Choosing to Forgive Yourself

Jordan had always been the all-American model teenager. Good student, star soccer player, active in the church youth program—but now he was sitting in my office in tears. I have known him all his life, but I had never seen him this distraught.

He spoke slowly at first, trying to hold back the tears.

“I’ve really blown it,” he said. “I’ve messed up my whole life. I really wish I could die.”

“Would you like to tell me about it?” I asked. Jordan looked at the floor as he talked.

“It all started last year,” he said. “I met this girl at school. I knew I shouldn’t have dated her, but she was so good-looking. I started taking her home after school. I found out her father had left four years ago and her mother didn’t get home from work until about 6:00 p.m. We would study together and talk. Then we started messing around, and before long, we were having sex. I knew it wasn’t right, but I tried to be careful. She got pregnant anyway, and last week she had an abortion.”

Jordan’s whole body was shaking. Tears were falling on his jeans like rain. A full minute later, he said, “I let my parents down. I let God down. I let myself down. I let her down. I just wish I could die.”

Jordan was young, but he was wise enough to know that he needed help. For the next twelve months, I saw him regularly. I watched him step up to the plate and apologize to his parents, the young woman, and her mother. I saw him weep as he acknowledged to God that he had sinned and asked for His forgiveness. Near the end of our year of counseling (he was now a freshman in college), Jordan said to me, “I think there is one more apology I need to make.”

“What’s that?” I asked.

“I think I need to apologize to myself.”

“That’s interesting. Why would you say that?”

“I keep beating myself up,” he said. “I keep remembering what I did and feeling bad about it. I don’t think I have ever forgiven myself. Everybody else seems to have forgiven me—but I haven’t forgiven me. Maybe if I could apologize to myself, I could forgive myself.”

“I think you’re dead right,” I said. “Why don’t we work on an apology? What would you like to say to yourself?”

Jordan started talking and I started writing. “I’d like to tell myself that I did wrong; I mean really wrong, grossly wrong. I’d like to tell myself how bad I feel about it and how much I regret what I did. I’d like to tell myself that I have learned my lesson, and I will keep myself sexually pure from now until the day I get married. I’d like to give myself the freedom to be happy again. And I’d like to ask myself to forgive me and to help me make the most of my life in the future.”

I had been writing furiously to capture Jordan’s words. “Give me just a moment,” I said. I turned to my computer and typed in Jordan’s apology, inserting his name. I printed off a copy and turned to him and said, “I want you to stand in front of this mirror and give your apology to yourself.” I listened and watched as Jordan read his apology. Here is what Jordan said:

Jordan, I want to tell you that I did wrong; I mean really wrong, grossly wrong. Jordan, I want to tell you how bad I feel about it and how much I regret what I did. I want to tell you that I have learned my lesson, and I will keep myself sexually pure from now until the day I get married. I want to give myself the freedom to be happy again. And, Jordan, I want to ask you to forgive me and to help me make the most of my life in the future.

Then Jordan turned to me, and I said, “Go ahead, read the last sentence.” He continued, “Jordan, because I believe your apology is sincere, I choose to forgive you.”

The tears were flowing freely down his face as he turned and we embraced. For a full minute we both wept in the thrill of forgiveness. Jordan went on to finish college and is now married, with his own family. He said to me several years after our counseling experience, “The most significant part of my journey was the day I apologized and forgave myself. I don’t think I would have made it if that had not happened.”

As a counselor, I learned from Jordan firsthand the tremendous power of apologizing to oneself.

WHO WE ARE—WHO WE WANT TO BE

Why would you apologize to yourself? In a general sense, you apologize to yourself for the same reason you apologize to someone else: you want to restore the relationship. When you apologize to someone else, you hope the apology will remove the barrier between the two of you so that your relationship can continue to grow. When you apologize to yourself, you are seeking to remove the emotional disequilibrium between the person you want to be (the ideal self) and the person you are (the real self). The greater the distance between the ideal self and the real self, the greater the intensity of the inner emotional turmoil. Being “at peace with oneself” occurs when we remove the distance between the ideal self and the real self. Apologizing to oneself—and subsequently experiencing forgiveness—serves to remove the distance.

Sometimes the emotional anxiety stems from failure to live up to one’s moral standards. This was the case with Jordan. He had promised himself that he would never become sexually active before marriage. He knew this was not a moral standard accepted by all teenagers but for him it was a spiritual issue. He believed that this was God’s standard, and he intended to follow it. When he consciously violated his moral standards, he was assailed by anxiety and guilt. For him, the distance between the ideal self and the real self was immense. His apologies to others had served to heal relationships, but until he apologized to himself, he did not find inner peace.

Moral failures occur on many fronts. Neal was a forty-five-year-old father of two. He had taught his boys from an early age to tell the truth. Integrity was a high moral value for him, and he wanted his boys to learn to tell the truth. One year as he was filling out his federal tax return, he “stretched the truth” in order to get a larger deduction. At the time, it seemed like a little thing and inconsequential. But within a week, Neal was experiencing strong misgivings about what he had done. It was not until he filed an amended tax return and apologized and forgave himself that he felt better.

Lying, stealing, cheating, and sexual immorality are all examples of broken moral standards that can lead to guilt and anxiety. While apologizing to others may bring healing to human relationships, self-apology and forgiveness remove the anxiety and restore peace of mind.

Not all bad behavior is immoral or even very significant. Still, when we feel we’ve behaved badly, our view of ourselves is damaged. We thought we were “more mature”—and we beat ourselves up.

Ellen from New England said to me, “I can’t believe I was so immature. I created a scene over a discrepancy in a meal charge. I treated the waiter harshly and drew attention to myself from people at other tables. I have been reliving that scene for weeks now. I used to think I was a pretty decent person … but now I don’t know.”

Ellen is suffering with damaged self-esteem. The difference between her ideal self and real self are causing her great emotional pain. Ellen needs to apologize to herself.

Then there’s Davis, an aspiring businessman who made an unwise response to another businessman in town. He said to me, “I feel like I shot myself in the foot. I apologized to the person involved, and I think he’s forgiven me. But I am afraid that what I did is going to affect my business for a long time to come. I’m having a hard time shaking it and getting motivated to go on. I’ve even thought about moving to another city and starting over.” Davis is struggling with intense anxiety over the matter, and it is affecting the way he operates his business. He needs to apologize to himself so he can focus on the future and not on past failures.

When you are plagued with anxiety over a past failure, the answer is not “trying to forget it.” The more you try to forget it, the bigger it becomes in your mind. The answer lies in apologizing to the offended parties and then apologizing and forgiving yourself.

WHEN YOU’RE ANGRY AT YOURSELF

When we fail to live up to our ideal self, what happens inside of us is what happens inside others when we offend them: we become angry. This anger is turned toward self and is often expressed through implosion or explosion.

When we explode with anger, we damage our relationships with others. When we implode, we damage ourselves. This may take the form of berating yourself mentally. I’m stupid; I’m dumb; I’ll never get it right; I’ll never amount to anything. What’s wrong with me? These are the attitudes of implosive anger. An extreme case of implosion may express itself by physically abusing one’s body. Wrist cutting, head banging, and starvation are examples of personal physical abuse. Self-anger expressed by explosion or implosion never improves a situation.

Anger at yourself when you feel you’ve “blown it” in some way is normal. But here is the healthy way to process that anger. First, admit to yourself that what you did was unwise, wrong, or hurtful to others and to yourself. Second, apologize to the people you have offended, and hope they will forgive you. Third, consciously apologize to yourself and choose to forgive yourself.

HOW DO I APOLOGIZE TO MYSELF?

Apologizing to oneself requires self-talk. Perhaps you have heard someone say, “Talking to yourself is a sign of mental illness.” Wrong! Mentally healthy people always talk to themselves—encouraging themselves, advising themselves, questioning themselves. Some of this self-talk is done aloud; much of it is done inwardly and silently. One woman I know said, “When I have a tough challenge ahead of me, I will always murmur aloud, over and over, ‘You can do this.’ It helps!”

And when it comes to apologizing to yourself, I like to encourage audible self-talk. If you are aware of your own apology language, then focus on speaking that language, but include the other four languages for additional emotional credit.

At the time I counseled with Jordan, I had not discovered the five languages of an apology. However, in retrospect Jordan did an excellent job of speaking all five languages to himself. My guess is that Jordan’s primary apology language was accepting responsibility. I say that because he began his self-apology by saying, “I did wrong; really and grossly wrong. I really regret what I did.” I have discovered that when people offer an apology, many times they will begin by expressing it in their own apology language. They are saying to others what they would expect others to say to them if they were apologizing.

We suggest that you write out your self-apology before you speak it to yourself. Here is a summary of the apology that Jordan made to himself. We have removed his name and left the blanks so you can include your name. You may change the order of his statements, and you may change the wording. We offer it simply to help you get started in forming your self-apology.

“_________, I want to tell you that I did wrong; I mean really wrong, grossly wrong. _________, I want to tell you how bad I feel about it and how much I regret what I did. I want to tell you that I have learned my lesson. ________, I want to give myself the freedom to be happy again. And, ________, I want to ask you to forgive me and to help me make the most of my life in the future. ________, because I believe your apology is sincere, I choose to forgive you.”

Go ahead and write your self-apology statement. After you have written that self-apology, we encourage you to stand in front of the mirror, look yourself in the eyes, and audibly offer your apology to yourself. We believe that apologizing to yourself is an important step in the process of restoring “peace with yourself.”

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO FORGIVE MYSELF?

Forgiving oneself is much like forgiving someone who has offended you. Forgiving someone else means that you choose to no longer hold the offense against them. You will accept them back into your life and will seek to continue building your relationship with them. Their offense is no longer a barrier in your relationship. If a wall is seen as a symbol of their offense against you, forgiveness tears down the wall. Forgiveness allows the two of you to communicate again and to listen to each other with a view to understanding. It opens up the potential of working together as a team.

The same is true in forgiving oneself. At its root, self-forgiveness is a choice. We feel pained at our wrongdoing. We wish we had not committed the offense. The reality is that we have. We have apologized to other parties who were involved if our offense was against others. Perhaps we have asked God’s forgiveness. We have also apologized to ourselves. Now it is time to forgive ourselves. We must choose to do so. No positive purpose is served by berating ourselves explosively or implosively. All such behavior is destructive. Choosing to forgive oneself removes the distance between the ideal self and the real self. In forgiving ourselves, we are affirming our high ideals. We are admitting our failures and affirming our commitment to our ideals.

As you wrote your self-apology statement, we also encourage you to write your self-forgiveness statement. Here is a sample that may stimulate your own thinking.

“________, the offense you committed has troubled me greatly. It has brought me much inner anxiety. But I have heard your sincere apology and I value you. Therefore, ________, I choose to forgive you. I will no longer hold the offense against you. I will do everything I can to make your future bright. You can count on my support. Let me say it again, _________: I forgive you.”

After you have written your forgiveness statement, again we urge you to stand in front of the mirror, look yourself in the eyes, and audibly express your forgiveness.

As in forgiving others, this self-forgiveness does not remove all the pain or memories of your failure, nor does it necessarily remove all the results of your failure. For example, if you have lied or stolen, you may still face the results of those actions. What forgiveness does is release you from the bondage of your past failures and give you the freedom to make the most of the future.

LEARNING FROM YOUR FAILURES

You are now in a position to change the course of your life. Sometimes people make the mistake of trying never to think again about the failure. The fact is we can learn much from our failures. Ask yourself, What are the factors that led me to the offense? Those are things that need to be changed.

For example, if you fell into the abuse of alcohol or drugs, it may be that you put yourself into a situation that fostered drinking or drug use. In the future, you must not allow this to happen. If your failure was sexual immorality, then you must remove yourself from the environment that would encourage you to repeat that failure.

In addition to learning from past failures, you are now in a position to take positive steps to make your future brighter. This may involve reading books, attending seminars, talking with friends, or counseling. These are the kinds of steps that give you new information and insights with which to direct your future. Apologizing to yourself and choosing to forgive yourself opens to you the possibility of a future that is far brighter than you have ever dreamed.

TALK ABOUT IT

Why does it seem easier at times to forgive other people than to forgive ourselves? How have you seen this in your life?

Share an experience you have had in taking “positive steps” to overcome a challenge.

What do you think of the idea of talking with yourself about self-apology? Does it feel natural or awkward? How has your background influenced how you view this concept of self-talk?