Forgiving yourself can be one of the most challenging yet liberating aspects of personal growth. We often hold ourselves to impossibly high standards and struggle to let go of past mistakes, which can fuel inner conflict and shame, and create a separation within ourselves.
Self-forgiveness isn't about erasing past actions or pretending they didn't happen, but instead, it's about accepting yourself, learning from your experiences, and moving forward.
Journaling is a powerful tool in this process. It offers an intimate, reflective space where you can explore your thoughts, emotions, and experiences in a non-judgmental way. Through the act of writing, you can start to unravel the layers of guilt or regret and find your way forward.
In this article, we'll explore a series of journaling prompts designed specifically to guide you on your journey toward self-forgiveness. These prompts will help you confront your mistakes with honesty, understand the context behind your decisions, and ultimately, offer yourself the kindness and understanding you deserve.
By engaging in this reflective practice, you'll be taking a significant step toward healing and embracing a more compassionate view of yourself.
Understanding Self-Forgiveness
Forgiveness is an interesting and crucial part of healing. It’s essentially closing the door on the past, and giving yourself the opportunity to move forward. I often see a great amount of resistance to forgiving one’s self in the work I do, and it often stems from the shame one feels about the mistakes they’ve made. We all make mistakes. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, and we’ve all felt that sting of regret, wishing we could have done things differently.
However, learning from our mistakes is how we evolve, and I truly believe that is why we are here. We learn, evolve, and grow into our best selves, and it’s not an easy task! It requires us to really be vulnerable, and honest with ourselves, and the act of self-forgiveness is no different.
Before we get into the journaling prompts to help you forgive yourself, I want to make clear what self-forgiveness is, and what it is not.
Self-Forgiveness IS:
· A process of acceptance
· A personal choice that you make with your own free will
· An opportunity to evolve as an individual
· Permission to close an old chapter and move forward
Self-Forgiveness IS NOT:
· Simply saying the words or going through the motions
· A process you can be forced into
· A sign or weakness
· Dismissing or denying what happened
Forgiving yourself is a process of acceptance, which may not happen quickly. Sometimes we need to marinate in the idea first, and slowly work toward acceptance and forgiveness. Wherever you are at in your journey of self-forgiveness, this journaling exercise will help you gain clarity and cultivate a sense of compassion.
Journaling for Self-Forgiveness
The following journaling prompts are part of the process I take my clients through in a Hypnotherapy session. In a hypnotherapy session, you are in a state of trance, which means your conscious, “thinking” mind has taken a back seat and we can get straight to the emotional subconscious mind.
With that being said, these journal prompts will still be useful even in a conscious state. My advice would be to give yourself time and space where you can be with your thoughts without distraction, and take a few grounding breaths before you start.
Journaling, when done in this way, can actually bring you into a light trance state, which can allow you to work through problems with more ease, and process your emotions with less interruption from the conscious mind. If you find that you’re having trouble, take a break and come back later.
Journal Prompts to Forgive Yourself
The following is a journaling exercise to help you forgive yourself. The idea is that we can imagine meeting the part of you that you cannot forgive and begin to understand it in a new light. It’s absolutely crucial to lead with curiosity and to be non-judgmental during this exercise.
Judgement will simply take you around and around in circles, which is likely what you’ve already been doing and why you’re here. So for the sake of this exercise, journal without judgement.
Step 1: Meet the Part that You Can’t Forgive
Imagine you could meet the part of you that you can’t forgive. See yourself at the age that you were when you did the thing that you feel was unforgivable. Imagine telling this part of you exactly how it’s hurt you with the choices it’s made.
Step 2: Uncover the Positive Intent
Behind every action is a positive intent. A positive intent doesn’t always look positive from the behavior standpoint, but the intention behind it comes from a positive place.
For example, if you betrayed your partner by having an affair; the behavior was destructive and negative, but your intention behind it could have been to seek love and connection, or to seek excitement, or to seek affection. The intent is positive – it’s not bad to want any of those things – but the behavior was destructive to your relationship.
Try to use this same perspective to uncover the positive intent behind this Part of you. Ask this part of you Why did you do (the thing you did)? What were you really seeking? How did you want to feel?
Step 3: Identify the Pain or Discomfort
Once you’ve uncovered the positive intent, you have a greater understanding of why you did what you did. To take this another step further, imagine asking this part of you what it was trying to avoid with the destructive behavior.
To use the same infidelity example as above, you might find that this part of you chose to have an affair to avoid the discomfort that might come with having an honest conversation with your partner about how you feel or what you need. Perhaps there is a lot of fear in them possibly rejecting you or shaming you, whereas it felt easier to simply find what you needed elsewhere.
Ask this part of you What kind of pain or discomfort were you avoiding by [doing what you did]? What felt worse than [doing what you did]? This is an important step, so take your time.
Step 4: See the Protector in You
This step will be very difficult if the prior steps haven’t been done. However, if you’ve been able to reflect on this part of you with curiosity and now understand the positive intent behind it’s actions, and the pain that it was trying to avoid, you can start to see this part of you in a new light.
This part of you is actually a Protective Part. It was trying to protect you from that deeper pain. Of course, you would do things differently, but it’s only because you have more life experience and the advantage of seeing the consequences of that decision. That part of you was doing what it could to protect you with the resources it had at the time.
With curiosity and compassion, ask this part of you why it was so important to protect you from that pain. It may share with you how it’s felt that pain in the past, and how it was so painful at that time.
For example, the part that had the affair was trying to avoid the pain of rejection they thought they would face if they were honest and vulnerable with their partner about how they felt or what they needed.
Perhaps the reason that felt too scary or painful to face was because this part has faced rejection before, from a different partner, or perhaps a friend or a parent. It’s still holding the pain from that rejection, and so would do anything – including being unfaithful – to avoid that same pain again.
Ask this part of you What made you feel like that pain or discomfort was too much to bear?
Step 5: Comfort that Part at it’s most Vulnerable
This part of you has been in pain. It’s showing you why it felt it had to avoid that pain again.
Imagine seeing this part of you at the age you were when you experienced the initial painful experience.
In my example, that would be when the initial rejection from a previous partner/friend/parent happened. See yourself in that painful, vulnerable place, and understand that this is what that part of you was trying to avoid.
Imagine embracing this younger part of you and comforting it in it’s most vulnerable state. Imagine telling this part of you what you wished you would’ve known back then. What did that younger you need to understand that would’ve made this experience less painful?
If This Process Feels Challenging
If you’ve been able to move through this journaling exercise is compassion and curiosity, you will have a much greater understanding of the motivation and pain behind the choices you made. You can see your past self in a new light, and with that, have a sense of acceptance that you did what you did because a part of you was too afraid to face a deeper pain that you’ve been carrying.
You might find that this process has allowed you to have a greater understanding of yourself, or, if you struggled to have non-judgement, or to access deeper parts of you, it may have felt like you didn’t get much. That’s okay.
Forgiveness is a process, and this work can be more difficult in a conscious state. In hypnosis, you can quiet the conscious mind so that you can access the deeper emotions at play. This allows the process to feel more natural and effortless, rather than feeling like you’re trying to pull information out of yourself.
Conclusion
Self-Forgiveness is a process of healing through acceptance, and these five journaling prompts can help you forgive yourself, and reframe your perspective so that you can truly move on.
If you feel like a more personalized approach would be more effective, feel free to check out my private hypnotherapy sessions. Self-forgiveness can feel much easier to achieve when in a trance state where the logical mind has taken the back seat.
If you’d like to learn more about hypnosis, check out this article where I go into more detail about the process and what makes hypnotherapy such an effective tool for healing. You can even try hypnosis free with my 12 minute Think and Feel Positive Hypnosis available instantly.
If you have questions and would like to speak with me directly to see if hypnosis is the right fit for you, you can book a free 30-minute consultation where we can meet and discuss your goals.
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