There is no love without forgiveness, and there is no forgiveness without love.
~Bryant H. McGill
Many times when we think of forgiveness, the first thought that comes to mind is forgiving others. However, sometimes the most important person we have to forgive is ourselves.
People who have been hurt will typically find an element of the experience to blame on themselves. This is particularly true for those who are hurt as children. Often, we hear of children of divorce blaming themselves for their parents’ separation or a child that has been beaten convincing themselves that they need to change who they are so as not to invite more abuse onto themselves.
As a well-functioning adult, this way of thinking may seem absurd. If you were hurt as a child, you either understand or still hold onto the blame. For your health, you have to have forgiveness of self.
Forgiving self. This can be the most difficult hurdle to overcome in healing. As easy as it is to hold onto grudges against others, it is exponentially easier to hold onto a grudge against self. For someone that has been holding onto it since childhood, the grudge and anger felt toward self may actually feel comforting. However, in order to have a healthy body and mind of forgiveness, we need to find the path to forgiving self and bask in the the art of self loving.
But, let’s start with learning some new behaviors in order to create self-forgiveness first (we’ll move onto the art of self loving later).
In order to forgive yourself you need to practice:
- Believe in the power and wisdom of God (or higher power than yourself)
- Begin developing trust in yourself
- Believe and trust in your personal goodness
- Be open and brutally honest with yourself about the hurts and pains that you’ve experienced
- Trusting in the goodness and mercy of God to take the burden for you
- Letting go and letting God lead you past the hurt
- Begin to be open to the belief that with God, you can change
- Let go of self-hostility, resentment and self-destructive behaviors
- Let go of your fears for the future
- Allow yourself to trust in your own personal growth and ability to change with God
- Allow yourself to take calculated, healthy risks for your personal growth
- During your journey, when you take a step backward, simply redirect yourself
- Think of how strong you are to have lived through your experiences
- Let go of the pain and hurt of your past
- Replace any beliefs that block your ability to forgive yourself
Overall, the biggest obstacle to self-forgiveness is in letting go. Letting go of what you’ve believed about yourself, what you’ve thought about your situation and how you see your future and replacing it with positive ideas and thoughts about yourself and your future. For me, I truly couldn’t comprehend forgiving myself until I understood the full extent of God’s love for me and His willingness to forgive all that I had done in my life. The question that I asked myself was, “What gives me the right to hold onto to the anger against myself when God had already forgiven so much?” To remain in the anger with myself, I was denying God’s love for me.
Until you can let go, you can’t move forward…you remain a victim, not of your past, but of your mind.
Please share any thoughts that you have about self-forgiveness or inspiring quotes that may help others to let go!
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