How to forgive myself over past 10 years

LegacyUser

Hey guys,

Bit of a long post so sorry about this. I will try to summarise as best I can but basically it goes from having a great life to self-destructing and finding myself again. Having started to find myself recently, I need to be able to forgive myself as I will illustrate below.

Ten years ago:

I was a happy, popular sporty young (22) man in university. I loved life. I had a lot of friends, a few different girlfriends, my family had some money and were working. Relatively suddenly, due to the recession my father's IT company went bust. A lot of our family friends companies went bust too. Due to pressures here and elsewhere in their relationship, my parents split up and my mother moved out. It was a horrific breakup which dragged on for years and was extremely traumatic. My parents probably each had a nervous breakdown and my brother dropped out of school before his Leaving Cert due to stress (which he has never retaken). We went from having anything we wanted in a middle-class sense, to having nothing. The house was nearly taken from us by the banks. I dropped out of my university course and dropped out of another one the year after. too Due to the recession, jobs were scarce and I had very little money at all. I lost interest in women and any relationships that I did get into were toxic. They all ended quite badly.

Due to different stresses on me (emotional, financial etc.) I could not join some friends on their trips abroad, despite being a strong part of those groups and that would make me feel bad. I started to drink heavily and would have big mood swings. I would verbally and physically lash out and I lost a lot of friends. I lost my dignity on some occasions here too. This is what I regret most. The friends I did keep, were not good for me. I stopped sports and put on a lot of weight. The thing outside my control that I regret most is losing a close extended family member to suicide. He was a great friend to me. During these ten years, I had little if any support. During this time however, I did my best to keep certain family admin things going.

Fast forward 10 years:
I completed my degree finally. I completed a masters and had to emigrate to find work which I did. I worked abroad for 3 years and have returned to Ireland. My brother is finally working after years of doing nothing and we are both drink and drug free. Our parents are also somewhat better after what was a horrific breakup 10 years ago. I have a plan to continue to lose weight and learn some new sports. We are all working and getting on - finally.

So what's the problem?
At 32, I feel as if I am just starting my life properly now. I feel as if 10 years of my life was taken from me. I don't remember a lot from those ten years and I put it down to stress to be honest. Due to weight gain, dropping out, family pressures, and lack of money in the past, it is only now that I feel that I am back to 'normal'. I cringe at some of how I acted in the past. Sure most was down to stresses that I didn't deal with and didn't have anyone to help me with but that is no excuse.

What I would like to know is - how do I forgive myself? Has anyone else forgiven themselves for stuff? Can I come to terms with the past?

Perhaps living well is the best way to salute the past.

Thanks folks. x

Jasper_

Youtube - Sam Harris free will

Sit and have a proper listen to what he is saying. How you acted is the only way you could have acted. Free will is an illusion.

This has helped me greatly in forgiving my past self.

ginandtonicsky

You forgive yourself by living the best life possible now. Take nothing for granted, nurture your relationships and friendships, hold your family close, work hard and always make time for fun and silliness. Live for joy now and don’t dwell on what happened yesterday.

Practically, I would recommend incorporating 10 minutes of mindfulness into your day (Calm app is a great way to get started). Write down 5 things you are grateful for every day, no matter how small they are. Focus on getting your fitness up and exercise every day. Personally the feel good endorphins from that have changed my quality of life.

For what it’s worth, you sound like an inspiring individual who has learned some very harsh but valuable life lessons early on in your youth. Many of us coast through our 20s and get these lessons later in life and aren’t as well equipped to handle them as you clearly are. You’ve been to the brink and you’ve come back and started anew. Don’t underestimate yourself. None of us are saintly when faced with these tough times in life. And 32 is young! The world is your oyster. Try to be kind to yourself, life is much easier that way x

cannotlogin

You are extremely hard on yourself. A lot of people do a lot of stupid immature things in their 20s that they regret and that is without having to deal with any of the things you went through.

Sounds like everything within your family unit fell apart and it's not surprising that you began to unravel when all of the stability you were used to was removed. It's a natural reaction - you acted in the only why you knew how at the time.

Sounds like you have got everything else back on track and forgiving yourself is the final step in living the better life. The 10 years cost you a lot and you can cap it at 10 if you let go now. If you don't, it'll cost you more years. You can't change it, so draw a line under it and live a good life now.

completedit

Enjoy man. You are now a young 32 year old. You've been through the ringer already and had to grow up quick but now it's your time to enjoy yourself and reward yourself for the turnaround.

Augme

Have you considered reaching out to the friends you lost because of your behaviour? It might help. Not necessarily to get them back in your life but even just to apologise for your own benefit.

KikiLaRue

You mention you’re drink and drug free. Are you in a 12 step programme?

I know not everyone is into it but Step 4 (where you write out all your resentments), Step 5 (where you share that list with your sponsor and they help you work out your part/ what you might have done differently) and Step 9 where you make amends to the people you hurt were very useful to me for letting go of difficult parts of my past.

Some relationships may heal, others may not but you’ll know you did what you could to right the wrongs.

LegacyUser

Hi all - OP here.

Thank you for the positivity guys. It has really warmed me up and made me look forward to living positively.

KikiLaRue: no, I am not in a 12 step programme. While I now live sober, I have the odd beer now and then.

With regards to your comments and Augme's sentiments, I don't know if reaching out to people would work. When my personal issues arose, I was completely swept up in it. I became mean and bitter and lashed out pretty badly at friends and girlfriends. I have regrets over this and yes, emotionally it probably holds me back a bit. Saying sorry would probably help ME but I am unsure as to whether it would be good for some of them, turning back up to say sorry.

There are two sides to it.

1) I had a massive fall from grace and was hit by an awful lot of different stresses at once with absolutely no support system. I had to try to keep my family members on the straight and narrow as no one else could/would. Due to all of this and not taking care of myself, I lashed out verbally and emotionally to a lot of people around me with little explanation.

2) While all of the above is true, I was very verbally mean to people. I was horrible and acted the same. I cheated on, fought with and mouthed off to people around me.

What galls me is all of the above. That is NOT me. I have a great heart and am a people person (easy saying that on a forum, I suppose) But it's true. For the past 4 years I have been engaged with national charities and have references for my work, character and behaviour. I was just bitter before that and twisted mean from not being able to process everything that was going on.

Should I apologise for my behaviour to people in the past?

LegacyUser

Ah, OP, you’re being very hard on yourself. I think we all take very hard hits at some point in our lives and for some of us it is later on but I think it’s actually a sort of a positive thing to have it earlier if you know what I mean. Like ginandtonicsky said, you got those hard times early on. You know now the value of things and what matters and what really doesn’t. Try and examine the things that you learned from this and can take with you into your life now. I reckon many of us aged 32 lost a good chunk of our youth to the recession in some way or another. Some days I feel I’m only starting to live in the last 2-3 years and I’m only doing things I should’ve been doing at 25 but it was just the way it all fell. The timing was all wrong. You probably think about all of the ‘what ifs’ and how would life be if the recession never happened. As a few people have said, just focus on living your best life now. That doesn’t mean forgetting those darker times totally because those times are what make you the person you are today and you sound like a very strong and stable person today. But don’t think you have to ‘forgive’ yourself for anything. I’d say you did just as good and even better than anyone in the circumstances would have. Indeed a lot would sink (and no shame in it either) but you swam. Be kind to yourself. Smile. Breathe. Live life to the full now and let you and your family be kind to each other.

Ellie2008

I read your post, got to the end & had to re-read it as I couldn’t see what you had to forgive yourself for & tbh I still can’t. My reading of it is that due to the many many pressures you were experiencing at the time you went off the rails when you were young. So did I to be frank & I didn’t have much reason to. You are still young as others have pointed out. Wipe the slant clean yes some of the things that happened probably make you cringe but nothing you’ve described is so terrible it can’t be let go.

You can’t do anything about the past, it’s the past! Glad to hear things are going better for you now & for your family. Wipe the slate clean & pump all your energies into getting the most out of life now. I’d suggest volunteering with young people would be a good use of your time & help you see that you aren’t so different to many other young people. It might help you feel that you are atoning for sins past if that’s something you feel you need.

I’m very sorry re the suicide, a terrible loss to suffer, take care of yourself.

KikiLaRue

Well, in AA we get told to do it like this: You go to the person, admit what you did wrong, ask if there is anything you can do to make amends. You can also say something like "Is there anything else I did that I haven't mentioned that you want to talk about?" because it's likely there is.

If those people tell you to F off, that's what you do - you walk away knowing that you've done what you can to repair the damage.

But a lot of the time that doesn't happen, an apology can mean a lot to people, even after years. You may or may not repair the relationships - it's likely that in some cases you will, but either way you will have done your best.

The only exception to this (in AA terms) is if, as you mentioned, an apology would do more harm than good. Say you slept with someone who was married, you wouldn't go and apologise to that person if they didn't know, creating all kinds of chaos and hurt in their lives.

LegacyUser

I don't think you have the slightest thing to forgive yourself for, you were a kid caught up in events outside your control, that's hardly your fault. But, it would also be impossible to go through all that without some baggage. A couple of sessions of counselling to give you a leg-up on the new start you're making would probably help, just to support what you've already started yourself.

padser

selfforgiveness wrote: »

.

KikiLaRue: no, I am not in a 12 step programme. While I now live sober, I have the odd beer now and then.

I know lots of people who are sober and have "the odd drink".

Invariably it's many many "odd drinks"

I think a 12 step program would be very useful

ILIKEFOOD

can I just zone in on the mess caused by financial issues and the impact they had on you and your family..

Don’t feel the need to forgive yourself for any of that. I’m 34 now and similar to you the past ten years have been a rollercoaster - particularly jobs and money oh and a parental divorce too! So many of our generation were shafted by things we couldn’t control and you’ve done fantastic to put that right for yourself. I think a lot of people our age felt that they lost years and perhaps aren’t where they expected to be in life at this point. It’s not much consolation but those things weren’t your fault

We do strange things under pressure - like you I ****ed up a relationship and hit the session hard. You have to like yourself for who you are now and not hate yourself for the past. I felt tremendous guilt for boozing and drugs for a long time. But with that knocked on the head you build your successes incrementally until one day you realise you’ve a lot of personal successes under your belt and you just keep adding.

KikiLaRue

I think people saying "ah just forgive yourself and move on - we all make mistakes, sure aren't you grand now?" are misguided.

OP obviously feels very guilty and by his own admission hurt people badly. I don't think he should live the rest of his life in some kind of penance, he deserves to move forward - but it does sound like some of the people he hurt deserve an apology.

Also I saw someone say "apologise for your own benefit". Again, I feel this is a mistake. Apologise for their benefit, if it has a positive impact on how you feel - and it probably will - that should be a side benefit. Your first goal should be to try and make amends for or rectify any damage you caused.

Dien

selfforgiveness wrote: »

Hey guys,

Bit of a long post so sorry about this. I will try to summarise as best I can but basically it goes from having a great life to self-destructing and finding myself again. Having started to find myself recently, I need to be able to forgive myself as I will illustrate below.

Ten years ago:

I was a happy, popular sporty young (22) man in university. I loved life. I had a lot of friends, a few different girlfriends, my family had some money and were working. Relatively suddenly, due to the recession my father's IT company went bust. A lot of our family friends companies went bust too. Due to pressures here and elsewhere in their relationship, my parents split up and my mother moved out. It was a horrific breakup which dragged on for years and was extremely traumatic. My parents probably each had a nervous breakdown and my brother dropped out of school before his Leaving Cert due to stress (which he has never retaken). We went from having anything we wanted in a middle-class sense, to having nothing. The house was nearly taken from us by the banks. I dropped out of my university course and dropped out of another one the year after. too Due to the recession, jobs were scarce and I had very little money at all. I lost interest in women and any relationships that I did get into were toxic. They all ended quite badly.

Due to different stresses on me (emotional, financial etc.) I could not join some friends on their trips abroad, despite being a strong part of those groups and that would make me feel bad. I started to drink heavily and would have big mood swings. I would verbally and physically lash out and I lost a lot of friends. I lost my dignity on some occasions here too. This is what I regret most. The friends I did keep, were not good for me. I stopped sports and put on a lot of weight. The thing outside my control that I regret most is losing a close extended family member to suicide. He was a great friend to me. During these ten years, I had little if any support. During this time however, I did my best to keep certain family admin things going.

Fast forward 10 years:
I completed my degree finally. I completed a masters and had to emigrate to find work which I did. I worked abroad for 3 years and have returned to Ireland. My brother is finally working after years of doing nothing and we are both drink and drug free. Our parents are also somewhat better after what was a horrific breakup 10 years ago. I have a plan to continue to lose weight and learn some new sports. We are all working and getting on - finally.

So what's the problem?
At 32, I feel as if I am just starting my life properly now. I feel as if 10 years of my life was taken from me. I don't remember a lot from those ten years and I put it down to stress to be honest. Due to weight gain, dropping out, family pressures, and lack of money in the past, it is only now that I feel that I am back to 'normal'. I cringe at some of how I acted in the past. Sure most was down to stresses that I didn't deal with and didn't have anyone to help me with but that is no excuse.

What I would like to know is - how do I forgive myself? Has anyone else forgiven themselves for stuff? Can I come to terms with the past?

Perhaps living well is the best way to salute the past.

Thanks folks. x

You are a young man and instead of asking "how can I be forgiven" you should be asking "where do I want to go from here?". I'm not saying you had it easy, but losing money, businesses going bust etc., is small fry compared to losing a loved one (as you know from your friends passing).
You are in control of the one and only thing that matters, your integrity. How you treat others defines you so much more than a job title or salary...f**k pretension and fancy addresses, the only thing you have to answer to is your own conscience. We all make mistakes, own them the let them make you a better person. I wish you well.