How To Forgive Yourself: For Cheating, Mistakes, or Hurting Someone

By Kelsey Schultz, Ph.D. Candidate
Reviewed by Tchiki Davis, M.A., Ph.D.

Mistakes are easy to make, but forgiving ourselves for them is not. Learn more about what self-forgiveness means and how to forgive yourself for past mistakes.

How To Forgive Yourself: For Cheating, Mistakes, or Hurting Someone

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No human is perfect. In fact, human fallibility is one of the great enduring truths of the universe. So, if we know that mistakes are an inevitable part of life, then why is it so hard to forgive ourselves for them? How do we manage the feelings of guilt or shame over the mistakes we have made? And how do we allow ourselves to move forward after we’ve betrayed someone we love or treated someone unjustly?

Unfortunately, there is no one simple answer to these questions, but psychological research on self-forgiveness can offer us some insight into what the process of self-forgiveness consists of and how we can begin to master it. Let’s look at what science has to say.

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What Does It Mean To Forgive Yourself? (A Definition)

Self-forgiveness has been defined in a variety of ways. It’s been described as “a willingness to abandon self-resentment in the face of one’s own acknowledged wrong, while fostering compassion, generosity, and love toward oneself” (Enright, 1996) as well as “a shift from a fundamental estrangement to being at home with one’s self in the world . . . from an attitude of judgment to embracing who one is” (Bauer et al., 1992). Though researchers have not reached a consensus on a single, precise definition of self-forgiveness, most definitions include the following characteristics (Webb et al., 2017):

Self-acceptance
One of the primary features of self-forgiveness is self-acceptance. Some researchers even suggest that self-forgiveness is more accurately understood as a form of self-acceptance (Vitz & Meade, 2011). This understanding of self-forgiveness emphasizes accepting your fallibility, recognizing that you are an imperfect person and that you are not defined by your mistakes.

Willingness to accept accountability
This one might seem obvious considering that you can’t forgive yourself if you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong, but it’s a really important component of the process of self-forgiveness and is often the hardest and most painful step.

Genuine effort to change
This is an important factor because it’s the difference between true self-forgiveness and simply “letting yourself off the hook”. The honest desire to learn from your mistakes and to do better in the future is crucial.

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How to Forgive Yourself For Past Mistakes

The ultimate goal of self-forgiveness is to allow ourselves to move forward with our lives by learning from our mistakes. When we deny ourselves forgiveness and persist in self-punishment and self-loathing, we deny ourselves the opportunity to learn, grow, and live a more fulfilling and meaningful life.

Experts in the study of self-forgiveness suggest that one of the most critical components of self-forgiveness is the ability to “recognize that each person is part of a community of imperfect others who are mostly striving to be the best people they can be” (Jacinto & Edwards, 2011). With our fallibility and good intentions in mind, let’s look at the 4 steps to forgiving ourselves for our mistakes.

Steps To Self-Forgiveness: The Four R’s

Responsibility. The first step to self-forgiveness is accepting responsibility. This includes an honest assessment of what was in your control and the part you played in the transgression. It’s important to accept an appropriate amount of responsibility. We may be inclined to blame ourselves entirely for something when the responsibility was shared or avoid accountability when we were in the wrong. Both of these extremes will impede our ability to sincerely forgive ourselves and move forward. This stage also includes accepting your value, your inherent worthiness of self-love and self-respect, and making the decision to forgive yourself.

Remorse. Though undesirable, feeling some amount of guilt is actually a very important part of self-forgiveness. This doesn’t mean that you need to beat yourself up of course. Treating yourself harshly can be counterproductive, but truly empathizing with the person you have hurt (even when that person is yourself) and expressing those feelings can help you move toward healing and forgiveness.

Restoration. This is an action-oriented step in which you seek to make amends and repair any damage you might have caused. Restoration also includes identifying the behavioral patterns that led to the transgression so that you can understand where the harmful behavior came from and take measures to prevent it from happening again.

Renewal. This is the stage of personal growth from which you emerge with self-acceptance, self-compassion, and a greater understanding of yourself and your personal values. Renewal includes rewriting your story, synthesizing a new perspective of the world and the self that considers the reality of your past actions without using them to define yourself.

These four stages in the process of self-forgiveness can apply to any mistake or event that has left you feeling guilty, but let’s take a look at how these apply to a few specific examples.

How To Forgive Yourself For Cheating

If your goal is to repair the relationship, self-forgiveness is essential. Though feeling some amount of guilt is healthy and necessary, punishing yourself really only serves to focus your energy and attention on yourself, rather than focusing on your partner and the relationship you have with them. In fact, research has shown that when people are able to increase the benevolence they show themselves and decrease self-criticism, satisfaction with the relationship improves (Woodyatt et al., 2017, p 121).

Another important component is understanding the motivation behind the transgression. Agency, or a sense that you are in control of your actions, is a critical piece of self-forgiveness. Without understanding how the behavior came about, your ability to control that behavior in the future is undermined. When you understand the cause of your actions, you have a greater capacity to prevent the same outcome in the future (Woodyatt et al., 2017, pp 43-46). If you are interested in learning more about the motivations behind infidelity, Esther Perel’s book Mating in Captivity is a great resource.

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How To Forgive Yourself For Something Terrible

When we feel that we’ve done something terrible, it’s a recognition that we have violated our own values. To egregiously overstep our own boundaries can make us feel fractured, like we are simultaneously two incompatible selves. It becomes hard to reconcile the person we want to see ourselves as with the person who did that awful thing and we are often left with an identity that is incoherent.

Because taking responsibility requires identifying with the self that committed the act, this discontinuity in our identity can create additional barriers to self-forgiveness. One way researchers suggest we can regain unity and facilitate self-forgiveness is by affirming our values. That is, reaffirming your values and your commitment to them reinforces the notion that you are a complex, benevolent human who cannot be defined by your past mistakes. Recognizing this can help reconcile your conflicting selves and facilitate self-forgiveness.

Tips for affirming values

Do good. Researchers suggest that one of the best ways to reaffirm your values and promote self-forgiveness is to participate in altruistic activities such as volunteering for a charitable organization. Contributing to your community is a great way to reconnect with your values and encourage a positive, accurate self-concept that includes your imperfections rather than a self-concept that places your violated values at the center (Webb et al., 2017). For an example of facilitating self-forgiveness through positive contributions to the world, check out this talk by Thich Nhat Hanh:

Video: How Can I Forgive Myself and Others?

Connect with others. Social support and connection have been shown to be important parts of the self-forgiveness process (Levi-Belz et al., 2022). For example, research has shown that upon returning from battle, military personnel sometimes feel rejected and misunderstood by family and friends and can lose trust in romantic partners and society in general. This mistrust often results in feelings of isolation and insecurity (Griffin et al., 2019). Connecting with others is one way to help cultivate a sense of belonging, understanding, and empowerment (Woodyatt et al., 2017, p 230).
Create meaning. Deriving personal meaning from an event in which we violate our values has been shown to improve aspects of psychological well-being (Bryan et al., 2015). Reconstructing the event as a significant, transformative experience from which you have emerged a better, more empathic person can help you break free from the cycle of rumination and negative self-image and reconnect with your deeply held moral beliefs (Woodyatt et al., 2017, p 62).

How To Forgive Yourself For Ruining a Relationship

The end of any relationship, romantic or not, can be devastating, especially when we’re the ones responsible for the rift. Sometimes we have the opportunity to repair the relationship, in which case the self-forgiveness process may focus more heavily on making amends with the person we’ve harmed. But what do we do when there is no chance of repairing the relationship? How do we forgive ourselves in the face of a permanent loss?

As with other contexts, the process of self-forgiveness should begin with an honest consideration of what was within your control that led to the end of the relationship and what was not. Considering that sometimes the extent to which you hold responsibility can be ambiguous in interpersonal conflict, identifying an appropriate amount of responsibility can be particularly difficult. When this is the case, it may be helpful to seek out the input of others, such as a trusted friend or therapist, to help identify what role you played in the ending of the relationship (Woodyatt et al., 2017, p 301).

Another method scholars suggest could facilitate self-forgiveness is to write out a description of what happened. This description should include details concerning the circumstances surrounding the end of the relationship, the actions (or inactions) that you believe contributed to the end of the relationship, and the wants, needs, and motivations behind your actions (or inactions; Cornish, 2015). By writing out the story behind the end of the relationship, you can develop a deeper and more compassionate understanding of where you erred and what lessons you can learn from your mistakes.

How To Forgive Yourself For An Addiction

People with addictions often feel guilt and shame for the ways in which their addiction has impacted them and those around them. These feelings can be exacerbated by the societal stigmatization of addiction. People often cope with guilt and shame by using substances, which increases guilt and shame and ultimately serves to lock them into a cycle of substance use and self-contempt. This is why self-forgiveness is thought to be an essential component of addiction recovery and healing (Scherer et al., 2011).

Given the question of agency that arises when considering addictions, the process of taking responsibility may not be straightforward. In other words, if we don’t feel like we have control over our actions, it’s hard to feel accountable for damages that result from them. However, because true self-forgiveness requires agency – a sense that you have control over your behavior and can do better in the future – it is critical to accept responsibility for your actions to the greatest extent possible.

In addition to accepting responsibility, accepting yourself – in all your infinite complexity and humanness – is an important step in the process of self-forgiveness. Research suggests that people who are better able to sit with the discomfort caused by their remorse are more likely to forgive themselves (McGaffin et al., 2013), which can improve their capacity to abstain from substance use (Scherer et al., 2011).

Quotes On Forgiving Yourself

“You forgive yourself by realizing that nobody can act beyond their level of consciousness.” - Eckhart Tolle

“The truth about you (and all of us) is hard to accept, but it’s powerful and life changing when you do face it and engage with it. The truth is this: you are more flawed than you can imagine. But, miraculously, you are also far more valuable and cherished than you can imagine.” - E.L. Worthington

“It is such a great moment of liberation when you learn to forgive yourself, let the burden go, and walk out into a new path of promise and possibility.” – John O’Donohue

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Final Thoughts On Forgiving Yourself

Self-forgiveness is a skill that, when practiced, allows you to start the next chapter of your story, to let go of the debilitating narrative that says, “I am terrible and unworthy of love and acceptance” and replace it with “I am a fallible and precious human who learned an important lesson which has helped me to become more than I once was.” Each step in this process – taking responsibility, allowing yourself to feel remorse, taking action to repair the damage done, and renewing your values and identity – can all be challenging for their own reasons and may be more or less difficult in different contexts. However, self-forgiveness is a skill that can be learned and, like any other skill, requires practice and intention. As you move through your self-forgiveness journey, here are some affirmations to help you along the way:

Video: Affirmations for Self-Forgiveness

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References

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Bryan, A. O., Theriault, J. L., & Bryan, C. J. (2015). Self-forgiveness, posttraumatic stress, and suicide attempts among military personnel and veterans. Traumatology, 21(1), 40–46.
Cornish, M. A. (2015). Examination of an emotion-focused therapy intervention to promote self-forgiveness for interpersonal offenses. Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 76(2-B(E)), No-Specified.
Enright, R. D. (1996). Counseling within the forgiveness triad: On forgiving, receiving forgiveness, and self‐forgiveness. Counseling and values, 40(2), 107-126.
Griffin, B. J., Purcell, N., Burkman, K., Litz, B. T., Bryan, C. J., Schmitz, M., Villierme, C., Walsh, J., & Maguen, S. (2019). Moral Injury: An Integrative Review. Journal of Traumatic Stress, 32(3), 350–362.
Jacinto, G. A., & Edwards, B. L. (2011). Therapeutic stages of forgiveness and self-forgiveness. Journal of Human Behavior in the Social Environment, 21(4), 423–437.
Levi-Belz, Y., DIchter, N., & Zerach, G. (2022). Moral Injury and Suicide Ideation Among Israeli Combat Veterans: The Contribution of Self-Forgiveness and Perceived Social Support. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 37(1–2), 1031–1057.
Litz, B. T., Stein, N., Delaney, E., Lebowitz, L., Nash, W. P., Silva, C., & Maguen, S. (2009). Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans: A preliminary model and intervention strategy. Clinical Psychology Review, 29(8), 695–706.
McGaffin, B. J., Lyons, G. C. B., & Deane, F. P. (2013). Self-forgiveness, shame, and guilt in recovery from drug and alcohol problems. Substance Abuse, 34(4), 396–404.
Scherer, M., Worthington, E. L., Hook, J. N., & Campana, K. L. (2011). Forgiveness and the Bottle: Promoting Self-Forgiveness in Individuals Who Abuse Alcohol. Journal of Addictive Diseases, 30(4), 382–395.
Vitz, P. C., & Meade, J. M. (2011). Self-forgiveness in Psychology and Psychotherapy: A Critique. Journal of Religion and Health, 50(2), 248–263.
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Woodyatt, L., Worthington, E. L., Wenzel, M., & Griffin, B. J. (2017). Handbook of the psychology of self-forgiveness. In Handbook of the Psychology of Self-Forgiveness.