Self Forgiveness

[soulsearcher]

I am finding it REALLY hard to forgive myself when I hate parts of myself. I feel like I'm caught in a circle. I have to love myself to forgive myself and I have to forgive myself to love myself. I feel lost and confused and I just can't wrap my head around it. If anyone can share words of wisdom or how they break this cycle I would appreciate it. Cause right now I am angry at all parts of myself because I am lost.

 

[arfie]

I break it down into smaller chunks, starting with forgiving myself for the simple fact that I will never be perfect.

 

[ResaLock]

Well. I think you should let it go and deny these things that the world conditions us by. Its very common and actually brings people into a self obsession when they try to convince us we need to forgive ourselves and learn to love ourselves. Listen to the word,'forgive" really carefully. The main idea of the word is to, "give." In the act of love, is not of itself. Love gives. Love is selfless. This is a part from a proverb I have written, " ...if we all stood around waiting to be loved, we would all stand alone." Why? Because love pours out to others. To love others is finding love in yourself. Because you cannot love others if it did not exist within you. Governing indoctrination wants us to seek to love ourselves alone before we can do anything for others. Why? Because it leaves us helpless and lost and weak. The only times I feel love and forgiving is when I am giving and loving to others. Its what keeps me alive. In that you will know the love of others and you will know and find love as others give. Some won't, but you love with a love they have not known. LOVE GIVES!

 

[stilldancing]

There's a book I would recommend to you. "Dark Side of the Light Chasers" by Debbie Ford. She talks about accepting all aspects of yourself, good, bad, and ugly. I think in acceptance, it might be easier for you to find forgiveness.

 

[Philippa]

I love that book. Embracing shadow is worthwhile work. It's hard and not comfortable at all, but it's where the gold is.

 

[It's all my fault]

I feel your pain. It is tough. I'm finding the more I learn about childhood trauma the more validation I get for why I constantly feel guilty. It is a well known fact that because we could not control the situation, we must be bad. Something must be wrong with me if this happened to me. Its all my fault. It's intrinsic.

Try to ask yourself what someone would consider you to have done wrong. Perhaps from the trauma your core judgement is off?

It is a struggle to rebuild yourself, I am no way near done but knowledge is power. Good luck

 

[Meadowsweet]

Forgiveness is what we do when we've genuinely made a mistake and done something wrong, and then, learning from it is better than forgiving it. But a lot of guilt and shame from trauma is not there because we have done anything that was wrong, it more usual that we have internalised the wrongness of the situation.

It helps me to envisage a child in front of me. Would I treat a child in distress harshly - no, I couldn't. And when I put myself in front of me as a separate person, then I am learning what it is to treat myself with kindness.

I think those acts of kindness are showing the child that she isn't bad or to blame, and in that case, she doesn't need forgiving, because it wasn't her bad in the first place. She needs to be treated like a good child, so that she can accept that side of herself.

 

[soulsearcher]

This has been bothering me so much for the past couple of days I haven't slept. I have called a crisis line twice hoping they could give me tools to help deal with this. That was a fail, I felt I was talking a foreign language. I told my T today that I want to put my inner child back in the locked room she was in for 25 years. She wants more than I can help her. I need to be here for my kids, they have already had one parent abandon them. My T told me to call my psyciatrist. I said what's the point, there is no magic pill that can fix this. I had to promise my T I would attend my appointment on Tuesday. I agreed but in the back of my mind I think this will be the last appointment for me. I need to put my kids first. I apologize if this has upset anyone, it's just not the right time for me to heal and I just have to accept that.

 

[arfie]

Please do not apologize, soulsearcher. This is the very reason this forum exists. We can't always help one another, but we can at least care and feel less alone.

Speaking of your inner child -and your kids- made me wonder if forgiveness is a topic best set aside for now. It is a highly esoteric topic for children. When my sons were small and my PTSD issues were bleeding all over my parenting skills, self forgiveness was quite beyond me. I needed to start with simple acceptance. The demands of parenting had lanced the boil and it was either heal or go whole hog on locking my sons into a similar closet to the one my own childhood experience had locked my own inner child into.

25 years is long enough to leave a childhood in a closet. Love her. Comfort her. She deserves it. She needs it.

 

[ghotiff]

I feel where you are at. Trying to do this type of work while also trying to be a good parent is really really hard....and I haven't worked out how to do it yet...but this forum is helping me.

It helps me to envisage a child in front of me. Would I treat a child in distress harshly - no, I couldn't. And when I put myself in front of me as a separate person, then I am learning what it is to treat myself with kindness.

Forgiving yourself is a huge task and it seems that this is too big for you now (I certainly haven't done it yet). Instead maybe try Medowsweets approach. Don't try to forgive 'yourself' but try to connect to your inner child IC (yourself as a child). Maybe write a letter to your inner child from the adult you are now.

I wrote a letter to my IC and I was very careful to write not what I know I should believe, but only what I actually really did believe. I think it helped. A huge part of this for me was to picture in my mind a child I know now of the same age of my IC. If I just look at my own pictures of myself at my IC age (which is what my T said) I am less forgiving and expect her to be older, more mature, and more generally together than if I keep a reference point to a child that I know from my kids school. To avoid any potential for transference type issues, I choose a child that I don't really know or interact with...but one I know well enough to understand her true age and cognitive abilities. I also change this reference child regularly.

There are lots of IC letters on the internet that you can read for reference. I found reading other peoples was really interesting as they highlighted all the things that I didn't believe and thus couldn't/can't say even though at an intellectual level I thought I should believe and say. For example, telling my IC that I liked her and wanted to re-connect with her, that she wasn't to blame, that she was innocent....this took some time to even consider. I think my first letter was very short, just saying hello and that I wanted to help her, that I don't yet know how to help her, but I am working on it.

 

[xena21]

All I can say is that I can relate. I can't say I agree with everyone that has posted on here, because I definitely don't put out love to other people in terms of the word forgiveness. I hate the people that did this to me. I'm sorry but I can't forgive them, and that's just me. I am still in that stage I guess and forgiveness is for the individual not for the group.

I'm not telling you you shouldn't forgive anyone. I'm just telling you I can relate to the problem regarding forgiveness. I hate the people that abused me, and I wanted them to pay. I wanted to kill them but then I was a wimp and changed my mind. I ended up just dropping of a descriptive letter of how much I despised her and how much everyone else knew about her. It doesn't touch the pain I feel though believe me.

 

[It's all my fault]

@soulsearcher. I'm sorry your struggling. Being a parent is so difficult, add PTSD to the mix and it is even more so. I can understand wanting to just put things back and focus on your kids. I'm wondering if you are biting off too much with your healing and therapy. Perhaps instead of just saying forget it you could try to give yourself a break and maybe scale back some. I wouldn't recommend stopping therapy but instead take sometime to work on things not associated with the PTSD. Let your therapist know you are struggling with the work and maybe focus some time on being overloaded. Then, when your ready, slowly bring out the inner child issues you want to address. Good luck!