Self Development and Forgiving Ourselves Part 1

Tera has two problems with living an authentic life. Her first problem is about forgiving herself and the second is about overwhelm. She puts it this way:

My biggest pain stems from having difficulty forgiving myself for my past transgressions. How do I let go of what I have done and realize that who I am now is all that matters? I continue to have an aching feeling that I will always know what I’ve done and can’t forgive myself fully.

Sometimes I’m overwhelmed with all that I want to accomplish because I spend copious amounts of time learning and feel like I’m not spending enough time applying those things to my life.

I’d like to deal with these separately. I’d firstly like to begin, in this post, dealing with forgiving ourselves and in later posts finish dealing with forgiving ourselves and then deal with the overwhelm of all that we want to accomplish.

 
FORGIVING OURSELVES

Before I talk about how to forgive ourselves I’d like to give a few preliminary considerations.

I’d like to begin by saying something that is probably a bit strange:

1. You don’t have to forgive yourself if you don’t want to.

Perhaps you would prefer to live in the light of your transgression. Perhaps the philanthropist Chuck Feeney is making up for making his money from booze and cigarettes via duty free shops. If so, more power to him. A life spent making amends for a mistake can be an honourable and noble path. I guess this isn’t standard self development advice but it is as an option. We can sit with this option and see if this is a path that calls to us. If so, go with your heart (you can always change your mind later if you find you can’t do it).

 
2. It Depends What the Transgression Is . . .
If someone’s life was severely impacted or someone died as the result of our action, this makes a difference I think. If the injury or death was the result of self defence this makes a difference too.

In these situations it may be we want to expand our options for responding. This can range from martial arts classes to being more at home with our anger and vulnerability.

 
3. . . . and It Depends What Our Intention Was
I think it makes a difference if our transgression was an accident or us deliberately setting out to do something.

If we were motivated by vengeance then it is worth understanding this feeling.

 
I’d like to ask what may be a strange question:

Why would we want to forgive ourselves?

The first reason that comes for me in answer to this question is: wanting the relief. Feeling guilty isn’t one of the more pleasant feelings.

There is a process (which comes from gestalt psychotherapy) for working with feeling guilty: underneath guilty there is a resentment and underneath resentment there is a demand. Once you get to the demand you aren’t bothered with feeling guilty anymore.

To experience this:

• imagine yourself expressing your guilty feeling to someone. It can be someone you imagine or an idealised figure (like a judge) or the person or group you feel you transgressed against.
• Express the feeling fully. As you do this you will either finish with the feeling or feel resentment arise. If you don’t feel resentment you are probably finished with feeling guilty.
• If you feel resentment arise then express this resentment. Allow yourself to be very specific. Be as specific as you can.
• As you express you resentment you will find that you are making a series of demands. These demands are important. They contain, at their heart, what you need to thrive.
• As you find a way to get what you are demanding you will find that you are free of feeling guilty.

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I want to know what your biggest pains or passions about living an authentic life are, or about self development.

I hope to write a great book on self development and living authentically and this is the kind of information that I need to write it.

I wrote this post about it which will give you more detail and is where you can leave your comments.

To find out how to live authentically you can download my manifesto.

It has exercises that will help you experience what authenticity means for you and so experience a more satisfying life.

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Related posts:

1. Self Development and Strong Feelings Part 2 of 2
2. Self Development and Vulnerability (getting hurt) Part 1 of 2
3. Self Development and Strong Feelings Part 1 of 2
4. Lyman Reed on Self Development and Authenticity Part 2 of 3
5. Self Development and Vulnerability (getting hurt) Part 2

Tags: demands, feeling guilty, forgiveness, forgiving ourselves, guilty, resentment, self development, thriving