How Do You Forgive Yourself

Sometimes in life, we do things that cause suffering. Part of the healing process is to learn how to successfully forgive ourselves, no matter how badly we have messed up. Self-forgiveness is an essential aspect of living a good life.

Transcript

Welcome to the Happiness Podcast.

I'm Dr.

Robert Puff.

Forgiveness.

How do we forgive ourselves when we've messed up?

The good news is we can,

No matter what we've done,

We can come to the place of self-forgiveness and letting go of the hurt we've caused others.

Though it can be very hard,

It is also very possible.

Because sometimes we can really mess up.

Recently,

In the town that I live in,

There's a woman who has four children of her own at home and she went out drinking one night.

Well,

When she was coming home,

She crashed her car into a car of three other teenagers who are here in Southern California for vacation and she killed all three of them.

She did survive but the other three teenagers didn't.

She was sentenced to 51 years in prison for her very bad choice that evening.

Now,

Many of us can't relate to that type of crime,

But have we ever done things where this could have happened?

Have any of us ever made choices that could have gone very south?

Or,

Have we hurt people in other ways?

One of the listeners to our podcast sent a message to me just the other day.

He wrote,

Hello Dr.

Puff,

I'm a long time listener.

In my early childhood,

I experienced a lot of violence,

Both verbal and physical,

From my parents and others and I inflicted the same upon my younger sister.

I witnessed my father being violent with my mother and others.

I actually thought it was a normal part of life to be violent,

Mean and judgmental.

As I got older and after I started listening to your podcast,

I became aware that my behavior was extremely wrong.

I have genuinely apologized to her many times and explained that my awareness wasn't there and I deeply regret my actions.

Although we have been apart for more than 20 years and she's a professional with a wonderful family,

She still has very negative thoughts about me and lashes out at me.

She blames me for ruining her life.

In your podcast,

You always say to do whatever you can to reconcile and then forgive yourself and I think that's all I can do now.

Do you have any suggestions on how I can move forward,

Jayden?

So when we've hurt others,

What do we do?

I mean if we were drinking and driving and we killed three other people's children,

Are we really allowed to forgive ourselves?

Or if we hurt people that we love,

For whatever reason,

Is there really any room for self-forgiveness?

And the answer is yes,

Yes,

Yes,

There is.

It's very hard,

But there is.

Because the truth is,

We all mess up and it may be to varying degrees,

But sometimes we just got lucky in the sense of what we did could have caused great damage to another person if we hadn't been lucky.

And of course there are degrees to what we can do in regards to hurting others,

But forgiveness,

Whether we do something really awful or a minor offense,

If we beat ourselves up,

We'll have the same effects.

What's going to ultimately matter,

No matter what we've done,

Whether horrific or just bad,

Is that we need to work towards self-forgiveness and we can.

It is definitely possible and it is also very healthy and it will also be the path to happiness.

Because if we don't forgive ourselves,

A couple of things are going to happen.

One is,

We're going to have to numb ourselves from our pain through the myriad of choices that life presents us,

Like addictions,

Like being busy,

Like so many different things we can do to numb ourselves.

Or we may have moments when life is going well,

But then we'll remember,

Oh,

We're a dirty scoundrel.

We did that deed in the past.

And that self-loathing will take away any peace or happiness that comes.

So let's talk about how do we forgive ourselves and,

More importantly,

Move forward and have beautiful lives,

Which we all can.

Well,

The first thing we need to do is to acknowledge what we've done.

Not deny it,

Not pretend it didn't happen,

Look at it and say,

Okay,

What did I do?

Be honest about it.

If we've hurt someone,

Start with that.

Well,

What did I do?

How did I hurt them?

Gather information so that we can find out.

The gathering information might be getting into therapy.

It might be journaling.

It might be talking to people and say,

Wow,

What did I actually do?

And how did that make you feel?

But honesty is the first thing we want to do.

We want to really know what did we do and what damage did it cause to others?

When I was reading about that case where that woman killed three other people while she was drinking and driving during the court proceedings,

The parents of these teenagers who had died,

They shared their story about what she had done to their lives and how she had hurt them and will continue to hurt them because they're never going to see their kids again in this life.

She needed to hear that.

That was the truth.

We don't want to run.

We don't want to hide from the truth.

We want to squarely look at it.

Now it doesn't mean we're going to do anything about it.

We may do nothing about it,

But we do want to be honest about it.

What happened?

What damage did my behavior cause to others or myself?

Then we want to ask ourselves,

Is there anything I can do to rectify this or to make amends for what's happened?

I mean,

Think of Jane's example.

He talked to his sister.

He apologized.

Mind you,

She didn't accept the apology,

But he did apologize.

In the same way with this woman who killed three other teenagers,

She did profusely apologize to the family for the mistake she made that night.

Sometimes the person we may have hurt is past.

They may not be here anymore.

So what we can do is perhaps visit their grave site or place that's special to them and us and go there and spend some time talking to them and apologizing for what we did.

I had found this real,

Real helpful with my clients over the years and would highly recommend it.

Now sometimes it could be more harmful for us to talk to the other person that we hurt.

We may know if we bring up what we did.

It could be painful for them.

And so it might be better not to say anything,

But what I highly recommend is finding someone first who is kind and can be kind towards us and tell them what we did.

Secrets aren't very good for our soul.

So find someone,

Again,

Who's very kind and just share with them what happened in a sense of getting it off our chest,

Talking about it,

Getting it out there and having someone listen.

They don't have to say anything.

They don't have to do anything,

But it is good to share our secrets,

At least with one person who I do want to emphasize is kind because kindness comes with wisdom.

As we get older,

And hopefully we get wiser,

We realize we all make mistakes and that forgiveness is the path towards healing,

Healing ourselves.

So it is good to find someone to talk to.

Now we can ask ourselves,

Is there anything I can do to make retribution to what I've done?

Sometimes that may mean doing jail time for what we've done.

Sometimes that may mean keeping distance from the other person because they don't want to talk to us.

Sometimes that may mean making retribution,

Financial.

Sometimes that may mean helping others who are in the same situation,

Other person that we hurt,

And helping them instead because this other person doesn't want our help or we can't help them anymore.

Then we take a deep breath because now comes the hard part.

We have to let it go.

We have to forgive ourselves for what we've done.

And if we've done these steps,

We've reached out,

We've understood,

We've tried to make amends as best we can,

We may be doing time in prison for what we've done.

But now that we know that we've done our best,

We say,

Okay,

I need to now live my life because here's a couple of truths.

One is we all make mistakes and sometimes they're really big or sometimes we're just very lucky that what we did didn't turn into something big.

I think a lot of people who drink regularly have had an incident where they may have been drinking and driving at the same time and they could have that night of killed another person.

They didn't,

But they could have.

And I think when it comes to more active hurting other people,

We need to be truthful because when we hurt others,

It's because we're hurting or people have hurt us first.

We've done extensive interviews on people that have committed heinous crimes and in all situations they were just passing on the baton that was given to them.

They were hurt.

So now they hurt others.

It doesn't make it right,

But it helps to understand it.

And if we take the time to understand our behavior,

Then we can let it go.

We all make mistakes and sometimes our mistakes have really big consequences.

But what we want to do is say,

Okay,

I made a mistake.

What can I learn from it going forward?

And two,

I need to let it go.

I need to forgive myself because if there isn't self forgiveness,

There isn't going to be happiness for anyone because all of us make mistakes.

And part of healing is saying,

It's time to let this go and live my life.

It may mean I'm in prison and I'm going to spend the next 51 years in prison because of my choice that I made.

Then what we focus on is living well in prison.

You may say that's crazy,

Dr.

Puff,

But I'm not.

A friend of mine,

She's a psychologist and she specializes in working with people in prison.

And one of the guys in prison who is on death row is one of the most enlightened people she's ever met because he's done a whole lot of work on himself to improve.

And though he probably someday will be executed,

Nonetheless he has found deep peace and happiness and now shares it with people in his life,

Even though he's going to spend the rest of his life in prison.

We can make our lives work no matter what.

We have to focus on that,

Making our lives well,

Not on what we did.

It's time to bury that and let that go.

We need to now move forward and focus on living well.

Mistakes are just part of life.

We make them,

We make amends,

And then we move forward,

Period.

Now our focus for all of us,

No matter what we've done,

Is to live well one day at a time and focus on that.

How do I make this a good day in this present moment throughout the day?

Our focus is on the here and now,

Not on the past and what's happened.

We let that go and we live in the present moment.

It is time to forgive ourselves.

I want to end this podcast with my own story.

I think a lot of people think that,

Well,

If your life's going well,

Then your life's just been easy.

I've heard that many times.

That is not true.

Often the opposite is true.

When I was 14 years old,

I was raised in the Midwest.

My parents were very happily married and I had one sister.

I did very well in school.

I had friends and everything seemed fine.

I didn't have any psychological disorders.

I just would watch shows about mountain men and I felt really called to go live out in the mountains.

And also,

I would go to church and I'd get so excited about my faith,

But then I would come home and it would dissipate and I couldn't keep it.

So those two things at the time caused me to say,

I need to go find out what life is really all about.

So I didn't tell anyone,

But I saved $70 and I took with me a wind jacket,

A Bible,

And that's it.

And I left home and I didn't come back for nine months later.

No one knew where I was at all.

They didn't know if I was kidnapped.

They didn't know if I was dead.

They had no idea where I was.

I did come back nine months later,

A very different person.

And you can imagine it's a very long story of what happened during those nine months.

But the part I want to focus on is when I came back,

I had a lot to forgive myself for.

It actually took me years to really understand the depth of the pain I caused my family because they were just so glad when I came back.

But I did cause some pain and being a parent,

I deeply know the impact I had on their lives.

Yet my life turned out well.

I had a lot of healing to do of course,

But I healed.

I had a lot of self-forgiveness to do,

But I did.

And my relationship with my family stayed strong and we remained very close until my mother passed about 20 years ago.

My father passed a few months ago.

My father was one of my dearest friends.

In life,

We do hurt others.

Part of it is,

Is to forgive ourselves and make our lives work now.

Turn that which we have hurt others into something beautiful.

I believe this podcast goes back to my leaving home at 14 years old.

I needed to find what the deep truths of life were.

Why are we here?

That's why I left.

And now I share it with you.

I never meant to hurt anyone,

But I did.

So part of my life has been letting go and moving forward.

And I have.

We can have beautiful lives no matter what.

But part of that journey towards our beautiful life is self-forgiveness.

And one last thing,

Don't wait until the other person forgives you.

That's their responsibility.

Your responsibility is to forgive yourself and focus on living each day well.

Thank you for joining me on the happiness podcast.

Until next time,

Accept what is,

Love what is.

Reviews

Thank you Dr Puff for this honest and important teaching on the importance of Forgiveness. 🙏🏼🕊️🌈☀️

Wonderful 😊 thank you so much 😊

Super helpful. Listening to this gives me tools on how I can forgive myself, let go and be more compassionate towards myself. Growing up Catholic I tend to over punish myself. Got to let that stuff go!

An excellent talk on forgiveness. I am specifically working on self forgiveness for the harms I have done to others throughout my life com some of whom have already him to the next lot