every single one of us makes mistakes and every single one of us experiences some of those mistakes as shameful and embarrassing and regretful. We hurt ourselves and we hurt others. Those mistakes do not define you. The truth is that mistakes serve as opportunities to learn and to grow. It is only when you see them in a way that causes you to stay stuck in your shame that they become hurtful. Tell yourself the truth. The truth is you are human and you make mistakes and those mistakes do not tell the story of who you are.

·         You are loved. You were created by God and he loves you. There is nothing you can do to earn it and there is nothing you can do to stop it. Your past is not bigger than his love for you. I don’t care what you have done, you are still loved. Your self-esteem and self-respect come from the fact that you were created by a loving God and there is a purpose for you and you are needed. You are valuable and it doesn’t matter what other people think about you or say about you. They do not form the basis of your worthiness to be loved. If whether or not you deserve love is based on anything other than a God gift, it is like shifting sand and fluctuates from one day to another. The truth is you are loved and you no longer have to keep living your life to try to earn it from other people or from God.

·         You are worthy. The fact that you were created by God and that he wants to partner with you to bring you into a life of joy implies without question that you are a worthy person. Your worth is not determined by the mistakes that you’ve made or even the good things that you’ve done. Your worth is solely determined by the fact that you have a purpose in this life. The truth is if you will believe in your worthiness and partner with God to move forward, your regretful past can become something upon which you can build because you have learned from it and it no longer has the power to hold you back. In fact, it may be what has prepared you to do your next great thing. 

·         You are meant for joy. You were not meant to be depressed, to be anxious, or to be afraid. You were meant to experience joy and it is, in fact, what is produced when you are on your mountaintop looking down on the valley from which you just emerged.  You cannot have peaks without valleys. Joy does not mean you’ll never be sad or hurt or will never again make bad decisions. It does not mean that there won’t be more valleys in your life to be conquered. But it does mean that you have a partnership with a being greater than yourself and a purpose in a story that’s bigger than you.  That makes your mistakes and setbacks part of an important process in that story.  Becoming further immersed in that bigger story in partnership with God leads to joy. Tell yourself the truth of deserving joy.

·         You can do this. Many of us have fears about moving from where we are to some place new and different because we have no idea what to expect. Oftentimes we feel like we don’t even have what it takes to get past the shame and the guilt of our past decisions so we live in defeat. I will tell you that you have within yourself the ability to do this. By moving into a partnership with your creator and possibly even seeking the help of someone else you can find the strength to overcome the pain of your past. Yes, you can forgive yourself and that is the truth that you need to be saying over and over and over again. It will take work and it may be a painful process but you will be so glad that you accepted the challenge.

·         Freedom is much better than bondage. Doing the work and going through the process, even though very difficult, will take you to a place of freedom that is so much better than bondage. In this new freedom you can accomplish the dreams that you always wanted for your life. By choosing to stay in a place of shame and guilt over your past you are robbing yourself of your future. You’re actually even robbing yourself of your present since you can’t truly be you as you hide your shame from other people. I encourage you to set freedom as your goal and strive for and tell yourself the truth that the freedom that will come to you is so much better than the bondage in which you live.

Make a chart of these truths.  Place them where you can see them every day.  Don’t waste another minute letting your past defeat you.  While you are at it, make another chart of who you really are.  Think about your personality, your strengths, your character.  Are you loving, sensitive, kind, courageous, strong, spiritual, etc?  These traits are who you are, not the things you have done or what has been done to you.  Hang this list where you can see it daily as well.  Then, whatever the circumstances you will know that you are loved, worthy, joyful, determined, and free and you will be reminded of the person you really are.

Tomorrow:  The final chapter.  Full reconciliation of self.

Part 6 of 8: Forgiving Myself? I just can’t and I shouldn’t : The role of grieving

The pain of past mistakes and regretful decisions can be excruciating. The temptation is to want to hide and to avoid dealing with that pain. After all, who wants to purposefully think about things that cause heartache? It is amazing how creative the human mind can be in trying to avoid the hurt that often accompanies healing. There are many avenues of escape; including shopping, spending, drinking, gambling, eating, TV, religion, pornography, and the list goes on and on and on. Hopefully, the realization that these are only temporary escapes which will only lead to bigger problems will be understood quickly. These temporary escapes only allow the internalized shame and un-confronted guilt to continue working in your heart and soul at subconscious levels, destroying your very being. The shame will continue to surface repeatedly, and the temptation to continue the numbing process using these unsatisfying escapes will get more and more intense.  It is one way addictions develop.

I believe it is imperative to squarely turn and face your past and acknowledge and deal with the mistakes and choices that you regret. Part of the process of doing this involves grieving what you have lost. Perhaps you lost close relationships or maybe it was social status. Perhaps your financial situation totally changed for the worse. A marriage may have been destroyed, children hurt, a job lost, your relationship with God sacrificed, or maybe your reputation took a huge hit. Those are all difficult things to think about and they all cause significant pain when you do. However, it is important to grieve those losses and to sit in the pain of that grief while you process what those things mean to you. Considering these things may cause you to feel anger, depression, sadness, denial, or even send you into an “if only” kind of thinking. You know, “if only” someone would have done something differently, or “if only” the set of circumstances wouldn’t have been this way, or “if only” my parents would’ve raised me differently, then these things wouldn’t have happened. There may be some truth to the “if onlys,” but you are the only one who can deal with the aftermath of your decisions in response to those circumstances.  Facing those decisions and allowing yourself to feel all of the accompanying emotions and processes is so important to get to a place of acceptance. Accepting what has happened as a result of your regretful past is imperative for you to now contemplate how you can learn from the situations and begin to build something new; to write new and exciting healthy chapters in the stories of your life.

This is certainly a very difficult step. Many people will not be able to process this on their own and may need a very close and trusted friend to talk with about the grief that they are facing regarding their past. Some may need counseling to help process what has happened.  I would encourage you to take that step if you feel stuck.  I truly hope you will decide you will face the fear of taking this step and put in place the necessary supports to do this safely. There are many productive ways in which to address your painful past and journey down the road to acceptance and self-forgiveness.  Journaling is a great way to process self-evaluation while creating a record of your progress for later reference.  Reading books on the subjects regarding those past mistakes also can be of benefit. Remember to take care of yourself during this time. Find what feeds your soul and make sure that that is included as part of your healing process. For some people it’s listening to music, for some it’s getting out in nature, while others find being with people something that feeds their soul. Whatever these healing activities are for you I encourage you to commit to using them to care for yourself as you continue your journey of healing.

Tomorrow:  Telling myself the truth

Part 5 of 8: Forgiving Myself? I just can’t and I shouldn’t : The role of silver linings

This is a very difficult post and it is important that I not be misunderstood. No matter how severe the trial was that you endured or how bad you feel about decisions you made, there is some good that has come out this part of your story.  This is true of divorce, abuse, addiction, financial loss, and any number of other trials you may have experienced.  The caveat is, you can’t truly find and appreciate the silver lining until you are on the other side of the trial.  That is why it is so important to do the work that you must do to get out of bad situations and heal and commit to growth.  Maybe it’s time to tell my own story a little bit.

My wife and I were married for 26 years before we got divorced. It was a very difficult relationship the entire time we were married. I felt unsupported and she felt unsafe by the way that I treated her. We both dug our heels in and would not budge to try to make our marriage better. We ended up divorced. Through an amazing set of circumstances we found ourselves living in a different city together and because of family obligations we were in contact with each other again. During that time we developed a friendship, rediscovered our love for each other, and remarried again after four years. During those four years I would have to say it felt like hell. The loneliness for both of us was excruciating and we learned how important it was to value friendship, love, and even discover a different definition of what love and commitment are. The last year and a half of marriage has been completely different than the previous 26 years. We support each other, love each other, value each other, and really cherish the time we have together. It is accurate for both of us to say that without going through the pain and suffering of divorce we would have never discovered the things about ourselves that allow was to now live together in harmony and love. We didn’t want to go through what we did, but had we not gone through it we never would have learned what we needed to learn about ourselves that allows us to be completely different people in our new relationship. That is the silver lining for us that never would’ve occurred had we not gone through the pain of the bad decisions we each made.

Please do not hear me say that we should go out and make bad decisions so we can learn from them. What I’m saying is that when we do make bad decisions, once we are on the other side of them we can learn and make our lives better because of the growth that has occurred in that valley. It is therefore important to look for those silver linings. They typically refine us as people and make us better if we allow them to. It does not always happen that way though. Some people use difficult times in their lives as an excuse to get angry, bitter, revengeful, and hurtful. We don’t have to go down those roads. We can choose something different and more healthy. That’s what I challenge you to do; to find health and wholeness and healing out of the bad decisions that you have made. Look for the silver lining. It is there and it is important

We are nearing the end of this series. There will be three more posts on this topic of forgiving yourself. I hope that you are getting the idea that forgiving yourself isn’t just the snapping of your fingers and deciding it’s over and moving on. There are processes to go through and work to do. Some of us have to spend more time on some aspects of this and not so much on others. I’m not trying to say that everybody has to go through all of these steps and do the work associated with each one. All of us are different.  My goal is for you to look at each of these topics and see what areas pertain to you and where the work needs to be done.

Tomorrow: the importance of grieving.

Part 4: Forgiving Myself? I just can’t and I shouldn’t : The role of empathy

When considering things in your past that you are having a difficult time forgiving, have you ever considered why you did what you did? For me, I came to the conclusion that I was completely lost. I lost my moral compass and at the time and I actually believed I was making the better decision. I can’t explain how this happened. My wife in her wisdom says that my brain was hijacked. I would have to add to that that so was my heart and soul. This in no way is trying to devise an excuse for my actions but just a way to say that something happened that wrongly convinced me that my decisions were the best ones for me at the time.

Some of you may have feelings that you should have done something to prevent a bad thing from happening but you didn’t.  So, you end up carrying unnecessary guilt and shame your whole life.  Many times, you may not even have an idea what you could have done differently, but you believe it is your fault anyway.  I once knew a woman who lived her entire life withdrawn, shy, and socially awkward.  After she died, her husband and I were talking and he told me that she had a completely normal childhood until age twelve.  At that time, her parents owned a small general store and one day they asked her to run an errand for them.  When she came back she found her parents dead from stab wounds following a robbery.  Something snapped in that twelve year old heart and she was never the same.  Her husband told me she blamed herself her entire life for their deaths, thinking that had she been there she could have prevented the whole thing.  A twelve year old girl!

She isn’t alone.  I’ve heard abuse victims, both child and adult, blame themselves for the abuse they suffered.  They believe that if they had only acted differently, said the right things, fought the right way, or fought back at all they could have prevented the angry attacks.  They believe it is their fault they were abused.  The toll this takes on their lives is devastating.  Let’s get something straight.  I don’t care what you said or how you said it, what you did or how you did it, you do not deserve to be abused.  Abuse is the sole problem of the abuser.  Period!

Another reason we make decisions we later regret is that we are trying to fill a void in our lives. You may have no idea at the time what that void was or even that that’s what you were doing but whatever you did brought relief from the emptiness even if only for a moment. It was only when you discovered that your decisions were not working in your life and were, in fact, becoming destructive that you realized you needed to change.   Unfortunately, often it is only through the process of realizing what doesn’t work that we inch closer to discovering what does.

Reflection on and processing of the events in our lives that we can’t seem to forgive is imperative.  Did you make poor choices to escape pain?  Are you putting unrealistic or impossible expectations on yourself thinking you could have changed the course of events that were beyond your control?  Are you allowing space in your life to understand that you are human and will make mistakes?  Do you extend the same amount of empathy to yourself that you do to others?  Can you use bad decisions to learn and grow rather than allow them to turn you bitter and angry?  Give yourself a break.  Bad decisions and poor choices are part of the journey of life.  What is important is how you deal with them.  Reflect on what life lessons you could learn if only you would release yourself from the shame in your past.

Tomorrow: Finding the silver lining

Part 3: Forgiving Myself? I just can’t and I shouldn’t : The role of spirituality

 In yesterday’s post I discussed the issues of shame and guilt and how shame can keep us from forgiving ourselves for our prior regrets. The point was made that our worthiness does not depend on things in the past that shame us, but rather on our intrinsic worth. So how do we get to the point where we no longer define ourselves by what we did or didn’t do, the job we have or don’t have, whether we are married or single, or whether we are wealthy or poor?  Keep reading.

In order for you to truly forgive the things that you hate about yourself I believe you must embrace your spirituality.   You are a spiritual being whether you realize it or not but you may not have developed this aspect of your life. One reason is that many of us have equated spirituality with the belief in a God who is out to get us. This God sits up in the clouds somewhere and looks down on us waiting for us to do something wrong so He can punish us and, ultimately, send us to eternal damnation in an ever burning fire. All that did was make us realize we could never be perfect, after trying and failing so many times, so we threw away the whole notion of a God; and, if there is one, He’s not somebody I’d want to hang out with. This belief is nothing short of a lie that is designed to keep you from connecting with your Creator.

You see, it is through God that you realize your true worth so it is imperative that your view of Him (please know I use “Him” for simplicity.  This Being is much greater than any gender identity) be accurate. God created you. He loves you. No matter what other people have tried to tell you about how His love only reaches those who attend church enough, read their Bible enough, believe the right things, or pray enough,  there is nothing you can do to earn His love and nothing you can do to shut it down. If you believe what you’ve done makes you too flawed for Him to love, it is a lie only designed to defeat you. 

Spirituality is developing a connection to this unconditionally loving God by recognizing His presence throughout your life; all day, every day. Understanding that your worth comes from God provides a rock solid foundation that is not swayed by circumstance or what people think of you or how much you believe you should achieve in different areas of your life. The fact that you were created, that you were the one sperm to out swim the millions of others to reach the egg (sorry, I couldn’t resist), makes you valuable and of great worth! This God with whom you are partnering has seen absolutely everything that everyone in the human race has done and His love still extends to all. He is not dissuaded by the things you have done. His love is much bigger than anything you could do to disrupt it. He will always believe in you and He wants to partner with you to make this world a better place and you a joyful person.  Your shame and/or faulty beliefs are what hold you back from this partnership and what must be shattered for you to emerge from your cocoon.

Please understand I am not talking about religion. I don’t care what denomination you belong to or if you even belong to one. It doesn’t matter if you go to a traditional church or not.  I am simply talking about belief in God and that he created you and that he loves you just as you are and that he wants to be your partner. I’m speaking of being able to have a relationship with this Creator rather than avoiding him, hiding from him, and being afraid of him. He is for you, not against.

Realizing that you’re worthwhile and valuable and that you have a purpose, even if you haven’t discovered it yet, is essential in helping you realize the importance of overcoming shame. Even if you’re willing to live in the pain of your shame and are afraid of what it might look like or feel like to do the work to let it go, the realization that this God who created you has something much greater and better in store for you just might be the catalyst that allows you to take those first steps to freedom. Overcoming your shame through faith finally allows you to see that you are part of a bigger story; a story much greater than past mistakes. Taking the pen and writing new chapters in this story brings joy to life, while constantly rereading those old, painful chapters only brings emotional death.  The book of your life will always contain those hurtful chapters and they are important, but those chapters do not make up the entire story unless you stop writing or keep writing different versions of the same things over and over again.

I challenge you to connect with your spirituality and partner with your Creator to write new chapters in your story.  May this story be one that represents triumph over adversity and may you embrace yourself in the same way you are seen by your Creator.

On Monday:  Finding Empathy for Yourself

Part 2: Forgiving Myself? I just can’t and I shouldn’t : The role of shame

When I think of shame I remember a time when I was 11 years old. A friend of mine told me a rumor about my fifth grade teacher and I shared it with some of my classmates. Somehow the teacher found out and thought that the best way to handle it was to try to scare me half to death, which she did. She pulled me aside and told me that she could sue me for slander and that I was in big trouble. The principal was called in and I was taken into the coat room, which was part of the classroom, and given five swats completely in earshot of the other kids. Then, as a fifth grade boy I was made to stand in front of my class and apologize for spreading these horrible rumors. I broke down and cried from the humiliation and the crying only added to the feeling that I just wanted to crawl away and die. Needless to say I could not wait for the end of my fifth grade year to get away from that teacher and start over with different classmates.

None of us want to be treated the way I was treated by that teacher. We can’t wait to escape from those people who seem to be bent on making us feel horrible about ourselves. And yet, we treat ourselves this way all the time. We beat ourselves up and tell ourselves lies about how we are so much less worthy than everyone else because we hate things in our past. Especially as a child, but even as adults, we tend to take what people say about us and to us, internalize it and believe it. We begin to think that they are right; that we are incompetent, not worthy, incapable of achieving things, a failure, and the list goes on and on. Maybe they were words spoken by a parent, a teacher, a coach, or someone who we respected and loved, but no matter who it was it cut to the core of our soul.

This internalized shame leads us to view our regretted past through very skewed lenses and we end up reinforcing those negative messages with lies we tell ourselves. For example, if I under perform for a quarter at work I see myself as incompetent. Because I believe I’m incompetent I have a much greater chance of under performing the next quarter and the next and so on. This cycle of shame absolutely has to be broken. We can no longer allow ourselves be defined by other people’s opinions of us or by the lies that we have begun to believe about ourselves because they been programmed into our hearts. The price of alienation from community, losing self-confidence, developing self-hatred, feeling stressed , living in anxiety and depression, and even experiencing physical ailments is too high to pay as we live the rest of our lives.

I do want to distinguish between guilt and shame at this point. Guilt is an emotion that serves a very positive purpose in our lives. It tells us that we need to take a look at something that we’ve done, evaluate it, figure out how we want to handle it differently in the future, and make amends with anyone that we have hurt along the way. Shame, on the other hand, personalizes what we have done. Instead of feeling like we made mistakes in our choices, we believe we are intrinsically flawed. And if we are flawed then perhaps we are bad people inside and out and unlovable. We can no longer learn from our past mistakes because we are too embarrassed and humiliated to even think about them, much less process them. So we develop all kinds of mechanisms to avoid the pain of our hurt including drinking, shopping, sports, religion, and any other way we can think of to avoid processing our past. It is so important to realize that the things we have done do not define who we are. If I made poor grades in school, I am not dumb. If I botched a project at work, I am not incompetent. The truth is that we are human and we will make mistakes and we will do things wrong and it is only by embracing that humanity part of who we are that we can be free from the shame that accompanies our mistakes.  Only then can we be authentic with the people with whom we share life.  You are valuable because of being you, nothing more and nothing less. Therefore, when you look back on your regrets please conclude that as a human it is part of the journey and commit to learning to embrace those mistakes, not because you’re proud of them, but because you realize that they were necessary for you to learn valuable lessons. After all, we typically don’t learn what we need to when everything goes right and we think we’re doing everything perfectly.

My challenge to you is to identify in your life the areas where you have experienced shame; the areas where you have decided that you are unworthy and are a bad person, and start retraining your mind to believe that those messages and lies do not define you as a person.  Lean into the pain and process the valuable lessons of your successes and failures. You are enough!  You are valuable!  You were created because you are loved wholly and unconditionally by the Creator!  Do not let yourself or anybody else rob you of this truth.

Forgiving Myself? I just can’t and I shouldn’t : The Beginning

It is impossible to go through life without doing some things about which we look back and feel regret. Whether we classify them as mistakes or bad choices or are just unhappy with the way we reacted to a situation we often have quite a bit of difficulty forgiving ourselves for what we did. It is often easier to forgive others for the mistakes that they made than it is to forgive ourselves. While we believe that God can forgive absolutely every sin that someone else commits, we often feel like He doesn’t have enough grace to extend to me because what I’ve done is so bad that it is unforgivable. We wonder how God can love us because we’ve let Him down so many times.

It’s not unusual to go to counseling in hopes that someone will help us be able to forgive someone who has wronged us in our past. We listen to the therapist and go through the steps necessary to forgive that person even though we feel like what they did was completely wrong. We begin to realize that forgiveness has nothing to do with them but everything to do with us and that becomes our motivation to forgive. We understand that we can’t move on to becoming healthy without first forgiving those who hurt us because if we don’t we end up staying stuck in our bitterness.

However, when it comes to forgiving ourselves for our pasts mistakes/sins/decisions we often don’t know how to do it or if we even deserve forgiveness. But, forgiving ourselves is just as important as forgiving others for our mental health.  Let me say it again with emphasis.  FORGIVING OURSELVES IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS FORGIVING OTHERS.  If we fail to take this step we end up often dealing with depression, bitterness, hatred, and many other physical and mental health issues.  At the root of feeling like we don’t deserve forgiveness is shame; the feeling that I am a bad person.  The truth is that I am a very important, valuable person who has much to contribute, but in my humanness I make mistakes.  The struggle with actually believing this truth is seemingly impossible to overcome.

I acknowledge that in my own experience of counseling clients, I often tell them how important it is to forgive themselves but I seldom have explored with them how to do that. I take for granted that people can just figure it out.  However, as I was considering this topic I realized I hadn’t thought this through even as much as I believed. This series attempts to address those steps that we can take to move beyond the things in our past that are holding us back.

Over the next several days I will be posting thoughts about each step, what it means, and how to address it.  I hope you will follow the series, pass it on, share your comments, ask me your questions.  I believe this is something with which we all struggle so I do hope you will share the series on your FB pages in hopes that these words may touch the lives of people who really need healing in this area.  Topics addressed will include shame, spirituality, understanding my motivations, grieving, life lessons, reconciliation, and anything else I might think of along the way or you might prod me to explore.  Thank you for being a part of this.