It’s super important that you forgive yourself.

No matter what you’ve done…let it go!

Pushed your grandmother down the stairs? – Let it go.

Set fire to a church? – Let it go.

Poisoned the city’s water supply? – Let it go.

Experts in psychology, or psychiatry, or astrology or something offer loads of advice for how to shirk responsibility forgive yourself.

None of it is any good.

1. Become clear on your morals and values as they are right now.

There is nothing morally superior about “right now”. My morals and values “right now” aren’t better than my morals “back then”. They’re just more recent. Today’s morality is exactly what I’ll be forgiving myself for tomorrow.

2. Realize that the past is the past.

So what? Pushing grandma down stairs isn’t cool just because I did it yesterday. Reminding me that I can’t change the past doesn’t do anything to ease my conscience.

3. Create a “re-do.”
Never underestimate the power of a “re-do”. Write down how you would have done things differently if you could go back and do it again. In doing so, we affirm that we not only learned from our past mistake, but that if we had the skills we have now, back then, we would have done things differently.

There is no such thing as a “re-do”. Wishing for a “re-do” actually has a name. It’s called, “regret”. Regretting the past doesn’t make me feel any better about the past. In fact, it kind of makes me feel worse.

4. Realize you did the best you could at the time.

But what if I didn’t? What if I intentionally gave-in to my darkest, most vile urging? Am I still allowed to shrug it off with a cheery, “Oh well. The past is in the past”?

5. Start acting in accordance with your morals and values.

That’s what I was trying to do when I screwed up in the first place.

6. Identify your biggest regrets.
When I work with clients on moving on from their past, it can be very overwhelming for them because they see so many regrets. It’s often helpful to categorize these things because people often only hold on to a handful of big categories/patterns. Working on patterns of behavior is often more helpful than working on individual regrets

Somehow categorizing my screw-ups according to size is going to help me feel less guilty about them? I doubt that. I can’t imagine that putting my bank robbery incident beneath my child kidnapping incident will bring me peace about either one of them.

7. Tackle the big ones.
There may be some regrets that don’t seem to improve, and they’re going to require some extra work. I call it “clearing your conscience.” This means it might take bringing this regret into the room and apologizing for your past mistake.

Finally! Apologizing makes the list at #7. Problem is I can’t apologize for some of those big ones because they happened in the past. So “clearing my conscience” isn’t always possible.

8. Turn the page.
At some point, you have to accept that the past has happened and you’ve done everything in your power to amend past mistakes…

Um…you haven’t suggested I “amend past mistakes”. So far this list contains: pretending to forget the past, pretending morality changes over time, and pretending I would behave differently if I were to go back in time. Now I should just “turn the page” and pretend I’ve made progress?

9. Cut yourself some slack.
When we learned how to ride a bike, most of us realized it would probably take a few tries before achieving perfection. New behavior and thinking patterns are no different. They’re both skills. Cut yourself some slack while you’re on a new learning curve. Realize that you’re going to make mistakes. We all do.

This is another way of saying, “forgive yourself”, isn’t it? That’s what this whole stupid article was supposed to tell me how to do!

10. Move toward self-love.
The last step in building self-esteem is moving toward loving yourself. Think kind thoughts toward yourself and show yourself some compassion. If we can learn to think of ourselves as our best friend, to speak to ourselves with love and kindness, and put ourselves as a priority, it reaffirms that we believe we are worth it. Engage in psychotherapy or coaching if you need some outside perspective in this area. Seek books on this subject. Surround yourself with supportive people.

Before I could ever love someone like me, I need to get rid of my horrible past. But I can’t forgive myself for what I’ve done in the past. Do you have any advice?


The good news is that God Himself took the penalty for my awful past.

All I have to do is ask God to wipe away my sin and *poof* it disappears.

Trying to forgive myself doesn’t work.

I get my forgiveness from God.

After that, there is nothing left to forgive.

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5 Responses

  1. Ten steps toward developing narcissistic behavior for sociopaths. Got it. They forgot #11: blame the other person for making you do what you did. That goes a long way toward dismissing the bad behavior. After all, it’s not your fault they ran in front of your car while you were tweeting.

    You’re right, only God can really reveal what’s inside of us.

    1. This is why we need to reelect President Donald Trump? Otherwise, lots of people who need someone to blame will have no one to blame?

      Seriously, because they have pinpointed government as the source of their failures, lots of people view politics, government “reform,” as their means to salvation.

      1. Did you mean to post this here? This seems like it was intended as a reply to some other comment.

  2. Yes! It always erks me when people posit “ you can not truly love others til you learn to love yourself”. Funny? God said no man ever hated himself but loves & cherishes his flesh

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