Please, Stop Being Mean to Yourself. You are Forgiven.
They're not mad at you. You're mad at you. Forgive yourself just as they have.
Shame is a %^&*$, and if you are mean to yourself but utterly incapable of being mean to another being without feeling incredibly guilty and heading into the death spiral of meanness, welcome to the club. We have snacks.
Pot calling the kettle black moment, here. On my worst days, I am mean to myself. No one else. Just me.
Whether it is how I handle my health, my relationships, my schedule, my business, my dogs, or my *whatever*, some days I am just mean.
This meanness can extend to how I have handled grief - whether from grieving my late husband or life lost to health - or grieving anything else. This self judgment has improved with time, but it is a process, and some days are still better than others.
During my conversations, while facilitating grief groups, and while doing readings, I have discovered that we are not alone in this judgment of ourselves and our perceived actions.
95% of the readings I do have this common theme: We don’t think we did enough at the end or near the end, and we want to know if our loved ones have forgiven us.
When it comes to grief and loss, our meanness to ourselves can inhibit processing grief. We become completely unable to move forward because we are busy feeling shame and punishing ourselves for the things we *think* we did wrong at the end:
Not being able to say goodbye
Being on our phones too much
Physically hurting them because we did CPR or had to make difficult end-of-life decisions.
Not loving them enough or listening to what they had to say.
Insert perceived thing we did wrong here.
btw, You are also not alone if you are afraid that your loved one is upset with you. I can tell you, they are NOT. Not in the slightest. They want you to feel their love.
I cannot stress this enough - we are forgiven. We are ALWAYS forgiven.
We need to forgive ourselves, though.
This is how we *start* to forgive ourselves:
Write it down. Get it out of your head and onto paper.
Ask if what you are saying to yourself you would say to someone you love.
Find a therapist. If you are stuck in the carousel of serious shame over what you believe you did wrong at the end, don’t talk to a friend or loved one about it ( I mean, you can, but hear me out). A therapist is an objective 3rd party that will help get you out of that self-judgment spiral. A friend or loved one can try, but sometimes we don’t listen.
Move your body. Shake it out if you feel your shoulders tensing when you are mean to yourself (about grief or otherwise). Or shake it off if you’re a Swifty. Visualize getting rid of that guilt and shame.
Say out loud “I forgive me.” You are the only one who can move you forward. Empower yourself by doing just that.
More than anything, I want you to know this: Please don't live your life punishing yourself for something you think you need to be forgiven for. We are loved - and our loved ones want us to feel that.
They have forgiven us. We need to give ourselves the same grace.