If you’ve struggled with toxic behavior in your life, you probably hold resentment towards yourself because of it. As someone that has a diploma in Self-Esteem, I’m going to help you deal with the resentment in the best possible way.
When someone has a toxic behavior, it is usually because of wrong patterns of behavior learned from parents. It’s not an excuse, but it can help to understand. If you’ve gone through this, you probably want a way out if you haven’t already. But dealing with the guilt and resentment towards yourself can make it challenging. Overall, the best thing you can do to forgive yourself is to strengthen your Self Esteem. Normally is harder for people that don’t have self esteem to forgive themselves. That’s why is crucial to do everything you can to take care of it. Here are some of the best things you can do to forgive yourself for being toxic or emotionally abusive:
- Accept what happened
- Understand Why it Happened
- Apologize to the people that dealt with it
- Try to Repair if damage was done
- Do a Firm Commitment to Change
After learning all this 5 things in more detail, you’re going to be a pro and super prepared to be able to forgive yourself for what you would consider unforgivable. You’re going to be able to boost your self esteem which will make it a ton easier for you to forgive yourself.
This post is all about the best 5 things you can do to be able to forgive yourself for being toxic.
Understanding Forgiveness
Let’s start by understanding what forgiveness actually is, so we can get there.
Forgiveness is the release of anger or resentment towards someone or something. Phycology Today has a good article about it.
Forgiveness is the ability to feel free of anger and resentment towards someone or something. You can realize if you’ve forgiven or not by noticing if you still get mad about the thing you have claimed to forgive. There’s mainly 2 pre requisites to forgiveness:
- Wanting to forgive
- That the person stops doing the action to be forgiven
Wanting to Forgive
There should be a valid reason why you would want to forgive someone, because if not, why would you want to?
To be sustainable the want, there should be a good reason why.
And a very valid reason to forgive someone is if they are a value to you. In other words, they matter to you and contribute to your happiness. If you have no desire to forgive yourself because what you did is unforgivable in your eyes, think about yourself as the highest value that you have. Because it is. You should be the person you are most willing to forgive!
This is going to contribute to your well being, and that is a very good reason to do it. Unless you prefer to suffer.
Forgiving can be challenging for many reasons, but don’t worry, in time is totally possible if you want to.
Stop doing the action to be forgiven
In order for forgiveness to be sustainable, there needs to be a change in the action being done. If not, you’ll sooner or later find it almost impossible to forgive.
Take this example to understand it better:
“A husband drinks, gets drunk and is physically or emotionally abusive to his wife. When he gets sober aguen, he feels really bad and apologizes for what he did. The wife says that she forgives him, she actually wants to, but then he does it aguen the next day. The same cycle repeats over the next several weeks. The weeks become months, and the months become years. Until it gets to a point where the wife just wants to get divorce.“
She has claimed to forgive him many times, but she’s coming to the point of realizing, that even tho she says she has forgiven him, she hasn’t in reality. She wants out, and doesn’t want to be with him anymore.
She may be able to forgive him, but being outside of the relationship because she won’t deal with his destructive actions anymore.
This is why the action to be forgiven needs to be stopped so that forgiveness can be sustainable over time.
Now that we’ve understood how forgiveness work, let’s focus on the 5 things you can do to help you forgive yourself.
1. Accept What Happened
This means, accept all the faults and all the things you’ve done that you wish you wouldn’t have done.
The past can’t be changed, that’s why it only needs to be accepted. You can’t change what happened, so the best thing to do is to make peace with your past, knowing that it won’t change and that there’s no use in feeling guilty for it anymore.
If you are having a hard time accepting it, start by accepting that you don’t want to accept it. And if you don’t even want to do that, then accept that you don’t want to accept that you don’t want to accept it, and so on.
Accepting what happened is making peace with it. This will undeniably help you to obtain the infrastructure needed to forgive.
2. Understand Why It Happened
Seek for the cause of the problem. For the root and all the reasons why you might’ve done it or been this way.
Normally people that struggle with toxic behavior learned it from their parents. And that’s a very logical explanation. Sadly at a very young age, you don’t have much options on how you are raised. It’s totally out of your control, until you become older and can decide what things you want to do and what things you don’t.
Understanding why you’ve had this behaviors can help you to be more compassionate with yourself, since you didn’t have any control on the way you were raised. This can help you to forgive yourself more easily.
Only now as an adult you can decide how you’re going to keep behaving in your life. Now you do have a choice. But you had no choice on how you were raised, you had no control over it. And you shouldn’t feel bad for things you can’t control.
3. Apologize to the people that dealt with it
If there was people that took your toxic behavior, they should be a priority to apologize to.
This can make you feel better about yourself, which will increase the chances of you being able to forgive yourself.
When you apologize, here are some tips to keep in mind while doing so:
- Be honest, sincere and caring
- Don’t over apologize
- Communicate they’re important to you
After doing this step, you will have increased the odds of you being able to forgive yourself.
4. Try to repair if damage was done
After apologizing, is good you always offer to do anything that might help minimize the harm done.
Maybe most times people will not ask for anything, but it’s good for your self esteem to offer it and to do so if it’s possible.
The power of replacing and repairing can be very beneficial for your well being. As well as it can help repair relationships.
If you broke a mirror, then go to the store and buy another one for the owner. This really shows a person is sorry for what happened.
5. Do a Firm Commitment To Change
The best way to end the process for you to be able to forgive yourself for toxic behavior, is by firmly committing to change.
Actions matter more than words, and what matters more than saying sorry and apologizing, is changing the action for good.
When you change the action that’s making you feel guilty, you will build self esteem. And as you keep going down this path, you’ll have built a lot of self love by the way that you’ve behaved.
Remember, when it comes to forgiveness, there needs to be a change in the action so that forgiveness can be sustainable. This applies if you want to forgive anyone, and it also applies to forgiving yourself.
Think about it, would you not get mad at yourself if you find that you constantly have a toxic behavior over and over aguen?
Inevitably you will find yourself struggling with forgiving yourself if you keep doing the same thing you want to forgive yourself about. That’s why is crucial to shift the action, and if you can’t shift it all the way, start little by little. Your goal should be to be better than who you were yesterday. Aim at improvement, regardless of if it’s little or big.
Don’t get frustrated if you can’t change all the way, this is common and what matters is if you’re doing progress.
Don’t give up on change, it’s possible, it’s real, it’s out there for you to pursue.
A great book you can read to understand what I’m saying above is The Six Pillars of Self Esteem. The 5 steps previously mentioned are based on it.
After doing all 5 steps and understanding them correctly, you will be super prepared to deal with resentment towards yourself in the best possible way. Just do the 5 steps, and then keep trying to forgive yourself. Remember, be a friend to you.
How do you forgive yourself for a terrible regret
If you’re dealing with something really terrible recently, it can be super challenging to deal with. Here are some things you can do to forgive yourself for a terrible regret:
- Acceptance: Accept everything from your feelings to what can’t be changed
- Seek to understand why it happened, compassionately
- Focus on what can be solved, and solve it.
- If there’s nothing that can be done, accept that.
- Focus on doing constructive things from now on
How do I stop feeling bad about my self?
If you struggle with constantly feeling bad about yourself, there can be 2 main causes. Which are:
- It’s people putting you down. There’s no real reason to feel bad.
- It’s the actions that you’re taking. There’s a real reason to feel bad. But you can locate it.
So, firstly, identify what is the cause of you feeling bad about yourself. Is it because of someone putting you down for no reason, or is it the actions that you’re taking. If it’s because of people putting you down, for you to be able to not feel bad about yourself, you need to understand that they are not right, and there’s absolutely no reason on why you should feel bad about yourself.
If you’re feeling bad about yourself, it can be because of destructive actions that you’ve taken that have caused you to have low self esteem. In this case what you need to do is change the destructive actions that you’re taking, and aim at building self esteem. If you build self esteem, you will be very capable of not feeling bad about yourself anymore. Self esteem is the solution for feeling bad about yourself.
Can you forgive someone for being toxic?
If you’re wondering if you can forgive someone for being toxic. The answer is Yes you can, but it requires that they work on changing the toxic behavior. Otherwise, you will find it immensly difficult to do so. Your ability to forgive, depends in 2 things:
- Purely your ability to let go
- The change of behavior in the other person
You can work on getting better at #1, but you also need help from the other person so that forgiveness can be sustainable over time.
This post was all about forgiveness and how to forgive yourself for being toxic that everyone that has dealt with toxicity should know about.
