Forgiving myself as forgiving another ..

iVillage Member
Registered: 06-09-2003
Forgiving myself as forgiving another ..
4
Tue, 03-08-2005 - 11:43am
Why is it hard for a person to forgive herself?  Should it be as easy as forgiving others??


CeeCee Phone Shocker
 


 


 


CeeCee

iVillage Member
Registered: 03-26-2003
Tue, 03-08-2005 - 4:22pm
Good question CeeCee. It's an issue I've been dealing with the last year or so myself, and I'm not any closer to an answer. It seems to be human nature though, that we are most critical of ourselves (I'm thinking particularly of physical looks) so this falls right into the same pattern.
iVillage Member
Registered: 02-27-2004
Wed, 03-09-2005 - 2:45pm

I think that it is harder to forgive ourselves because we somehow seem to expect higher standards of ourselves than we do of others. We accept that others are 'only human' but when it comes to ourselves we seem to think that this doesn't apply and expect that we should do everything to perfection. Whether this stems from our childhood when everything we did wrong was constantly pointed out to us, or from the media that often portrays characters seemingly without flaws or some other reason I'm not sure but it seems to me that we set impossible standards for ourselves that we don't expect of others and when we fail to meet those standards we internalise it adding guilt, which in our eyes only adds to the things that we have failed at. It becomes a viscous circle with us failing to forgive ourselves for what we perceive we have done wrong, followed by feelings of guilt, followed by failing to forgive because we don't think we are worthy of forgiveness.

Logically I think that it should often be easier to forgive ourselves because we have the full facts and are aware of the demands/reasons for our perceived failure, whereas with other people we often only have brief details, however the reality is usually the reverse.

I wish I had a solution to this conundrum but I don't ;-0

Carol

iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
Wed, 03-09-2005 - 5:49pm

Well said, Carol.


iVillage Member
Registered: 09-20-2003
Sun, 03-13-2005 - 12:11pm

>>>Logically I think that it should often be easier to forgive ourselves because we have the full facts and are aware of the demands/reasons for our perceived failure, whereas with other people we often only have brief details, however the reality is usually the reverse.<<<

I agree that logically this should work. However, I think realistically the fact we know all these things about ourselves is why it truly is harder to forgive ourselves. We can forgive others because we don't know all the facts. We can understand that perhaps that which we don't know is why the other person did or did not do whatever it is we are forgiving them for.

I wish I could forgive myself easier. I am so super critical of myself and ruminate forever on my actions.

Brightest Blessings,
Annika

Brightest Blessings, Annika