Forgiveness

7 Reasons You May Struggle to Forgive Yourself

If you can’t exonerate yourself for misdeeds, here’s what to explore.

Posted November 20, 2024 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

Key points

However justified they may be, it doesn’t help you—or anyone else—to hang onto feeling of guilt.
Your guilt is how, subconsciously, you’re taking personal responsibility for your misbehavior.
It’s hard to achieve the self-forgiveness necessary to make peace with your past and evolve further.
Considering what precipitated the mistake may require you to examine uncomfortable truths about yourself.

Regardless of how warranted your self-righteous emotions might be, rationalizing why you took advantage of another, it doesn’t help to hang onto feelings of guilt either. Personal recrimination for abusing someone out of egocentric self-interest manages only to degrade your self-image, prompting you to feel that given such misdeeds in your history, you’re not good enough. And maybe can never be good enough.

Obviously, that adversely biased stance doesn’t really serve your welfare, nor does it contribute to anyone else’s.

Possessed with enduring feelings of guilt actually suggests just the opposite of seeing yourself as totally blameless. Plus, consider that having violated your ideals, your very guilt is how, subconsciously, you’re taking responsibility for your errant behavior.

If you’re to forgive yourself for having committed some breach and are motivated to learn what you need to from the experience, getting beyond feelings of guilt is what ultimately is called for.

Nonetheless, here are 7 reasons why it can be so hard to achieve the self-forgiveness requisite to making peace with your past and felicitously evolving as the older individual you now are:

1. Emotional Burdens. If you hold yourself to unrealistically lofty standards, when you’ve violated such self-imposed ideals, committing acts that have caused others pain, you’ll suffer from feelings of guilt, shame, and regret. And once these feelings take hold, it’s hard to move beyond them.

2. Perfectionism. If you believe you should never make mistakes, your overblown sense of responsibility and inability to accept your limitations will compel you to stand in negative judgment on yourself whenever, however inadvertently, your behavior led to misusing or damaging others—and yourself, too.

3. Fearing the Perception of Others. If you worry that candidly acknowledging your mistakes will lead others —whether strangers, friends, or society in general—to evaluate you harshly, you’ll defensively avoid seeking their forgiveness.

4. Self-Deception. If self-protectively you minimize your blameworthy role in situations too tempting for you to have resisted, or you shifted blame onto external factors rather than taking full responsibility for your culpable actions, practicing self-forgiveness will be elusive.

5. Identity Threats. If your errant behavior caused others substantial harm, your fundamental sense of self-worth will be threatened, so that self-forgiveness may indeed feel irresponsible. After all, your actions were incompatible with your ideals, so such forgiveness may feel “unearned.”

6. Going Public With Your Flaws. If at all possible, acknowledging the harm you did to another makes it incumbent on you to atone, or make amends for it. And that requires ample moral courage to take steps to repair the relational damage you’ve committed.

7. Self-Reflection Can Be Painful. Considering what precipitated the mistake can be extremely difficult, for it typically involves examining uncomfortable truths about yourself that you might be wary of facing.

Still, boldly standing up to these difficulties as the imperfect human you (and all the rest of us) are is essential in promoting your healthy evolution.