SELF-FORGIVENESS
Oct 26, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
“Many adult children struggle with self-forgiveness because we are oriented to doubt ourselves or to be hypercritical of ourselves as children.” BRB p. 234
“We carry messages in our heads that if we do something and anyone has a negative reaction, we must have made a mistake. And if anyone tells us we did something wrong, our first thought is, “Of course they’re right!” It doesn’t matter whether we actually did something wrong or not.
We tell ourselves things like “I should have known better!” “What’s the matter with me?” “Look at his expression; of course he’s mad at me.” These are like the messages we heard as children that became so ingrained that we learned at a very early age to say them to ourselves. Now as adults in ACA, we stop “beating ourselves up” and see the full story. Our healthy support system can help us understand the reality of our situation, to determine what’s really ours and what actually belongs to someone else.
On this day I will remember that I deserve to treat myself better! I will use the tools of the program to separate myself emotionally from an uncomfortable situation and take on only what belongs to me.”
My experience:
I have historically been hard on myself. I am very familiar with the terms described above like, “I should have known better.” But as I travel further and further down the healing path, I move farther and farther away from terms like that. I take what happened, process it, see what my part was, decide if I could do something different in the future or if it just played out that way, and move forward. I don’t beat myself up for doing something wrong or stupid, I sit with the knowledge that I am not perfect and this situation is just a situation that is. If I determine that I did something wrong, I admit it, make amends for it, and move on. Beating myself up keeps me in a negative space that is not good for me or anyone around me. Although not perfect, I attempt to treat myself better at every turn and know that I deserve good things and that sometimes things don’t turn out the way you thought or wanted them to.
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