Self-forgiveness

Hi coaches, I wanted to pick your brains on the subject of self-forgiveness. I am in a situation where things I did in the past are now causing me a lot of anxiety and worry. Partly they were genuine mistakes, as in, things that I thought were correct at the time (errors in my CV that I had just not spotted) and partly they were decisions that I knew were a bit dodgy at the time, but did anyway. I am finding myself really angry with my past self for making those errors and that decision as they are causing me anxiety and worry now that they will make me lose my job and I will be penniless on the street and my cat won’t have any food. Rationally, I know that that’s not true, but I am finding it much harder than usual to feel it emotionally as well. There’s this little voice that keeps creeping in saying ‘But you don’t really actually know, do you? If they knew what you did, they won’t want you anymore.) I am also finding it incredibly difficult to be compassionate with myself here or to zoom out and tell myself what I would tell a friend. For some reason, neither approach has worked so far which is adding an extra level of frustration all of which is unhelpful, but I don’t know how to deal with all these feelings. I tried a model as well, but got stuck because it didn’t really click. It went: C: I made mistakes in my CV. T. This is terrible. Feeling: Shame. A: I berate myself, my anxiety spirals, I obsess over my mistakes, I worry. R: I feel anxious and incapable. C: I made mistakes in my CV. T: It happens. F: Compassion. A: I breathe more easily, I don’t ruminate, I embrace myself. R: I feel grounded. Somehow the feeling doesn’t stick.

 

 

Answer:

Pick away! Thank you for bringing this question. The reason your intentional thought isn’t sticking is because you think what was in your CV is a negative circumstance. It might “happen” for other people, but it’s not in alignment with who you want to be so you can’t let yourself off the hook with that thought. You know some of it wasn’t a mistake it was intentional so that’s another place that thought feels icky.

Since we can’t go back and change things, we just get to decide what to do now. As you create your intentional model, take out the word “mistakes.” What are the actual facts that are in black and white in your CV? Pick one that is bothering you the most and put it in a model. Start with the feeling line. Try to get out of your head and really sit with some compassion and open up to the possibility that you can forgive yourself for this, even knowing you did something you knew was wrong, and you can still have the life you’re meant to have.

C: CV fact

T: What would you want to think to create this feeling?

F: Self-forgiveness (or insert the emotion you are really looking for)

A: What would you do if you felt self-forgiveness? What would you stop doing?

R: What would the result of these actions be for you?