by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
Forgiveness of Others is (Even) Harder When You Haven’t Forgiven and Accepted Yourself First & Foremost
There are some relationships in our lives where things just get kina…stuck:
Maybe somebody betrayed your trust; maybe they humiliated you; maybe they disappointed you when we needed them most or maybe they crossed a line that can never quite be uncrossed. Whatever happened, something in the relationship changed and now – even if you want to move on – you find yourself unable to fully let go.
When we’re stuck between holding onto resentments and grudges and letting go then we can get lost in loops of replaying conversations in our heads and imagining what we should have said or what we think about what they “took” from us. When we’re stuck in this state, we’re basically just carrying around resentment like some kind of unpaid emotional debt that we secretly hope life will collect on our behalf one day.
In fairness, sometimes feeling this kind of resentment does feel justified – if somebody hurt us, lied to us, rejected us, manipulated us, or abandoned us, then of course there’s going to be emotional fallout….after all is said and done, we’re human beings and not robots.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth, though:
Holding onto resentment might feel like strength but most of the time it’s actually resistance.
This kind of resentment keeps us emotionally chained to the past, causes us to define ourselves and others through old experiences instead of what’s actually here in the present, and stops us from evolving because – instead of moving with life – we become psychologically frozen in a moment that has already ended (eventually turning bitter).
Of course, that doesn’t necessarily mean you have to forgive everybody that’s hurt you (or even anybody that might’ve done so) – you don’t owe anybody access to your life and you don’t need to tolerate abuse or to that pretend harmful behaviour was acceptable when it wasn’t.
(Though, in my opinion, forgiveness is really for the one forgiving more than it is the forgiven).
Saying that, if you genuinely want to improve a relationship or let go and move forward – and yet find yourself unable to do so because you’re holding onto something – then one of the most powerful things you can do is learn to forgive yourself first.
This all boils down to the simple truth that we’ll focus on in this article:
Forgiveness doesn’t begin with the other person – it begins with acceptance.
Let’s dig a little deeper:
Forgiveness & Self-Acceptance: What We'll Cover in This Article
- Forgiveness of Others is (Even) Harder When You Haven’t Forgiven and Accepted Yourself First & Foremost
- Forgiveness is the Process of Returning to Acceptance
- Why Self-Forgiveness Comes Before Forgiveness of Others
- The Ego Wants Static Reality But Realness Allows Movement
- Practical Steps for Returning to Acceptance and Shifting Into Forgiveness Over Resentment
- 1. Accept That the Past is DONE
- 2. Take Responsibility for Your Emotional Experience
- 3. Let People Be Human
- 4. Focus on What You Can GIVE
- Forgiveness: Work on Yourself First & The Rest Follows
Forgiveness is the Process of Returning to Acceptance
Most people think forgiveness is some kind of mystical act – like one day you wake up, angels start singing, sunlight pours through the curtains, and suddenly you announce:
“I FORGIVE THEE”
Fortunately (or unfortunately – depending on how you look at it), forgiveness is usually much simpler and much more practical than having to get the angels involved.
The definition I like to use is that:
Forgiveness is the process of returning to acceptance.
This is simple but powerful:
When we resent somebody, it usually means that something inside us is resisting reality as it currently is and so we’re holding onto emotions, beliefs, expectations, or interpretations that stop us from fully accepting what happened and moving forward from it – in other words, something has become emotionally ‘blocked’.
Usually, emotional blocks like these are rooted in some form of shame which is really just a disconnection from truth about ourselves and life that causes us to live in the Void:
Maybe what happened made us feel weak, rejected, humiliated, inferior, powerless, or unworthy; maybe it triggered old wounds we already carried long before the relationship itself existed; maybe it shook the identity we’ve built around ourselves and it made us question who we are before we were ready to find out (i.e. it poked at the Shadow Self).
Whatever the case, it caused something inside us stopped flowing which is bad news because that’s exactly what emotions are supposed to do: flow instead of stagnating (emotions are “e-motion, energy in motion”).
The bottom line is that when emotions get stuck, our thoughts get stuck and then we get stuck.
At the mental level (as an extension of those blocked emotions), resentment also tends to involve distorted beliefs about reality because we may unconsciously start believing things like:
- “That person took something real away from me” (when nobody can take anything real from you).
- “My life would be okay if they hadn’t done this” (when your life can still be okay and maybe even better).
- “I can’t move forward unless they apologise” (when actually you can move forward whenever you CHOOSE to do so)”.
- “Their behaviour defines my worth” (when their behaviour says more about them than it ever can say about ‘you’).
- “I can never feel whole again because of what happened” (when you’re already whole when you stop blocking the view with those blocked emotions and mental distortions).
Essentially, none of these beliefs are ultimately true because no human being can take away what is real in you.
Yup, they can hurt you, disappoint you, trigger wounds and expose insecurities and create consequences but they can’t ever remove your capacity for truth, growth, choice, or wholeness.
Knowing this can be really helpful because once we begin updating these distorted beliefs so they’re more aligned with reality, something starts shifting:
-We stop trying to freeze life in place as a reflection of our internal ‘blockages’.
-We stop demanding that the past become different to what was.
-We stop resisting what already happened.
Slowly, we begin moving back into acceptance instead of resistance – not because the past magically changes but because we do.
Why Self-Forgiveness Comes Before Forgiveness of Others
The deeper part of learning to let go of the resentments we want to let go of is something that often gets missed (it seems):
We can’t truly forgive others until we’ve started learning to forgive ourselves.
This might sound a bit much but remember how we defined forgiveness above:
“Forgiveness is the process of returning to acceptance.“
The truth is that somebody who can’t accept themselves as a perfectly imperfect human being who is constantly evolving into deeper wholeness will struggle to accept others in the same way and so the inability to forgive others – when we genuinely think we want to – is often a mirror of the inability to accept ourselves.
If we secretly carry unresolved shame – for example, if we believe we’re fundamentally flawed, broken, defective, unworthy, or “not enough”, etc – then we have become disconnected from the truth (the opposite of acceptance) and so we end up creating an ego identity to compensate for that pain.
The ego then tries to maintain control by demanding perfection, certainty, righteousness, and predictability from life and this creates impossible expectations of ourselves and others.
The short-version is pretty simple:
When we deny our own shadow – the beautiful chaos of our own humanity – then we also deny it in others.
What this looks like is that we unconsciously demand that people always be morally consistent, emotionally mature, fair, wise, kind, and self-aware at all times…even though none of us are (including – and often especially – ourselves…speaking from experience).
We expect human beings to behave like machines and then we get all shocked when they don’t but the truth is that human beings are messy:
We contradict ourselves; we make mistakes; we regress and repeat patterns we thought we outgrew; we project our wounds onto each other; we act unconsciously; we fail to communicate; we get emotional; we avoid things; we try to protect ourselves when we’re already safe’; we hurt people while trying not to get hurt ourselves.
None of this excuses purposely harmful behaviour but it does make it human.
When we start integrating our own shadow – when we stop trying to pretend we’re perfect and stop hiding the real ‘parts’ of who we are from ourselves – then we begin releasing others from the impossible burden of perfection too.
This is why real inner work changes relationships because when we process emotions instead of suppressing them, challenge limiting beliefs instead of worshipping them, stop defining ourselves by shame and become more integrated and whole, then we naturally become more capable of acceptance – not because we become weak but because we finally become REAL again.
The Ego Wants Static Reality But Realness Allows Movement
One of the biggest reasons resentment lingers is because the ego hates movement towards anything more real:
The ego wants everything ‘fixed’ and predictable so that it can allow us to feel a sense of ‘control’ so we can keep avoiding uncomfortable emotions and the shadow self – for this reason it wants people to always behave in ways that protect its identity to avoid emotional discomfort (even though we often need to feel uncomfortable as we grow through old unrealities into something more real).
All of this is to say that the ego wants guarantees, emotional insurance policies, and for reality to stay the ‘same’ but reality in our experience doesn’t stay the same because people change, relationships change, and life keeps moving until the day we die.
Realness means learning to move with reality instead of trying to freeze it into a shape that protects the ego from discomfort and forgiveness is about working with this natural sense of movement.
Forgiveness doesn’t mean saying “What happened was okay” but “I refuse to remain psychologically imprisoned by something that already ended“.
That’s a massive difference.
Practical Steps for Returning to Acceptance and Shifting Into Forgiveness Over Resentment
So what does this actually look like in real life?
How do we begin forgiving ourselves so that we can stop carrying resentment towards others?
Here are some practical foundations that can help you get moving:
1. Accept That the Past is DONE
This perhaps sounds a bit obvious but most people are still psychologically negotiating with the past and so they replay old moments over and over like a broken record:
- “If only I’d said this…”
- “If only they’d done that…”
- “If only things had gone differently…”
No “if only” can ever serve you because the past is DONE and the truth is that you can’t build a real life while mentally living in an imaginary alternative timeline.
Acceptance begins when you stop resisting what already happened and take the medicine that reality has to offer:
This doesn’t mean approving of it – it just means acknowledging reality so that you can finally work with life instead of against it which is ‘good’ news because the moment you stop asking reality to be different, you reclaim your energy, and that energy can finally go into growth instead of resistance.
2. Take Responsibility for Your Emotional Experience
This is one of the most important shifts of all so listen up!
The person you’re trying to forgive may have triggered emotions in you but they did not create those emotions from nothing – they activated something that was already there.
This is why different people can experience the same event in completely different ways:
What hurts us most intensely is usually connected to unresolved emotional ‘stuff’ we already carry and this is why we can say that trigger are teachers – in other words, they reveal where we still need healing, integration, and truth (because of what we have waiting to be felt in our emotional reservoir).
If somebody’s behaviour triggers abandonment, humiliation, rejection, inferiority, or shame inside you, then the question becomes:
“What is this experience trying to show me about myself?”
This question can actually really change things for you because instead of remaining trapped in blame, you begin using life as feedback (and feedback creates real growth if you use what’s being offered).
3. Let People Be Human
A ‘person’ is often just a mental construct like a role, an image, or a character in our psychological story but a real human being is something much messier and much more alive.
Human beings are REAL which means that contain all kinds of contradictions that might be both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ in themselves but become REAL when you put them all together:
Strength and weakness.
Wisdom and stupidity.
Love and fear.
Clarity and confusion.
Etc. and etc.
This is important to embrace because when we accept our own humanity, it becomes much easier to accept the humanity of others too.
Again, this does not mean tolerating abuse or staying in situations that harm you:
Boundaries are real, discernment is real, and walking away is sometimes necessary for our sanity at the very least but – even if you do choose to create distance – you don’t need to carry the psychological poison of resentment with you forever.
You can learn to let go internally without allowing harmful behaviour externally and that’s the strength of your REALNESS.
If you want to grow real and go deeper into integration then check out my book Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace.
4. Focus on What You Can GIVE
A lot of resentment exists because the ego feels something was taken from it
It could literally be anything but some of the most common ones are:
- Respect.
- Validation.
- Security.
- Control.
- Recognition.
- Love.
When the ego becomes obsessed with what it lost, relationships stagnate and so one powerful way to move beyond this is to shift focus from:
“What didn’t I get?”
To:
“What can I still give?”
This doesn’t mean becoming a doormat – it just means reconnecting to abundance (realness) instead of scarcity (ego).
It doesn’t have to be material things that you give – just something REAL:
Maybe what you can give is honesty; maybe it’s compassion; maybe it’s space; maybe it’s clarity; maybe it’s forgiveness itself.
Whatever it is, when we move into giving, we stop relating from a wounded ego and start relating to the world around us from a place of wholeness.
Forgiveness: Work on Yourself First & The Rest Follows
This is why the process of growing into REALNESS matters so deeply.
Normally, when I’m working on growing real with my coaching clients it goes:
Awareness (Deconstruct Ego), Acceptance (Integrate Shadow), and Action (Trust Yourself & Life)
Awareness: First, we deconstruct the ego and become aware of the unreal beliefs, emotional blocks, and shame patterns running our lives.
Acceptance: Then we integrate the shadow and learn to accept ourselves as we actually are instead of hiding behind compensation and performance.
Action: Finally, we take real action rooted in trust in ourselves, trust in life, and trust in reality itself.
As this process unfolds, relationships naturally change – some deepen, some dissolve, some heal, and some become peaceful from a distance but regardless of the outcome, everybody becomes more whole (real).
At the end of the day, this is what forgiveness is really about:
Not pretending the past didn’t happen, forcing reconciliation, or becoming passive but returning to acceptance so that life can flow again.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to work on cultivating self-acceptance and taking real action in your life then book a free coaching session with me and start building some flow.
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