How to Forgive Yourself in Recovery

When you’ve struggled with addiction, whether it’s an alcohol, drug, or sex addiction, it’s easy to blame yourself. You may have a lot of guilt or shame from your past. Consequently, it may be challenging to forgive yourself for the problems your actions and choices have caused in your own life, let alone the lives of your loved ones. But learning how to forgive yourself is a key aspect of your healing and recovery process. 

Why It’s Important to Forgive Yourself in Recovery

Success Magazine describes self-forgiveness as showing mercy to yourself when you slip up, mess up, or fail to live up to your own ideals. It’s a process of accepting what you can’t change and learning from your mistakes, shares VerywellMind.com. At the same time, forgiving yourself involves releasing negative feelings you have in order to promote healing and personal growth, according to PostivePscyhology.com. 

From a recovery context, learning to forgive yourself is critically important to releasing the shame and guilt associated with your addiction. Even if you’re making progress toward long-term sobriety, it’s still common to carry these negative feelings with you in spite of your accomplishments. As your shame persists, it can turn toxic, leading you to feel unworthy of healing, love, or the good things in recovery. As toxic shame grows, it can drive you back into isolation, as well as lead to relapse as you seek to cope. Self-forgiveness prevents this vicious cycle from returning in your life.

Learning how to forgive yourself doesn’t mean you avoid responsibility for your past actions. Rather, you acknowledge what you’ve done and choose to not let it define who you are. By forgiving yourself, you create space to see yourself in a new light as someone who is capable of achieving positive change. This allows you to pursue your recovery with peace and confidence, leading to further healing as you move forward with your sobriety goals. 

What Gets in the Way of Self-Forgiveness?

While it may seem simple in practice, learning to forgive yourself can be a challenge in the recovery process. There are a number of internal barriers that you may face as you overcome addiction that can keep you from self-forgiveness, including: 

• Fear of letting go: You may think that forgiving yourself means disregarding your behavior or avoiding responsibility for your actions, which may feel like betraying those you hurt in the past. 
• Negative self-talk: Your inner voice may continue to point out your past mistakes or failures, preventing you from ever feeling good about forgiving yourself.
• Feeling unworthy: If your addiction has hurt others, you may think you need their forgiveness before you can ever forgive yourself.
• Unrealistic expectations: You may think you have to achieve perfect sobriety without any setbacks or relapses before you can think about forgiving yourself. 

How to Forgive Yourself in Addiction Recovery

So how do you forgive yourself in recovery? Seeking self-forgiveness isn’t necessarily something that happens overnight for most people. It’s a process that takes time and intentionality, as well as compassion and honesty. With that said, if you want to learn how to forgive yourself, here are some steps you can take:

1. Face the Truth About Your Addiction’s Consequences

Instead of minimizing, discounting, or trying to explain away your addiction, own up to the ways your behavior brought about harm to yourself and your loved ones. Honesty in recovery — especially with yourself — allows you to move forward with forgiveness.

2. Take Responsibility for Your Actions and Give Yourself Grace

Take responsibility for your actions, choices, and behaviors, as well as the collateral damage they caused. This may mean seeking out friends and family and directly apologizing to them in the process. At the same time, understand that you don’t have to right every wrong in order to hold yourself accountable. 

3. Fight Against Shame or Your Inner Critic

There may be an inner voice or negative self-talk that tells you that you don’t deserve forgiveness. Make it a point to challenge those thoughts to prevent further shame and secrecy. By doing so, you can begin to make room for self-compassion.

4. Pursue Positive, Loving Self-Talk

In order to forgive yourself, you have to stop beating yourself up. Instead, you need to be kind to yourself and build yourself up. Stay positive about the courage it takes to pursue recovery and amend past mistakes. And don’t forget to acknowledge your own accomplishments along the way.

5. Stay Focused to Growth

Self-forgiveness doesn’t mean you’ve finished recovery. Lasting sobriety is a lifelong goal. Commit to staying the course and continuing to grow, in spite of any future setbacks or challenges. 

We’re Here for You at Integrative Life Center

If you feel stuck on your self-forgiveness or recovery journey, know that there’s help available to you. At Integrative Life Center, we’re here to help you move forward with your healing and sobriety. Our aftercare and alumni programming offer connection, accountability, support, and continued therapy post-treatment. To learn more, contact us today. 

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