Forgiving Yourself, While Building Empathy

Why is to so difficult for some people to seemingly forgive themselves so easily while other spend an unreasonable amount of time beating themselves up over a mistake.

First off, the person that cannot forgive themselves cannot see what they did as a mistake, and mark themselves as defective or a failure. This mishaps goes from one mistake to a global understanding of themselves. When a person doesn’t forgive themselves, it deepens shame and guilt, and becomes a breeding ground for pathological self-blame. These same people often over apologize because they see themselves as the defective ones due to this global belief they have adopted. These same people often feel that when they receive an apology from another person that they are undeserving of said apology. 

So, how does one move away from these unhealthy patterns, well it begins moving away from obsessive rumination and self-incrimination about any situation that has promoted the transgression.  It means cultivating empathy for oneself, which will ignite love for oneself. Through self-forgiveness there is psychological and, perhaps even more profoundly, spiritual growth that occurs. 

Here are some ideas on how to cultivate love for yourself:

1) Observation: Identify what you are doing and/or any judgments you are having about yourself for doing that. 

 2) Feeling: Ask yourself, "What am I feeling?"

 3) Need: Connect that feeling to a need/value/what's important to you,  and ask yourself, "What need is not met?" .

 4) Give yourself a moment or two to "sit with" or "feel into" the quality of that need and how important it (e.g. balance) is to you. 

 5) Request: After "sitting with" that need for balance, do you have any request of yourself or someone else? 

This process will help you direct your attention away from the head (where the negative thinking resides), toward your heart (where the feelings reside), and into the belly (where the precious needs reside). In this way, self-empathy is another tool for helping you get out of your head and into your heart and body. 

Forgiveness Can Help Improve Mental Health

Researches have studied forgiveness and what they have to say seems rather common sense, and of course we always enjoy proving something scientifically as well. Sometimes you can only take anecdotal information so far. Forgiveness is tied to anger, and anger can show up in many ways in our lives. We can choose to explode, avoid/suppress, process or hold on to those strong emotions. When "toxic" anger, comes into play, such as when we hold on, explode, or suppress this can effect our lives in various ways. Its important to point out that there is nothing wrong with healthy anger, but when anger is very deep and long lasting, it can do a number on us systemically. When you let go, forgive and process anger, your muscles relax, you're less anxious, you have more energy, your immune system can strengthen.

Forgiveness can also help rebuild self-esteem, this is because when people are beaten down by injustice, what results is the individual not liking themselves. However, when a person takes a stand up to the pain of what happened and offer goodness to the person who hurt them, they change your view of themselves.

What was found in the research that I'm referencing (link: http://www.apa.org/monitor/2017/01/ce-corner.aspx ) is that there are individuals that are more forgiving and those individuals tend to have higher levels of agreeableness and lower levels of neuroticism. People who have a tendency to ruminate are generally less quick to forgive, since they are more likely to hold onto grudges or hurt feelings. Hold onto anger can lead to depression and anxiety, by being sad over what has happened and by being fearful of future hurts are intensified due to continued hurt.

The research points to greater positive mental health outcomes when the people in the study practiced forgiveness. After all of that information, I'd imagine now that starting to practice forgiveness will be on the list of priorities to live a positive life.

Here are some tips on how to practice forgiveness:

1.  Developing and practicing empathy
2.  Stop keeping score between you and the world
3.  Take it to your journal and just let it all out
4.  Practice forgiving yourself first by allowing yourself to make mistakes and accept them as part of who you are
5. Practice gratitude of what you've learned from being hurt
6. Utilize stress management techniques such as taking deep breaths, doing a mindful breathing exercise, taking a walk outside
7. Allow yourself to feel your feelings without judgment
8. Shift your perspective to see forgiveness as a gift to yourself not to someone else
9. Consider the impact of holding on to the grudge