“Again, the necessary skills: The first step is to recognize what we’re feeling. The second step is to understand what we’ve discovered—what we’re feeling and why. The next step is to properly label our emotions, meaning not just to call ourselves “happy” or “sad” but to dig deeper and identify the nuances and intricacies of what we feel. The fourth step is to express our feelings, to ourselves first and then, when right, to others. The final step is to regulate—as we’ve said, not to suppress or ignore our emotions but to use them wisely to achieve desired goals.” ― Permission to Feel: Unlocking the Power of Emotions to Help Our Kids, Ourselves, and Our Society Thrive
Forgiveness is all about letting go of anger (however projected it is) and keeping alive bitter feelings against someone who you feel has somehow victimized you. Forgiveness has nothing to do with the other person. It is about freeing yourself of overthinking about that other person. Forgiving others is way easier than forgiving oneself.
Forgiving oneself is all about ‘getting over’ a type of wanting to make someone else pay, and all about getting on with life. It is about letting go of ruminating over something of the past and releasing it so you can get on with living in the present and having a future. It stops having us from being defined and defining ourself with past event(s). If we find ourselves having bitterness against someone else as part of our identity. I really never thought of it in that way. It is about changing the story we tell of our present that still belongs in the past.
Self-forgiveness is needed when we no that we had a part in something that caused pain to others and to ourselves. It can become something like an angry regret. Not one of us is perfect. We are beautifully flawed and if we allow our reaction to incidents become us, then we begin to define ourselves according to that perceived incident. Wee can turn away and haughtily say we could care less about that other person, but there is still that underlying judgment and identifying with it, deep down where truth lies, and we hurt ourselves over and over. If it is about being bullied, we keep the bullying alive by keep it present. When we realize this, we have to forgive ourselves in order to move on in life.
When we accept that everyone is flawed, we begin to understand that we are made, in our very bones, to survive. We feel that punishment has to happen, but in the end, we punish ourselves. As I said, we go over and over what we feel was/is a transgression towards us and it is like tearing at a scab to keep it fresh. The old adage: one finger points at another and three point back at us. When we realize we have no control over karma or punishment of another, there is a type of sadness that filters in and colors our world if we allow it. It takes two to tango is truth and we make mistakes, we slip up. We make poor choices. We have a part in every incident that happens to us. How we react, as if we are taking an incident and making it precious to us, no matter how angry and bitter that makes us. We find that we cannot go very long in a day before it is all brought up again, and our embedded anger shows up. We sound bitter. We feel bitter. And everything in us wants it all to be someone else’s fault. I have had to do some work on ace[ting my part in two failed, really painful, incidents where I have had to walk away from two who were so very important in my life. I have had to accept my part in it. Both are something I cannot fix. Everything in me wants to go back to being a pleaser and trying to find ways to make the relationships be what they were…in my head.. because, distance and time passing helps me see that I was the common den0ominator in those broken relationships. I had to look at what in me needed to learn that lesson that is the main theme of loss of those relationships. What, in me, caused this to happen? Once I got that figured out, I could forgive myself and try to get on without obsessing over trying to make things better, and simply pull myself away from relationships that were not healthy for me. I needed to learn the lesson, forgive myself for allowing the relationships in the first place, and get on without lugging their burdens along with me.
How easy it is to do that, in reality. But, forging oneself for continuing relationships that wounded me, that caused me drama, and for always trying to FIX it rather than face reality of it, is huge reason(s) to come to a place and space where we realize we need to forgive ourselves. Everyone else gets their ‘three chances’ but we do not give that to ourselves. Everyone else gets to be remembered only for the good things, and we do not offer that to our self. The real crux of self-forgiveness is that we cannot get away from, divorce, shut the door on ourselves. We are stuck with our self. If we are ruminating about past insults, incidents’ where we closed doors, we are not done with the lesson of the problems that caused it. We have not learned the lesson.
It takes a mature stance in order to give ourselves forgiveness. We have to accept our part in it. We have to learn to treat ourselves with kindness, with consideration, with compassion. We have to stop the victim-talk we do and tell our self over and over that we are surely sorry for choices we made in it all. We have to actively seek the lesson. Then, we have to make future choices around having learned that lesson.
We seldom get in touch with the myriad of emotions we feel in a day. When chaos or drama comes, we can label an emotion “anger”, etc. When we are sad, we can label that emotion. But there are many many emotions and they slip by us without awareness perhaps, but we do not label those emotions. What about guilt, shame, and those emotions that swirl within and are often tamped down? We have to become knowledgeable about emotions that we experience and labeling all emotions is part of self-forgiveness. As well, knowing the WHY of those emotions is key. It has been said that labeling emotions can reduce the intensity of that emotion. This is imperative in order to regulate emotions rather than have them regulate you.
And, yes, we can be guilty and feel that shame and guilt over something that, realistically, needs to be felt in order for us to move forward and not be lugging baggage around with us. It takes compassion where we might have used avoidances, excuses, rationalisation, justification for. Taking responsibility for ways we might have hurt others helps alleviate shame and guilt and other negative emotions. Being compassionate with self, being remorseful, can make sure that you do not feel worthlessness, not enough, and those critical statements our inner critical voice comes up with. (Remember, I call my critical inner voice my “Evil Inner Witch”), who runs a running negative commentary around everything I do, think, feel, and believe.
Many of us have heightened empathy (an Empath) who feels things deeply, can catch on to feelings others are having and experience them, feel things more4 deeply than what others seem to feel. Emotions are as much a gift, a birthright, as having fingernails on the ends of fingers... the tiny miracles of our birth, the perfectness of our body, the inherited features that make us who we are. Emotions are a gift, yes, even the negative ones. We have them and we have reasons for them, although we seldom take the time to honor them... seems we just feel them. Some, like me, are slow earners when it comes to regulating our emotions. I spend a great deal of time in Forgiveness mode. I am either forgiving (knowing the why of someone else’s behavior) or trying to rationalize my own. If I could expend that much energy doing that, imagine what I could get done.
©Carol Desjarlais 11.10.23
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