Forgiveness – It’s not just for others

It’s not only important to be able to forgive other people.  It’s important to be able to forgive yourself.  Healthy forgiveness involves accessing mistakes and releasing resentment for those mistakes.  You learn from the mistake.  Make amends when appropriate.  And work at improving future behavior.   

Forgiving yourself involves humility: the recognition that you’re human and humans make mistakes.

Shame, guilt, and regret are emotions that are meant to make us notice when something we did hurt our self or others.   Once you’ve paid attention to that message and made adjustments accordingly, it does not serve you or anyone else for you to wallow in the shame, guilt or regret.  Forgiving yourself helps you move on.   It helps you break free of burdens that can keep you stuck.

“Show me a person who’s never made a mistake, and I’ll show you the person who’s never made anything.”  – Anonymous

©Ann Silvers, MA, LMHC; www.annsilvers.com Ann@annsilvers.com 206-660-9840

Self-acceptance

We don’t just have relationships with other people; we also have a relationship with our self.  And that relationship is foundational to all other relationships.

If you don’t accept yourself, you probably don’t accept other people either.

“The happiness, the peace, and the love you crave cannot happen without Self-acceptance.” - Robert Holden

Shame, guilt, perfectionism, old negative messages repeating in your mind, can all contribute to being down on yourself.
Being unhappy with yourself taints every aspect of your life.  If you don’t recognize that your unhappiness is rooted inside, you may mistakenly attribute your unhappiness as being caused by something or someone else: your job, your partner, your house,. . . . You might then conclude that you’d feel better if you could just change your job, dump your partner, move. . . .  But there’s a saying about the disappointment that can come when you do something like move in order to feel better and then discover you’re still unhappy: Everywhere you go—there you are.

click read more for: How to improve your self-acceptance.