Beating Yourself Up Over Something You Did?

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Have you ever done something that you weren’t proud of and then repeatedly beaten yourself up over it?

Perhaps you hurt someone with your words or actions and then replayed the incident in your mind thousands of times. Maybe your rumination led to many sleepless nights tossing, turning, and relentlessly torturing yourself about the episode.

Many of us can likely relate with this scenario. While it’s a common human experience, it’s also one that can cause intense internal anguish. Apologizing to the person we harmed, of course, is crucial, and the right thing to do to express our deep sorrow and smooth things over.

However, we shouldn’t stop there. Latest findings suggest that an apology in itself often isn’t enough to help us heal in the long run. Instead, we must go a step further and extend forgiveness to ourselves if we want to stop the pain.

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Previous research has found that when we accept the negative feelings of regret, guilt, and shame that accompany poor choices we made, we are able to more easily move on rather than staying in denial or continually beating ourselves up over a specific situation.

In a recent study of 235 individuals, researchers examined the role of apology in the process of self-forgiveness. They investigated whether having extended an apology to someone made a difference on the research participants’ level of self-forgiveness, and on their physical and mental health as well.

Study participants were asked to recall an incident in which they offended another person. They were then asked whether or not they apologized to the victim.

The researchers measured a number of emotional and physical well-being measures including anger, anxiety, depression, fatigue, and sleep disturbances to analyze the participants’ feelings and behaviors over the prior week.

The findings revealed that those who apologized to the person they hurt showed higher levels of self-forgiveness than those who did not apologize.

Surprisingly, the investigators also found that whether or not they apologized had no influence on the study participants’ physical or emotional distress; however self-forgiveness did.

In fact, it was found to be negatively correlated with both: Participants who forgave themselves experienced better sleep, decreased anger, anxiety and depression.

While apologizing alone in itself wasn’t enough to help improve health, the researchers found that apology does play a role in self-forgiveness. The findings suggest that apologizing to others may help us with forgiving ourselves. And self-forgiveness, in turn, may promote increased physical and mental well-being.

Replace Self-flagellation with Self-forgiveness for Better Health

Defined as the moral virtue of forgiving extended to the self (Enright, 1996), self-forgiveness is a valuable gift we can give ourselves. However, researchers agree that it is not easy. It’s often harder than forgiving others because we tend to be harder on ourselves than other people.

Leading forgiveness researcher Everett Worthington says it’s important to forgive ourselves responsibly. It is not simply about feeling better about ourselves or “letting ourselves off the hook.”

Instead, we must take the necessary action to restore the moral damage we might have inflicted on ourselves by hurting others. Equally important, he says, is to take the steps to repair the damage done socially. Both are needed.

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While the process is tough, self-forgiveness is something we can all practice to banish unpleasant feelings of guilt, remorse, and shame. Based on Worthington’s research, here are six steps we can take to forgive ourselves:

• Receive Forgiveness (from God or the Universe). Make things right with what you consider sacred. For many, that will be with God. For others, it might be the universe.
• Repair Relationships. Try to fix things with anyone you might have hurt. If your actions caused irreparable harm, find some way that you can make a positive difference in the world so additional people are not hurt by your prior acts.
• Rethink Ruminations. Resist being consumed by regret and remorse. Let go of any perfectionistic tendencies.
• REACH Emotional Self-Forgiveness. Apply to yourself the steps to REACH forgiveness that we previously discussed: Recall the hurt as objectively as possible, Empathize with yourself, Give yourself an Altruistic gift, Commit to forgive, Hold onto forgiveness.)
• Rebuild Self-Acceptance. Acknowledge your common humanity. Accept yourself as worthy, despite your natural flaws.
• Resolve to Live Virtuously. Choose not to make the same mistakes again.

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Toxic Forgiveness: Why 'Forgive and Forget' Doesn't Really Work

In sum, while self-forgiveness is hard, with practice we can learn to stop berating ourselves and reliving the hurt. Apologizing to others is the moral thing to do, and it is also good for self-forgiveness, which can restore our relationships and our connection with ourself, and ultimately boost our physical and mental health.