Believing you deserve forgiveness

Compassion & trauma.

Sep 17, 2024

Hello!

Please remember to comment on this post if it resonates! I LOVE hearing from you all!

This month I have been talking a lot about beliefs - from the beliefs we pick up from our caregivers and peers without ever questioning them, to how to figure out your own beliefs that feel right to you, to the importance of surrounding yourself with people who have inspiring beliefs (such a Roger Bannister who believed he could run a sub 4 minute mile even though everyone else thought he couldn’t) and to all the drug trials that are scientific proof that our beliefs shape our reality not only on a mental level but a physical one too.

Today I want to talk about the belief around deserving forgiveness.

So many of us do not believe that we deserve to forgive ourselves for our past mistakes. So many of us keep a tight ball of regret, frustration and anger deep inside for the way we might have behaved in the past. So many of us bury this down so deep that it becomes severely suppressed. We do anything and everything to avoid the shameful feelings that we have about ourselves.

One of the first things I looked at in therapy was the way I berated myself for my past mistakes. The shame and embarrassment around so much stuff - from the important stuff (how I broke up with a friend is something that I felt shame about for a long time) to the smaller stuff (a director on set putting me far away from the action because he thought I had made a mistake with how I set the extras in a shot - I literally couldn’t even think about that memory for so long because I felt so gutted and embarrassed). Whatever it is, we all carry shame.

So many of us carry so much social shame - “why did I say what I said? I must have looked so stupid.” “I came across as such an idiot, I can’t believe anyone will invite me to the next party.”

Going back to therapy, I was given so much compassion from my therapist. She taught me that I didn’t consciously know what I know now at the time, so it would have been very difficult for me to act differently. In the case of my friend that I broke up with, she helped me understand why I had such a fear of confrontation, why I was terrified of being disliked, why I felt so suffocated and stifled in the relationship - and that understanding, very slowly started to allow me to bring in some compassion for myself.

“Being cut off from our own natural self-compassion is one of the greatest impairments we can suffer.” - Gabor Mate

Trauma

The way we have behaved in the past is linked to the trauma we have suffered in our lives and how we have adapted ourselves in order to survive.

It doesn’t have to be a big traumatic event - traumatic events are not only the things that happened to you, but they are also the things that didn’t happen that should have. (For example, not being able to express how you felt, not being given compassion when you needed it as a child.)

What happens inside as a result of these events is what trauma is.

So for example, if you were told to always be a “good girl” then perhaps you learnt that you needed to be perfect in order to gain love, approval and acceptance. This would mean that, at your core, you might believe you are never good enough and that you are going to be rejected if you are not perfect.

So now, in the present moment, someone has given you bad feedback for a piece of work that you submitted, and as result you feel angry, hurt and you go completely inwards. Your reaction is disproportionate to what’s actually happening, but you are no longer in the present, your subconscious is in the past feeling scared, rejected and not enough.

When we start to understand how trauma and the brain works - our prefrontal cortex which is responsible for rational thinking is no longer activated and instead the reptilian brain, responsible for fight or flight, is activated, we can start to have compassion for ourselves.

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Forgiving yourself is the place to start

I think when we are consciously choosing to create a new beginning (as some of us do in September!), a good place to start is forgiveness (towards ourselves) and letting go of shame.

“Shame is that warm feeling that washes over us, making us feel small, flawed, and never good enough.” - Brene Brown

Shame and guilt are different: shame is feeling you are a bad person, guilt is acknowledging you did a bad thing.

I think the biggest human struggle is shame. And when we have low self-worth, we cling onto this shame, which often ends up shadowing (subconsciously) everything we do. Letting go of shame I think is a lifelong journey. But one thing is for sure, you will stay stuck if you keep yourself in a shame spiral.

Shame causes us to perpetuate a story that we are perhaps unlovable, that we are perhaps broken, that we are perhaps always going to be alone.

Shame comes in many forms - see if you can relate to any of the below:

not being beautiful, attractive, strong, or smart enough.
being weak, too sensitive, or too much.
not being likeable / loveable.
getting old and getting wrinkles.
not being a good enough mum.
being left behind and never being a mum.
being disliked.
not being perfect.
not having it all.
being criticised.
stumbling over your words in an important work meeting.
not getting the job promotion.
saying the wrong thing.
not making enough money.
being judged by those you love.
having got it wrong, for making bad decisions, for hurting people in the past.
regretting something for the rest of your life.
not finding meaning in life.

Forgiving yourself for low standards

A note here - often we actually need to take some time to forgive ourselves for accepting less than we deserved in the past. For allowing someone to walk all over us. For allowing someone to speak badly to us without saying anything. For not treating ourselves well. For abusing our bodies with alcohol or lack of sleep. For speaking so unkindly to ourselves for so long.

I know that at the start of my self-worth journey I felt heartbroken realising all the ways in which I hadn’t stood up for myself, for the ways I hadn’t honoured my needs, for not believing in myself, for talking myself out of creating change for so long.

I cried a lot when these realisations hit me. So if this makes you feel teary too… let it out, I am with you. Part of the healing process sometimes is about grieving our past selves - the part of us who didn’t know better at the time, the part of us that didn’t know how to use our voice, the part of us that was terrified to set a boundary, the part of us that didn’t know that things could feel much, much better.

You now get to choose a whole new standard for yourself as you start to forgive yourself and let go of the shame.

To me, one of the most powerful things we can do to truly create a fresh start, is to find some forgiveness and compassion for ourselves.

Everything we have done in the past, we did what we could with the tools we had at the time. The only mistake you will ever make is choosing not to learn from your mistakes.

Share Self-Worth Weekly

For the rest of September can you:

Start to notice your inner critic when it pops up. Click your fingers and say “no Sophie (insert your name!) we are not going there.” Then start to notice whether you are gradually becoming aware of your inner critic a little bit earlier (rather than going into a shame spiral.). This is a win. 🎉 Acknowledge yourself for it and give yourself some love for it! This will slowly rewire your brain to stop indulging in the critical voice inside your head.

Write out the affirmations below that resonate with you. Write them everywhere you can - in your journal, save as a screensaver, write them on post it notes and put them on your bathroom mirror so you can repeat them silently in your head when you are brushing your teeth.

Affirmations for forgiveness:

1. I release the past and embrace the peace of forgiveness.

2. I forgive myself and others, allowing healing to flow through me.

3. I let go of resentment and choose to move forward with love.

4. I am worthy of forgiveness, and I offer it freely.

5. I embrace compassion and understanding in place of anger.

6. Forgiveness sets me free from the burden of the past.

7. I release all grudges and open my heart to healing.

8. I choose forgiveness as a path to inner peace.

9. I accept that everyone, including myself, is doing the best they can.

10. Forgiveness is a gift I give to myself and others.

We never got taught at school how important it is to forgive ourselves (and others - more on this another time), we never got taught how shame can stop us from being the best versions of ourselves and how it’s such a subconscious patterning - meaning that unless we take the steps to learn more about it, to learn more about how it might be holding us back, to learn more about how important compassion is, then we will never be able to live our lives in a truly expansive way. We also won’t have the capacity to truly believe in ourselves and the gifts we have. It’s always easier said than done but start to create a voice inside your head that is committed to forgiveness.

PLEASE comment below to share with me what has resonated with you in this post and which affirmations you will be bringing into your life this September!