Forgiving Oneself

By Crystal King

When forgiving ourselves, we have to go through similar steps to the ones mentioned in "The Ladder of Forgiveness," but there are some nuances to forgiving ourselves that need to be considered.

Sometimes forgiving ourselves is even more arduous than forgiving others. When forgiving others, if they have NOT sought reconciliation with us, we can place distance and limits around the relationship, so we are not subjected to the damaging behavior again and again. However, when forgiving oneself, it does not work this way. We cannot severe a relationship with ourselves. We can attempt it, but it would likely only fragment our soul and create masks. Our core self knows what we have done, and without our attempt to make it right, we will simply split, shatter, and create a dichotomous personality that must maintain masks to exist. We must make amends to ourselves and others in order to fully forgive ourselves.

Some of us deeply desire to make amends, but if we have self-hate underneath that desire, our amends will only be punitive rather than transformative. Continuing to punish ourselves will not actually help us or the people we have wronged. Self-hatred, critical talk, and beating parts of ourselves into submission often feels effective in the moment, and it CAN create short term changes; however, whipping ourselves into compliance does not create LASTING change. If we want to change our mode of operating on a long term basis, it is absolutely imperative that we find compassion and curiosity for ourselves. Because Loyalty to a master out of fear has a breaking point. Loyalty to a master out of love and compassion does not. We must start with loving ourselves if we are to master forgiveness.

Unfortunately, we do not believe we deserve love. This is a belief held by our shame. In his book, Whole Again, Jackson MacKenzie writes about the persuasive nature of shame:

“It convinces you that if you forgive yourself, then you’re letting yourself off the hook and you’ll just keep doing bad things. You think if you lash yourself repeatedly, then at least you’ll stay in control, but self-forgiveness isn’t a free pass to behave badly. It’s about understanding the impact your actions have on others, taking responsibility to prevent it from happening again, and choosing not to carry self-hatred about the past anymore, with the understanding that self-hatred only causes you to do more shameful and impulsive things.”……. “The thing about withholding forgiveness from yourself, is that it makes you behave in more shame inducing ways”….. “Shaming ourselves only causes more shaming behavior. It is an infinite loop. We’re holding ourselves hostage, which feels terrible, which causes us to act out and make more bad decisions, which causes us to hold ourselves hostage even more intensely. Forgiveness ends this cycle.”

Therefore, the absolute best thing we can do for others we have wronged is to actually forgive ourselves and release our shame.

Feeling shame and embarrassment for how we handled a situation can lead us to hiding, criticizing ourselves, or taking extremes.  We make vows that are well intended, but don’t always result in the outcome we hope for. These incredible vows and impossible promises are made because they help us feel farther from our offense. We are so disgusted with our behavior that we tend to pendulum swing and run as far away from our behavior as possible. The more extreme our disgust with our actions, the more extreme our punishments, promises, and penalties we create for ourselves. In part, we become this extreme because it does get us the result we want; unfortunately, it comes at a cost. Although we succeed in banishing the part of us that behaved in the repulsive or upsetting way, that part of ourselves is merely hiding out. It has not healed; there has been no transformation. We have simply siphoned it away. THAT particular behavior might go away and never come back, but when we silence it so severely, the NEED underneath of it will find another outlet. Some other behavior will take its place. We will play Whac-A-Mole with our behaviors until we address the underlying need.

The remedy to this, as in much of life, lies in doing the opposite of what we crave. We crave exiling that part of ourselves, yet, as in many of life’s paradoxes, doing the reverse will actually satisfy us. Because the craving to punish ourselves and do penance is actually a message, but we misunderstand it. What we are really craving is to atone for our action, to repair, to reconcile with ourselves and others. And true atonement draws us closer to the part of ourselves we are disgusted with, not farther. Looking CLOSER allows for transformation; whereas, banishment ensures we stay stuck. We cannot transform a part of us that we have exiled. To truly extinguish the craving to hold ourselves hostage for our offense, we must do the following: look closer at the offense, find our underlying motives through an exploration of the original pain that caused it, and grieve. Rather than running as far away as we can and shunning the offensive part of ourselves, we must instead grab a microscope and begin a painful yet life-giving inquiry.

ATONEMENT FOR OURSELVES

LOOK CLOSER AT THE OFFENSE

Take a small scale example: Let’s say we eat a carton of ice-cream in one sitting, and we are disgusted with ourselves. We vow that we will go to the gym every day and never eat another desert again. For a while this works. We are punishing the ice-cream eating part of us and doing appropriate penance to change our outcome and create healthier patterns.

However, in a moment of discomfort or pain, that ice-cream eating part comes out again because it is still there with its deep seated, unfulfilled need. All we did was change the behavior, but the healthy eating and gym exercise did nothing to address the need underneath the behavior. In fact, the need itself was banished! An unaddressed need will grow. Ultimately, if behavior is to change, the needs that drive our alarming behaviors must be found and tended to.   

On the surface, it may feel like the need is to eat the whole carton of ice-cream, to take another shot of whiskey, to look at pictures of women online, to add another item to our shopping cart, to receive an accolade from our co-worker, to win no matter the cost, to be seen a certain way, to ruminate, etc., etc., etc. If we think this is the need, we are not looking close enough. We must take the microscope out to find that underneath these surface needs are very real, core needs: attachment, repair with family member, security, adventure, safety, significance, authenticity, joy, peace, etc., etc., etc.

If we are thirsty because our body is dehydrated, a coke might feel great in the moment, but it does not hydrate us. Even though coke has water and our body feels satiated, the sugar and caffeine counteract the hydration process. It seems like we addressed the need when really we just found a way to kick the can down the road, causing the need itself to grow larger. We are trying to satisfy a craving for liquid, and this craving for liquid is serving as a scapegoat for the real need, which is to drink water, not just liquid.

Extreme behaviors bloom out of legitimate unmet needs, which we fool ourselves into satiating with phony substitutes.

FIND UNDERLYING MOTIVES THROUGH EXPLORATION OF THE ORIGINAL PAIN

Somewhere along the way, we were taught or decided that we had to hide the legitimate need, so our system found another way to meet it. Atonement for ourselves means we must find the fragmented parts of ourselves we have cast aside, ignored, minimized, and silenced. If we want to forgive ourselves, we must find the exiles in us that carry our pain because these silent parts of us have driven our protective, albeit destructive behaviors we are ashamed of. As Carl Jung stated, “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

Sometimes we try to forgive ourselves for something that was never our fault in the first place. This is futile because we are placing ownership at our own feet when we are not the ones who did the harm. To be clear, when our human needs or desires have been taken advantage of and manipulated by someone else, it is not our fault. We may be used to taking the blame for someone else as a coping strategy, but this will not serve us in the end. What they did is not our fault. But it IS our responsibility to investigate if we have developed adaptive, yet harmful coping mechanisms along the way because of the abuses we suffered or the neglect of legitimate needs.

We will remain conflicted in an internal war if we try to forgive ourselves without addressing our deep-seated injuries. Really seeing our original wounds will give us a compassion for why we do what we do. It does not make harmful actions okay, but it helps us understand that we often do what we do because we are actually trying to fulfill a need, protect someone, be seen, shelter our injuries, keep others from a worse version of ourselves, avoid harm, avoid grief, preserve a connection, etc.

 Once we truly see that the method we chose to meet our need is destructive, and we can actually fulfill the need rather than giving it false fixes, it may not automatically leave us. Our brain may have been wired to fill a need for connection in false ways for so long that we have to undergo a rigorous retraining of the mind. This often requires therapeutic support.

When we are presented with new information and a much broader picture, we must adjust our point of view. If we gain new knowledge, yet remain loyal to a previous stance, it is often because this fresh perspective has only gone to our head and not infiltrated our body and heart space.

For some of us, altering our behavior starts with changing our thinking, and for others shifting our thinking starts with changing our behaviors. Whichever direction we come at this from, both behavior and thinking must eventually align for sustainable change. But neither modifying our behavior nor altering our thinking will necessarily cross over to the heart space where we feel the difference in our emotions and body. To actually feel forgiven and not just know it, we need to grieve and be seen in our pain and comforted.

GRIEVE

To feel a change in our heart space, we must find a way to grieve AND receive comfort for the original wound. The original wound caused a chain reaction of behavior modification that allowed us to cope in our daily lives. Many times, the inability to forgive ourselves connects directly to childhood wounds that never got to be grieved. Those wounds were criticized, shunned, treated with contempt, looked over, cast aside, minimized, avoided, shamed, buried, and rationalized…..because that is how we cope with the lack of comfort. When pain is seen, held, understood, and comforted, there is no need for coping mechanisms to form.

Treating our feelings with contempt is the same as blowing wind on a fire. It will just jump to the next tree and keep consuming everything in its path until the cooling waters of comfort come to calm it. Allowing comfort for the wounds we have faced allows them to heal but contempt keeps them infected.

Along with grieving the wound that originally created the adaptive survival behaviors, we may need to grieve what we have lost out on because of those behaviors. In forgiving ourselves, we must accept the reality that our behaviors have caused us a great loss. FACE THE LOSS. Don’t deny it, don’t whitewash it, don’t paint it with a silver lining, don’t say it will all work out, don’t reframe it to look like it wasn’t so bad, don’t hope that the consequences will go away, don’t create a story where the loss can look like a win, and don’t change the narrative so the loss hurts less. These are all strategies of avoidance. Avoidance strategies hold us hostage.

YES, there may be a time and a place to see a beauty that can indeed come after a loss, but if we use that thinking to bypass feeling the initial loss, then we short-circuit regret and deep healing. FEELING THE REGRET is necessary to change the heart space. We find so many cognitive ways to rationalize and avoid feeling our deepest regrets because they are so painful. But this is a great disservice to ourselves and others. Let the pain of loss and regret do its transformative work. As fire can refine metals, grieving our pain can refine our souls. We need to stay in the discomfort of grief long enough to be refined by it, to be transformed by it. As the heat of fire melts gold to separate out the impurities, the ability to sit in the grieving flames of our losses and regrets will separate out all the masks and shallow platitudes we must maintain to keep from feeling the reality of our story.

And the truth is that fully seeing the reality of our story will often unlock the compassion needed to heal from it. As we look at our true reality, we will see that we did the best we could with what we knew. In cases where our bodies took over without our consent, there is an important type of realization needed to forgive ourselves. As Jackson MacKenzie illustrates in his book, Whole Again, many of the behaviors we are upset by are perfunctory. He writes the following excerpts:

“Carl Young Wrote: ‘The Foundation of all mental illness is the unwillingness to experience legitimate suffering.’ I agree with this quote, with one small caveat: the word unwilling, implies that there is some sort of conscious choice to avoid the suffering. When it comes to these issues, this is not really the case. You may have all the willpower in the world, determined to experience your suffering, but your mind and body have made the decision to keep you out. You must forgive yourself for this, so you can finally stop being at war with your body”…..”You didn’t ask for the protective self to take over. This was a physiological response from your own body, tensing or blocking or numbing to protect you. You didn’t go through a trauma and say, ‘okay body, numb me out now.’ Decisions were made without your approval or awareness” (Jackson MacKenzie in Whole Again).

Of course in hindsight, we may say, “I wish I had done this or that differently.” But we cannot do differently when our body was simply on autopilot trying to keep us safe. We do not enter healing by grieving what we have done with hate in our hearts toward ourselves. We enter healing by grieving our losses with an understanding that we are human and do not contain the capacity to control everything.

For more on how to grieve and do so safely, please see below.

Grief - Part 1

Grief - Part 2

SCAPEGOATS

When we do not address our real, original pains, we can fragment ourselves and false pain gets created as a representation of our deeper longings. We hurt big over something seemingly small or unrelated, but what we are actually hurting over IS big. We just ignored it so long that it must find somewhere else to hurt over. When we fail to look at the true source of our pain, we often create this secondary pain, and that secondary pain becomes the scapegoat, the focus. This can happen in individuals, marriages, and families. The real work of forgiveness will find where this scapegoat is and release it from its burden of carrying our pain for us. In his book, Yes, And…Daily Meditations, Richard Rohr expresses the idea this way: “What you are doing with forgiveness is changing your egoic investment in your own painful story—which too often has become your ticket to sympathy and sometimes your very identity. Forgiveness is one of the most radically free things a human being can do. When you forgive, you have to let go of your own feelings, your own ego, your own offended identity, and find your identity at a completely different level—the divine level” (31).

I would clarify that this is not only referring to a letting go of the feelings of the “egoic” identity, BUT it is also taking hold of the feelings of the wounded inner self that were originally submerged. When we go back in time and we witness (with our hearts, not just our minds) the core feelings of our pain, we relieve all the masks, scapegoats, and devices created to conceal the original pain. No longer do they need to be in those roles. True forgiveness hands us back our original identity.

FACING THE PAIN OF FORGIVING OURSELVES

“The pain of avoidance is much more suffocating and painful than the pain of working through it…. Our work is not to avoid pain. That’s like trying to find a place to live where there is just no gravity” (Julia DiGangi)

Many times we say, “I have done the work!! Why did everything go to hell?! Why is my relationship on the rocks?! I am punishing myself and feel bad every day for what I did; why isn’t this improving?”

While it DOES feel like we have been doing the work, we have actually been doing the work of avoiding our core pain. This truly does feel like work, and IT IS! It is heavy work, but it is work that does not produce the long term results we seek. It’s like saying, I have exercised every day for three months, but lost no weight because I am eating cake at midnight every night. It is work that doesn’t pay off because we are not addressing it from the necessary angle.

In a Typology Podcast with Ian Cron, (Living in Alignment with Julia DiGangi), Julia goes on to say, “In a life that promises pain, what is the more powerful pain? What is the pain that strengthens and empowers me?”

The painful work that ultimately strengthens and empowers us is the pain we need to shift our attention and energy to. Stop spending energy on the painful work of avoidance, blame-shifting, shaming, minimizing core needs, and punishing the self. Even though this work feels arduous and painful, and we think we should have some results, it is not the work that is going to be effective in changing our relationship to ourselves.

Taking a microscope to our core wounds is the type of work that allows us to not just forgive ourselves, but to restore relationship with ourselves and others again.  We cannot restore relationship with others when we are fractured ourselves. We can only meet and heal others as deeply as we have met and healed our own selves. Forgiving ourselves must be a priority in our lives if we want deeply authentic and connected relationships. 

I strongly suggest you embark on this process with a group, therapist, or a trusted and resourceful friend. It is very difficult to see truths when we are limited by our own perspective. Our perspective is the one that had to create the lie about ourselves in the first place: the lie to preserve a relationship, protect our ego, save us from the pain of loss, etc. Bringing safe, wise counsel into this process gives us a better chance to see our blind spots. The Johari Window talks about how these blind spots limit us. This window applies to everyone, and the more we can shrink the Blind Spot window and the Unknown/Unconscious window, the larger our connection to ourselves and others will naturally become. Below are a couple, short videos to explain how the window works.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s14pdVDvbcc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQq06rPHnro

The Open/Arena window of the Johari quadrant can grow and flourish through the following: actively seeking feedback from safe others, transforming our avoidance strategies through exploring with safe others why they were there and how they have helped us in the past, and looking closer at ourselves through self-reflection. The larger our Open/Arena window becomes, the more likely we will be able to forgive ourselves because we will no longer be limited and bound by our own perspective on the thing we feel stuck in.

In Frank Stockton’s classic short story called, “The Lady or The Tiger?”, there is a semi-barbaric king. He is described in this way: “He was greatly given to self-communing, and, when he and himself agreed upon anything, the thing was done.” Yikes!! I would not trust a king that never allows his perspective to be larger than the limitations of his own mind.

Self-communing alone will not allow us to fully engage in the process of forgiveness. Perspectives outside of ourselves can enlarge our viewpoint and enrich our own narrow lens. Communal work can help us re-engage the heart space. This heart space is the space in which forgiveness of the self takes place at the root and is felt in the body.