Forgiving Yourself Starts With Acceptance
Posted by admin | Posted in Addiction Recovery | Posted on 14-10-2010
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We all make mistakes. Sometimes we feel embarrassed by them, sometimes we feel guilty. But most of the time, we chalk it up to experience and move forward.
But there are times when we feel so bad that we can’t get past what we’ve done – or what we perceive that we’ve done. That’s when serious problems can result. When we’re unable to forgive ourselves for something in our past, it can bring our lives to a grinding halt. It can lead to depression and even to suicide.
At the root of this is the feeling that you’re actions are too bad to be forgiven, that you lack value as a person because of something you’ve done or something you feel.
This can crush a person’s spirit. They can lose the ability to feel pleasure in life because they don’t believe they are worthy of it. This can begin a downward spiral that takes on a life of its own.
The depression that can result from this can lead to isolation and this makes the guilt and regret continue to accumulate. This in turn leads to more depression and more isolation. It’s a vicious circle.
To turn this situation around will generally take an acceptance that the individual needs help. And that help needs to be asked for. Without the acceptance that the problem exists, it is very difficult to begin solving it.
Forgiving yourself doesn’t mean shirking responsibility for your actions. It means accepting that you’re human and that you don’t always make the best decisions. This is more of a challenge, of course, when the action that you regret is very serious in nature. A drunk driver who kills someone, for example, is bound to carry around enormous guilt.
Some accept and then try to turn their experience into a positive by talking to others about the dangers of drunk driving. This gives them the opportunity to exorcise their guilt by sharing it with others. But most people don’t get this chance. For this reason, professional help in the form of counselling can often be the best approach.
Many alcoholics and drug addicts face these issues because their addictions led them to treat their loved ones very badly. If they are able to break the addiction, they are often left with the guilt for their past behaviour.
This is one of the key elements of 12-step recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. In this program, the recovering alcoholic has to list all the people they wronged in their life. They have to look at what happened and what their part in the situation was. They then have to become willing to make amends to the people they feel they’ve wronged.
Finally, they have to actually contact the person and offer to make those amends. They understand that the other individual may not accept this, but at least the attempt was made. Then, the suffering individual can put this all behind and go on with living their life.
This doesn’t mean that they ignore the consequences of their actions, but more that they accept what they’ve done and accept responsibility. Only then, can healing begin.
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I in general notice: if to the person in the mornings happens nasty, and in the evening he is full of plans, both dreams, and efforts — he very bad, this person. It is bad in the morning, in the evening well — a sure sign of the wicked man. Here if on the contrary — if in the mornings the person is invigorated also all in hopes, and by the evening he is overcome by exhaustion is precisely person rubbish, the hardhead and mediocrity. This person is disgusting to me. I do not know, how to you, and to me it is disgusting.