Forgiving Self

Photo Credit to parents-are-people-too.com

Its been a while I am reading this book, Healing wounded relationships by Martin H. Padovani. This is my second time re-read this book. I would like to share this sub-chapter which I find it is difficult to put into action or practice. 

Why people slow to forgive themselves?

1. An element of self-hatred, anger, or disappointment with oneself for having done wrong.
2. Perfectionism. It is a disease that posits an unrealistic expectations to realistic expectations.
3. A sense of false pride or conceit, and an inflated sense of self, which considers oneself beyond failure and sin. 
4. An erroneous belief that self-forgiveness too easily removes the consequences of one's misbehaviour and even condones that behaviour.
5. The difficulty in accepting forgiveness and especially self-forgiveness.
6. Being overwhelmed by or stuck in guilt and shame.

Forgiving oneself doesn't mean we can forget what we have done. The memories will continue to be with us. Those memories, with all their difficult feelings, need to be worked through and sorted out, not buried, denied or avoided. The decision to forgive oneself opens the door, allowing our painful feelings to flow through us. We need to give ourselves permission to feel everything and anything. Then the emotional healing aspect of the process of elf-forgiveness begins. It is painfully long journey, involving identifying, sorting out, walking through, and talking about our difficult feelings, with God and others, until those feelings are understood, healed and diffused. 

In order to set ourselves free, we need to work out on this emotional healings. I know how difficult it is and often times I falls into the self-pity parties, again and again. By the Grace of GOD, nothing is impossible.