Anxiety Therapist: How to Forgive Yourself: 5 Simple Steps
Anxiety Therapist: How to Forgive Yourself: 5 Simple Steps
As you move through your personal healing journey, whether it is through self-help programs, reading spiritual books, or enrolling in therapy, there comes a time when you must take an honest look at the choices you’ve made in the past, whether conscious, unconscious, passive or intentional, and how they’ve contributed to your un-wellbeing. Taking this level of self-appraisal is not for the fainthearted.
As an anxiety and trauma therapist in Orlando, I have worked with many clients that eventually get to this point of self-realization. They are ready to let go of old behaviors because engaging in them no longer serves them or the people they love. Examples include letting go of unhealthy ways of coping with anxiety, releasing toxic relationships, and discontinuing extramarital affairs, to name a few.
When it’s all boiled down, what is at play here is an unhealthy coping strategy that is causing more harm than good. It helps on the front end to avoid feeling difficult emotions, like anxiety, loneliness, fear, and rejection; but it compounds the problem in the end because it adds complexity or complication to your life or to those you love.
Honest self-reflection is a bittersweet step along the healing path. There is nothing more bitter than seeing how you contributed to your own unhappiness and there’s nothing sweeter than realizing you are empowered to make changes that can lead you to health and happiness. It’s a time of reckoning to move from a “woe is me” perspective to actually having some choices and feeling empowered.
Sometimes this step on your healing journey, when not navigated properly, can lead to shame or toxic guilt. While a little healthy guilt is helpful, because it guides you to make better decisions in the future, it isn’t helpful to wallow in shame and guilt. Steeping yourself in shame and toxic guilt has a myriad of mental health consequences which include unhealthy relationships, low self-image and self-esteem, and taking too much responsibility for problems at work and in relationships. For more on toxic guilt, check out this post.
If you start to notice that you’re feeling really bad about yourself and the decisions you’ve made with thoughts like, “Wow, I can’t believe I did that. I am such a piece of $&^%,” - it’s time to take a step back and work on self-forgiveness and acceptance. Remember, beating yourself up for your shortcomings only makes matters worse.
Having a forgiving perspective allows you to let go of the past, it paves the way to be more forgiving toward others and breathes new life into old broken self-perspectives that just keep you stuck.
If you’ve extrapolated all the life lessons out of your checkered past and you’re continuing to beat yourself up for the choices you’ve made, it’s time to take steps toward self-forgiveness.
Steps for Forgiveness
Identify the behavior or choice.
Name and see it for what it is. Whether it’s your pattern of picking emotionally unavailable partners or spending excessive time on dating apps, be clear about the behavior you are working on forgiving yourself for.
Let’s take drinking, for example. Twelve years ago, I decided to stop drinking alcohol because it was like pouring gasoline on an open flame in many aspects of my life. It was making every problem in my life worse and it was starting to hurt the people who loved me the most.
Separate the behavior or choice from the desired outcome.
In other words, ask yourself, “What was I trying to accomplish by doing this?” Poor choices are misguided attempts at getting a basic need met. The need is not bad or wrong. In healing hurtful patterns, it is the strategy or behavior that needs an overhaul.
For me, drinking alcohol was an attempt at relieving stress and anxiety. The need or desire to want to feel calm in my skin is a basic human need. The behavior of drinking was a misguided attempt to feel settled. For folks that have a history of not holding to their boundaries, the desire is usually love and connection, the practice of folding on your boundaries is a misdirected attempt at staying close to someone. Do you see the difference?
Common needs and desires are to feel: safe, love, connection, acceptance, closeness, or peace.
Validate your need or desire.
This may seem a little redundant from the last step, however, this is crucial in working on self-forgiveness. Take a moment and say to yourself, “it is absolutely reasonable to want love and connection.” (or whatever need or desire you uncovered from the step above).
After I worked through the wreckage of my drinking career, at the point when I was ready to forgive myself, I literally put my hand on my chest and said, “Baby Girl, wanting to feel peace and calm is a normal human desire. You were trying to feel safe in your skin.” I am being compassionate to the part of me that was trying so hard to bring down the anxiety and get through a stressful day.
Acknowledge that the behavior is causing more harm than good.
Now we are back to the behavior. Compassionately, see the strategy for what it is and notice how it is a maladaptive attempt at relieving an emotional burden, and it isn’t working. It is in some way holding you back in your life now.
If you have a pattern of ignoring red flags in dating, so that you don’t have to be alone, recognize how the pattern of ignoring red flags is holding you back in your life.
Although my attempt at feeling calm and relaxed was valid, my pattern of drinking was hurting myself and others. I had a litany of reasons of how my strategy of drinking was causing more harm than good in my life.
Let it go.
I love ceremonies, so maybe you have a little ‘let it go’ ceremony. Let go of the behavior because it no longer serves you from where you are in your healing journey and let go of the negative self-talk about having engaged in the pattern (because trust me, that doesn’t serve you either). If you notice negative self-talk coming back in, go back to steps two and three, so that you can connect back in with self-compassion around how this behavior was an attempt to help you feel better.
In my own journey, I recognize that time has been a fundamental healing agent. The longer I am removed from drinking alcohol, the easier it is to accept it is a part of my past. Additionally, the longer I engaged in healthier choices that relive my anxiety, the easier it has been to let go of the negative self-talk.
So, as a bonus, I ask you to list other ways of healthfully meeting your needs.
BONUS STEP: Create healthy alternatives.
Create a list of healthy alternatives of meeting your needs. If love and connection is what you desire, make a list of healthy ways you can feel. Some ideas might be to call a friend, join a sports team, or have coffee with family.
In order to continue a drinking free life, I had to adopt many new strategies for managing anxiety, which included a daily mindfulness and meditation practice, calling support people when I felt stressed, going for a walk, grounding exercises, yoga, running, the list goes on. Overtime, these healthy practices made their way into healthy lifestyle.
If after working through these 5 steps to Self-forgiveness, you continue to struggle with negative self-talk about a previous pattern or set of choices, you made need extra support from a therapist.
Anxious and need support?
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Additional resources for you.
5 Ways to Become More Gentle With Yourself
Mindful Living Counseling Orlando is a trauma healing center. Our Orlando Therapy Services include anxiety therapy, trauma counseling, eating disorder recovery, teen counseling, and healing from toxic relationships. At Mindful Living Counseling Orlando, we use a down-to-earth approach infused with cutting-edge therapies that go beyond traditional talk therapy so clients can heal at the root level and experience lasting change. Feel free to access one of our Guided Meditations to help you feel settled and calm now.