How do you forgive yourself?

It's a deceptively simple question, isn't it? If healing begins with letting go of past regrets and looking forward, how do you forgive yourself? How do you forgive yourself for everything you've missed out on and move forward?

Focusing on regrets is part of self shaming, and you have to actively tell yourself to stop whenever you find yourself doing it. If you would not accept someone else says certain things to you, then why would you say them to yourself?

Therapy is a defining factor in getting over self shame, because it is likely that you have had some life events that have caused you to place the blame on yourself. Have you considered therapy?

Thanks for the answer! I have been, but therapy just doesn't seem to take

What kind of therapy did you receive? You might find another type of treatment will help you more.

Was the therapist able to help you find the origin of you avoidance?

Ten years with a psychiatrist who subscribed to the "psychodynamic" school of therapy. It's difficult, as a patient, to know whether the therapy is wrong for you, or you're simply too refractory

Have you considered going back? I am pretty lucky because my psychologist is a good fit. I did a bit research before I had contacted her. I had wanted someone who focuses on personality disorders, and I wanted a psychologist. If you are looking for talk therapy, then I would recommend finding a psychologist and not a psychiatrist.

Thanks again for the reply. Unfortunately, he retired, and he honestly seemed to think I should give it a go without therapy. It makes me wonder what I'm not seeing

How do I forgive myself? I don't. I just move on and eventually, I don't care anymore.
I'm incapable of forgiveness. One of my many flaws.

Simple question, simple answer. I don't. I don't forgive myself, and that's why I'm unhappy!

The thing I'm looking into at the moment is something called self compassion. It's about teaching to treat yourself kinder. I'm sure it's not that simple but I'm wondering if it's the antidote to the self flagellation we all do.

CBT was good as it taught you to challenge your thoughts, to seek evidence. Usually you found evidence to the contrary. But it's an issue when you can't do that OR if you find evidence to support your negative thought!

Acceptance and commitment therapy is a bit better as it teaches you not to reason with your emotional response. You don't wrestle with the thoughts or try to neutralise them. The fault with that is there are intense situations where this isn't possible.

I've stumbled across self compassion and it involves mindfulness. So you concentrate on the here and now. If you fall short though, you are compassionate and caring for yourself. The way I see it I 'talk' to myself as I would talk to my daughter. If she makes a mistake I wouldn't talk aggressively at her for hours and remind her how bad she is. So I need to stop doing that to myself. .... As I said it sounds easy but probably won't be.

It also asks why we compare ourselves. Everyone goes on about self esteem. It suggests that self esteem is based on the feeling that we're above average. Well how can that be, how can everyone be above average? Also everyone falls short at some time. And when they do and it doesn't match up with this image of self esteem then that is when we feel pain. Ask yourself what had comparing yourself done for you? Made you anxious and unhappy? It's not solved the problem.

The other thing it teaches is that everyone is in the same position. Everyone struggles with falling short in some way, struggling to understand what life is about. I found that very profound.

SB

Well, you can just be honest and say that you weren't strong enough but that you've just had a rough time and need to build your confidence up again and you'll be alright. To a certain extent it's alright to blame other people and circumstances.

Time can give you a better perspective about whatever it was. If you were an awkward teenager and couldn't get a girl hopefully you do something about it eventually. Look at it as a challenge instead of constantly beating yourself up about it. Does it really matter if you didn't have a girlfriend when you were a kid because you had it in your head that nobody would want you when you were a mixed up kid? It's tough if you're afraid of rejection but think of it this way; I message a dozen women on a dating site and nobody replies. Is it the end of the world? Somebody is bound to reply eventually. There wasn't actually anybody for me there that day or I simply didn't get lucky and I've chatted with a lot of women on dating sites and they are usually quite dull and I don't know if that's really my fault. Or you think that your messages were stupid and you don't know how to chat up women. Well, chatting up women is mostly just talking a lot of bollocks anyway.

Making a total fool of yourself: Looking back on it, that time I farted at the end of "The bear went over the mountain" at cub scouts was quite funny and I think that I might have actually got away with it when I said that it wasn't me. I doubt that anybody else even remembers that but I was absolutely mortified at the time.