Forgiveness is absolutely essential to recovery. In this post, I will explain how I forgave myself.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It allows us to learn from the past, but it can also trick us into believing we should have done something to help our past selves sooner than we did. Even though I believe in fate, I believe someone is watching over me and guiding me through life, I still make comments to myself and others about how I let these dreadful things happen to me.
It takes serious hard work and possibly a life-changing event to fully realise the bad habits you’ve created in your life. You listened to anxiety and created your life around it, rather than replacing it with positive thoughts and taking control of your own life. It’s a pretty heavy discovery to make. You weren’t living to your full potential.
You don’t consciously think about it. You don’t have time to think with the negative anxiety thoughts going through your head every minute of every day. It’s too much to expect someone to transform their lives under these conditions.
It’s important to clarify, I don’t actually believe in my rational brain that anyone can control toxic anxiety. It controls you. By toxic anxiety, I mean the type that rules your life and changes your behaviour. It takes serious hard work and possibly a life-changing event to fully realise the bad habits you’ve created in your life. You listened to anxiety and created your life around it, rather than replacing it with positive thoughts and taking control of your own life. It’s a pretty heavy discovery to make. You weren’t living to your full potential.
BUT the point is, you had no control and probably a lack of awareness about what was happening to you.
Mental health issues like this often come with a whole host of other negative side feelings. Shame because you sit on the toilet crying at work, or crumble in meetings. Guilt because you push people away. Embarrassment because you took it out on the wrong person. The list goes on.
Living in denial
Before exploring how I forgave myself, we need to rewind time.
I personally became so enthralled in hiding what was really going on, it was normal to me. I didn’t even really know I was hiding it. You don’t consciously think about it. You don’t have time to think with the negative anxiety thoughts going through your head every minute of every day. It’s too much to expect someone to transform their lives under these conditions.
The catalyst for me changing my way of life really was breaking point. I had a milder breaking point during pregnancy. Not that any of them are mild at all. I just took some annual leave from work and nobody knew. Hell, I didn’t even know it was called antenatal depression until recently. How can we change if we don’t understand what’s happening to us?
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What prompted me to change?
It didn’t just take the breakdown, but it was also the added pressure of redundancy and being off on long-term sick from work for mental health.
Naturally, when this happens, you reevaluate and ask what got you to this point. How did I get here? What can I do to prevent this in future? It’s like I was forced to acknowledge my situation. But it involved me literally deciding the last 15 years hadn’t worked and I should try something new.
It isn’t even this simple. Amongst the darkness of getting over a breakdown, where you literally struggle to get out of bed. You can’t breath due to severe anxiety, or get yourself motivated. You inevitably start asking big questions your mind can’t really deal with.
Where am I in the recovery process now?
For me, this process resulted in anger and I discuss my setbacks in this post and this post.
At this point, even during a phased return to work, I am still a work in progress and I am not fully healed.
Bearing all of this in mind, you can easily see how feelings about why you’ve let yourself suffer for so long creep into your mind. Maybe it’s a natural human instinct to do this.
Why is forgiving yourself essential to recovery?
It leads me to why forgiveness is absolutely essential to recovery. And how I forgave myself.
I am not the person I was before, I feel a change. How can you be the same person you were before this life-changing event? Of course, you transform into something different. This is what trauma does to a human being.
I’ve had two huge life changes in a short period of time, just after the pandemic: redundancy and a mental breakdown. But I’ve survived and you can too.
Forgiving your past self is one of the big steps in facilitating change.
How to practice self-forgiveness and look after yourself
This post has some really useful tips for self-forgiveness.
I personally want to keep doing all of the following…
Connecting with other people
Whether it’s online, for the blog. Walking to nursery and saying good morning to someone, or going out with friends. Connecting with other human beings has been one of the most therapeutic things I’ve done since my breakdown. I intend to keep making connections. Other people can add perspective to our lives and make us realise our past lives weren’t actually all that bad.
Talking about my experiences
Starting the blog was one of the main things that got me through a difficult time. I can’t really put it into words, but I felt compelled to set up the blog. Like someone was sending me a sign I just couldn’t ignore. Like it was my purpose in life to help others. And every single day from now on, this is what I intend to do.
It helps me to forgive my past self, because I am using the experiences I was once ashamed of to write. And these posts are helping others. How can I regret my past actions if this is the case?
Realising what is important in life
It sometimes takes a terrible experience. Maybe even years of getting it wrong, to realise the right way. I am thankful this horrible year has made me realise family is the most important thing and everything else I do in life should be centered around them.
I can now create a life with a good work-life balance and remember to enjoy every moment I get with family and friends.
Maybe it took my past experiences to get me to this place. Maybe I should be thankful to my past self, rather than believe forgiveness is required.
Final thoughts
I hope you liked this post on how I forgave myself.
Let me know what you think in the comments below. I would love to hear from you.
Excellent post. Forgiveness really is everything. When we forgive the world and forgive ourselves, we unwind all the fears that fueled our anxiety, worries and problems in life. A happy life is an inside out life where you forgive to release all the illusions and unhappiness that you learned. Thanks for sharing with us.
I totally agree with this!
I hold grudges if I’m honest. I never forgive people and I hold myself to even higher standards so I never forgive myself either! I really need to get better at forgiveness general!
I used to be very much like that. I am still stubborn and if someone wrongs me I am always emotional about it. But I just don’t have the energy to care anymore. If someone isn’t my kind of person I will just walk away. This all fell into place a few years ago, I just forgot to be kind to myself. And treat myself the same as others.
Forgiving ourselves can be such a difficult thing to do so you sharing your process was really encouraging and eye-opening. I am working through a long period of toxic anxiety which disrupted my life for a while. It was triggered by situational events (that caused depression) so as those began to resolve, so has the anxiety (somewhat — it’s going to take a while yet). I hadn’t thought about the aspect of forgiveness for myself so this is something I am going to explore as I think it will be beneficial. Thank you for sharing this — I wish you continued growth and progress.
I wish you continued growth and progress as well.
I am sorry to hear about your situation. You will get there, but yes it does always take a while. I feel like I will always be working on myself, but that’s ok.
Glad this post helped you x
Forgiving yourself can be one of the hardest things, and I applaud you for being so honest with this post
Katie x | http://www.postcardsfrom.co.uk
I agree it’s difficult. And thank you.
I like how you share things honestly and reflectively.
Thank you.
The subject of forgiveness is so vital. I shared my blog regarding forgiveness too this past week called “Forgive Me.” Forgiving others and yourself releases you and gives you freedom. Thank you for sharing your personal story this brings encouragement to others.
Pastor Natalie
Letstakeamoment.com
Thank you for your comment.
I will have a look at your post and I agree the subject is vital. Forgiveness sets you free.
Forgiving yourself can be harder than forgiving others but I agree it’s critical for moving forward. Until we forgive we are stuck in the past.
Totally agree with this.
Being stuck in the past is something that made my anxiety worse previously. It’s time to get out of this mindset.
When I first started having a decline in mental health I couldn’t figure out why. This led me to hating myself for so long, I too learned now to forgive myself after years of suffering.
I am happy you finally realised how to move forward.