I Don't Know What it Means to Forgive Myself - Day 171

Wow, sorry for the misleading post title yesterday, everyone. 146 page views and only 5 people gave a +1 haha. Okay: I do not know how to actualize unconditional forgiveness of self and other in reality.

The truth is that I'm not sure that I understand forgiveness really at all. To revisit the definition:

for·give
/fərˈgiv/
Verb
1. Stop feeling angry or resentful toward (someone) for an offense, flaw, or mistake.
2. Stop feeling angry or resentful toward someone for (an offense, flaw, or mistake).

for·give·ness
/fərˈgivnis/
Noun
The action or process of forgiving or being forgiven.

Within these definitions I see that I do not understand and have not really understood how to forgive myself, how to stop hating myself and actually stop turning on myself and being my own worst enemy eating away at myself from within. I mean just saying or writing words isn't the work itself. How do I actually stop my mind? How do I actually stop myself from continuing to go back to these places of eating myself alive?

I haven't really even understood quite exactly what I might need to forgive myself for in order to stop all of this anger and resentment against myself. I mean what's going on when I just completely turn on myself? I don't really get it, and I'm not going to pretend like I get it. I feel pretty fucking lost quite frankly, and overwhelmed with all the various things I'm facing...

But I am able to reflect on some advice given to me not so long ago when I was experiencing extreme emotions and it was suggested that I just breathe. Just focus on my breath for an entire week and let that be the thing that I push myself to do, rather than expecting myself to deal with everything else.

Well I have plenty to deal with from within and without, between family issues, work stress, friendship problems, and my own tendency to rip myself apart from within through self doubt, self judgment, and self hatred.

I suppose that one point might be having unrealistically high expectations for myself, which is a point I've visited before. Expecting myself to just somehow magically be able to do something or basically not have to walk the steps of the process of getting there. "Forgiveness" is a "process."

So I bring my expectations back to: breathing, doing what needs to be done, and doing whatever I can to support myself through that, no matter what that looks like as long as it is self-honest in its starting point. I can't figure everything else out at the same time, and I can't figure anything out if I'm allowing myself to get overwhelmed and caught up in anxiety and self hatred and self judgments and self doubt.

So:

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that I am overwhelmed and that there is simply "too much" going on and that there is no possible way to proceed or no possible solution or no possible way to support myself practically through everything that I am facing.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself for having emotional reactions to the various things that I am facing in my personal and professional life.

I commit myself to no longer judge myself as my reactions and emotions. I commit myself to realize that I am under a lot of stress. I commit myself however to find stability for myself as a gift to myself through my breath so that I do not allow these perfectly understandable and expected emotional reactions to direct me, instead I direct myself to find solutions in very moment that are self supportive and best for all.

I commit myself to no longer judge myself as my reactions and emotions. That will be a tough one.

I will support myself through that by continuing however to realize that regardless of my emotions and reactions, I am the self directive principle of myself, and so to give myself the gift of myself and my own ability to stabilize myself to direct myself in every moment because in any given moment I am probably only really facing one thing, and so to direct myself in self responsible self support in regards to that one thing.

So that when I am at work I am not allowing myself to feel sorry for myself with what is happening in my family or personal life.

I realize that work is an extremely stressful environment. I realize too however that the way that I direct my reaction to the environment is my responsibility. I realize there are resources for support with this when I feel confused or when my reactions get out of my own hands, and at that point I commit myself to seek out those resources of assistance and support.

I commit myself to seek out the assistance and support that I may need as I see fit, and to not judge myself for perceiving that I need or want assistance or support.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to judge myself for feeling that I need assistance or support or another perspective in order for me to clarify my own perspective and stabilize myself with cross references of experience and perspective.

I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to believe that just because I am facing a lot of different stressful situations right now that this is the time that I should abandon process, when really it would seem as if this would be the time to embrace what I have learned and still can learn more of within this process.

I commit myself to support myself in process in whatever form that takes be it writing or reading or listening, or also even taking a step back to reflect and process within myself and my lived application.

I realize I am juggling a lot right now. I realize I do not have a lot of built-in trusted support systems. I realize that because of this it is easy for me to turn on myself even at this time when I most need to be here to support myself. I forgive myself for accepting and allowing myself to sabotage and abuse myself just because I feel like I don't have anyone or very many other people supporting me.

I commit myself to seeking out assistance and support at work from my coworkers.

I commit myself to seeking out assistance and support in relation to my family from my mom and other family members, because we are all going through this together.

I commit myself to allowing myself to feel whatever emotional reactions come up for me in relation to what is happening in my family because I realize that I have not allowed myself to see how I really feel and have instead suppressed my emotions and it is only with the most recent development where I see that it is having a direct impact on my life that I am seeing that I can no longer suppress the emotions, but again I commit myself to maintain self directive principle over myself and my life so that I do not accept or allow the emotions or the circumstances to scare me into hiding or suppression but instead face the reality of what is happening as something that we all must face: illness and eventual death.

I commit myself to continue the process of facing myself in my friendships and learning how I can support myself to create and maintain healthy self-responsible and self-supportive friendships.

I commit myself to breathing in every moment that I would otherwise judge, doubt, or hate myself: I breathe. I breathe in and out slowly and I stabilize myself in the physical and out of my mind.