Self love pathway - Series Pt3: Forgive Me

Once you become more aware of your own unhealthy patterns and beliefs, it's time to make a choice:

You can choose to face the shame that surfaces once you realize you’ve been the one breaking your own heart all along. You can welcome the guilt you’ll inevitably feel from knowing you have been the one pushing people away, abandoning yourself and/or your needs for the sake of others. 

OR - You can ignore it all and continue on the same pathway you were on. 

Let me just say that if you were curious to start with self awareness, this proves that you already love yourself enough to learn to forgive some of these actions and finally start to heal. 

Forgiveness is a choice. It's by no means an easy “out” for any of the mistakes you’ve made and the people you may have hurt in the process (yes, this includes the hurt you've one hundred percent caused yourself) but, by looking at it dead in the eye, you’ll begin the process of earning your own forgiveness. 

Self forgiveness provides a wonderful opportunity for important growth and emotional health & well-being. We all make mistakes. We all make decisions that come with consequences in life. Self-forgiveness helps separate who you are, from the mistakes you have made. It is from here that you can learn from your decisions and find ways to make amends when possible.

So how do we begin to forgive, where do we even start? 

Identify & understand the things you need to forgive yourself for & what emotions come up for you when you do. Feeling your emotions of shame, guilt or resentment are a necessary part of the self-forgiveness process and we can no longer avoid them. Owning any mistakes is an essential part of the forgiveness process.

The next piece will be reflecting on what was going on for you during this time. Here you will gain an understanding of and learn the possible reasons for your behaviour, action or words. This is not to justify any behaviours, but bringing awareness to the situations so that you can calm & soothe the inner critic, opening up more room for forgiveness. 

This process is transformative because you are identifying that this is just a belief system and through this stage of self- forgiveness you will release it and learn to have empathy & compassion for yourself. 

For some of us, this part of the process can be enough to be able to move through it & move on. For others that might need more - inner child work and healing can be incredibly beneficial. Connecting with your younger self enables you to rewire some of those limiting beliefs at the root, when they were first formed. 

Inner child healing is getting to the root cause of patterns and beliefs that were planted by you, your perceptions of the world, people places and things, that you still have TODAY. 

We do inner child healing so that you can release those beliefs & patterns and then choose more empowering patterns and habits that change behaviours. There’s a balance of unlearning and learning or relearning, and it can be done with any and all beliefs. 

By addressing our unmet needs at the root, this helps clear the old belief system so that you can choose to do better for your mind body, health and wellbeing. The idea is to stop running off an old belief system, heal old pain and hurt - enabling more and more compassion, understanding & forgiveness.

Next up: Self Acceptance