Finding Forgiveness

This time of year can be great for some people, but not so easy for others. perhaps the challenge is feeling alone because of mistakes you’ve made in the past that cost you relationships. Perhaps you have family and friends around but the situation is, well, complicated.

I am speaking from experience with both of those challenges. The holiday seasons weren’t always easy for me because of those issues. Often they would add fuel to the depression and anxiety I was already struggling with. And because I know I am not alone in this aspect, I wanted to focus this week on something that helped me. Forgiveness.

First, lets start with my mistakes that cost me personal relationships. Forgiveness for myself was necessary to moving past that. Forgiving myself didn’t mean letting myself off the hook. Apologies, accountability, and making amends still matter. Yet forgiving myself was about recognizing that focusing on the negativity of the past will project negativity into the future. I can’t change the past and neither can you. Forgiving yourself means being honest about that.

Sometimes when you give yourself that compassionate space, you will see things more honestly. In my situation, I realized that I was just one part of a two-person equation. All relationships are more than just the sum of your own actions. And sometimes that realization will help you change the behaviors you regret and learn more positive habits for the future.

In my case, I realized some of my mistakes were because I never had a sufficient model for handling certain interpersonal relationships. I realized there were absences in my upbringing that made a big difference in creating the blind spots that I still struggle with. And that brings me to forgiveness of family.

Forgiveness for harmful actions by family members doesn’t mean you are letting them off the hook. It doesn’t even mean that you need to repair a broken relationship if doing so would violate your own boundaries or risk re-traumatizing you. Forgiveness isn’t for them. It is for you. Forgiving yourself frees you from the negativity of the past and so does forgiving someone else. But like I said, that doesn’t mean you allow the behavior at issue to continue.

Forgiveness can be hard. But for me, it has been an essential part of my recovery. If forgiveness is something you struggle with, something that you feel might be holding you back in your recovery, know that peer specialists at the LegalMind Society can help.