The Other Half of Forgiveness

    It seems like people are always urging forgiveness, doesn't it? Forgive anybody who may have hurt you or done you any kind of wrong. Forgive them even if they don't ask for it or deserve it. Forgive them because they may not even know or understand that they have hurt you. Forgive because holding onto grudges, anger, and other negative feelings only actually hurts you in the long run. 

    People love the idea of forgiveness, but they only ever really talk about half of it. Half of forgiveness is forgiving other people, and, yes, that's really important. Forgiving yourself is the other half of forgiveness that gets ignored a lot, but it's just as important, if not slightly more important, especially for those of us that live with a mental health condition or have endured some kind of trauma.

    If there is one thing that I've learned about life with a mental illness it's that it involves a lot of forgiveness. This is a point that my therapist really emphasized with me in the early days of my time with her. I would be guilt-riddled over something, usually my intrusive thoughts, some perceived moral shortcoming, or some incident in which I wasn't as kind or selfless as I thought I should have been (as is often the case when you're dealing with something like OCD), and I would tell her how awful I was still feeling despite the fact that I had prayed about it. She would always say something like, "So, you prayed about it, and asked for forgiveness, but...have you forgiven yourself for it yet?" I used to HATE that question, because forgiving yourself is HARD, friends. Saying to yourself, "I forgive myself for my past mistakes," and actually MEANING IT, and then actually working to change your faulty thinking patterns so that you can let go of the things you forgave yourself for is HARD.

    Learning to forgive yourself is hard for people with healthy brains, and it's even harder for those of us with mental health conditions because, a lot of the time, our mental health condition can make us believe that we don't really deserve forgiveness from anyone, let alone ourselves (which is a lie). Learning to forgive yourself is a crucial part of the healing process, though. How can you heal from your past if you can't forgive yourself for the things for which you are carrying the blame? How can you move past an issue if you can't forgive yourself for the role you think you played in it? The answer: You can't. So, you have to first extend the same forgiveness to yourself that you extend to everyone else so you can leave the past where it belongs: in the past.

    Forgive yourself for all the situations you handled the wrong way in the past in regard to your mental health before you learned the right way. Forgive yourself for all the times you let your mental illness make you believe you were unworthy or undeserving of forgiveness or anything else for that matter. Forgive yourself for all the time and opportunities you feel like you let your mental illness steal from you. Forgive yourself for all the times you felt like your mental health condition ruined something. Forgive yourself for everything you didn't become that you thought you should have. Forgive yourself for all the time you wasted avoiding getting the help you needed. Forgive yourself so you can start to heal. Forgive yourself because you don't deserve to carry the extra weight of the guilt, shame, and anger over things you can't go back and change. Forgive yourself so you can learn to live completely in the present.

    I'll end with this: Yes, forgiving other people is important to your overall well-being, but that's only half of forgiveness. The other half, forgiving yourself, is just as important, if not more important to your mental health. Learning to forgive yourself is difficult (possibly one of the most difficult things I've had to learn), but it is crucial to the healing process. You have to forgive yourself for your past before you can work through it and move on from it. And, remember, if your mental illness makes you think that you don't deserve or are unworthy of forgiveness, it's lying to you.