Beyond Forgiving Others: The Importance of Self-Forgiveness

Forgiveness is one of the powerful tools for healing and it has worked for many people. Although it's sometimes hard to do, the outcome is always positive. I have so many experiences of threatening not to forgive people and I suffered for it alone because my anger only drained my energy physically and mentally whenever I remember the incident.

I didn't know I was only punishing myself until I met someone whom I threatened not to forgive doing well, he has moved on so easily like nothing even happened, but there I was still venting unnecessarily. The worst part was that I couldn't make progress, I got hooked on the memories, and it hurts.

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Just like me, so many people find it hard to forgive. As much as I want to talk about forgiveness, it's not the regular discussion of forgiving those who hurt us.

Forgiveness is a two-way road, but we only care about one side, which is forgiving other people when they hurt us. A lot of us don't know that there is something called self-forgiveness and it's affecting us negatively.

I have always known what self-forgiveness means but didn't know many people lack the idea. I had to write about this because of an experience, it's about my friend who had issues in her relationship late last year. I knew about her relationship, which many of us were against, because the guy she was involved with didn't have a good reputation.

We all grew up together and he is someone who enjoys conflict. He has been involved with different girls we know, and his lifestyle was a red flag. My friend knew all of these things, but she believes people change. I know people do but he doesn't look like someone who would change.

She went into that relationship and it crashed after a short time. She felt ashamed of how it all ended, and I encouraged her to move on. I spoke from experience about why she needed to forgive him, let go, and move on with her life.

According to her, she had forgiven him, but there is this guilt lingering in her heart, because she knew who he was and still went ahead to date him. She hasn't been herself after the whole relationship drama and I kept wondering what was wrong. We spoke for some time and at the end of our discussion, I realized what she hadn't done was to forgive herself, which was worse than not forgiving others.

Self-forgiveness is one crucial part of forgiveness and it must be done if we truly want to heal completely. Many people are going about with this same guilt, but not relationship related, they go about with this burden, hurting, not knowing that self-forgiveness is all they need.

It's not as easy as I mentioned before, but reminding yourself that you are just another human capable of making mistakes can bring a bit of ease to this self-forgiveness journey.