How to forgive yourself

RN7916 · Mar 13, 2016

Agree with others who recommend changing your name, words are powerful!

i assume you are newly sober? Putting the drink/drug down is actually the easy part- working through all the crap that took you to drinking and drugging is how you STAY sober! I was all over the place when I first got sober, to be expected, we numb ourselves for so long! Not to mention just how imbalanced our brain chemistry is in the beginning....

It takes a lot of time and hard work. Be kind and patient with yourself- it doesn't come over night. Get a sponsor, do the steps, talk to other alcoholics/addicts. I love one on one counseling. I feel safe to speak about personal things I don't want the whole world to know about there.

I was told I gotta get in there and rip open all those scars that healed so badly because I took care of the wounds so poorly. Work through em and in the end, I will still have the scar but it won't be so gnarly. I thought the person who told me this was crazy!! But they were right...

And that resentment thing another poster talked about, yes, THAT! Resentment is baaaaad for us!

Hang in there, don't be so hard on yourself and take it day by day. Us addicts love a quick fix! Sending cyber hug!

CryssyD · Mar 15, 2016

Forgive yourself. It sounds so simple. But it's hard, sometimes.

I think that people who spend lots of time beating themselves up for being less than perfect tend toward substance abuse; we like to get away from ourselves, because we are so very demanding. I know I am hypercritical of myself, and I am prone to finding fault where others, perhaps, would not. But when I have done something wrong, I have learned that I must accept responsibility for it and then move on. You can't un-do whatever you've done, so you make amends and keep going. Sometimes relationships get broken and they can't be fixed; sometimes the fallout from past actions is hard to deal with. But you can't change what you can't change. You can only work with what you now have. It is what it is. Accept it and move on.

I learned to forgive myself when I learned that I can't change what has already happened, but I can do good things in the future and hope that they make up for the bad things I did in the past.

RCLPN · Mar 27, 2016

My addiction opened my eyes to prayer. If it wasn't for prayer I would not still be sober. Thats what helped me. One Day I Realized All This anger I Had took Way To Much consumed too much energy. That day I just let it go. I can't change my past. I no longer look and dwell in the past, this results on depression. I don't even try to look ahead to the future which caused my anxiety. I simply take one day at a time. Just like they told me when I did my 12 steps

RCLPN · Mar 27, 2016

Absolutely loved this response