Today's Thursday • 8 mins read
It’s easy to forgive a friend, but much harder to forgive yourself for the same mistake.
Even studies show self-forgiveness can sometimes be heart-rending and uncomfortable (Woodyatt & Wenzel, 2017).
So, why can’t we forgive ourselves for our drunken mistakes, idiotic stands, angry outbursts, breaking people’s hearts, and many other random mistakes?
One reason is our strict moralistic upbringing. We believe forgiving ourselves is unjust and may let us commit the same sin again.
One little truth may start fixing that: Forgiving isn’t condoning.
- Condoning is tolerating or allowing the objectionable behavior.
- Forgiving is making peace with the past as a lesson.
You could make someone forgive you, but why is it difficult to forgive yourself?
7 Reasons Why It’s So Hard To Forgive Yourself
Here are seven reasons why self-forgiveness is difficult:
1. You did not ask yourself for forgiveness.
You may have never asked yourself for it. Forgiveness rarely happens unless it is requested. When no request is made, there is no closure of the wound.
The self that did the wrong never asked for a pardon, so the self that lives now never granted it.
Time complicates this. The person who did the deed belongs to the past, almost a stranger to the self you are now.
You cannot face that earlier self to hear them say “I am sorry,” so there is nothing to answer back. Without that inner act of asking and permitting, forgiveness does not move forward.
Sometimes you cannot find the courage to even start the dialogue. Even when you try to ask yourself to be forgiven, you may not give full consent. A part of you refuses.
That resistance keeps the old wound alive.
Forgiveness is a funny thing. It cools the heart and cools the sting.
— William Arthur Ward
2. You forgot you already forgave yourself.
Forgetting a self-granted pardon is more common than you think. Inner conversations vanish fast.
The mistake stays vivid, while the memory of forgiveness fades. The guilt and shame keep firing on recall, so it feels unresolved even if self-forgiveness happened.
Leave an external trace. Write the decision down in a diary or a notes app to anchor it in time. Note down what you learned and what changes you made.
Pair it with a brief annual reminder of your entry to consolidate the new narrative.
Try expressive writing while granting forgiveness. Ten to twenty minutes of expressive writing can help you recover better. It also reduces rumination. Re-read the entry when old shame resurfaces.
Most of us can forgive and forget. We just don’t want the other person to forget that we forgave.
— Ivern Ball
3. You confuse forgiving with condoning.
Condoning means accepting or approving an offensive act. That is not forgiveness. Forgiveness releases self-condemnation while still owning responsibility and making amends where needed.
The fear is that self-forgiveness green-lights future misconduct is wrong. Research and clinical guidance hold that responsibility plus compassion reduces shame-driven avoidance and supports better future behavior.
The mind learns from accountability paired with values-based change, not from indefinite self-punishment.
Condonation in a legal sense in divorce law implies acceptance based on a promise of no recurrence. An example: A wife did not object to her husband’s adultery, even when she was aware of it. Later, she tried to use it as grounds for a divorce and a favorable settlement. The husband countered by arguing that she had already condoned his behavior.
That legal idea doesn’t apply to inner moral repair.
Self-forgiveness is a behavioral commitment: acknowledge, repair, and choose differently next time.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
— Mahatma Gandhi
4. You want to keep on suffering.
Penance was there much before forgiveness. So, some may pick penance over relief.
Penance is self-punishment as a remorseful payback for your wrongdoing.
Penance feels fair. Suffer as payback and keep the moral books balanced. People adopt fasting, cold exposure, rigid self-denial, or chronic over-giving to “even the score,” turning repair into a lifestyle of pain.
This can look virtuous while freezing growth. Without release, shame fuels more avoidance and perfectionism, not wiser action.
Sustainable atonement is specific: name the harm, make concrete amends, set safeguards, and resume valued living instead of open-ended self-punishment.
Penance as a religious ritual aims at reconciliation, not endless self-flagellation. Outside the sacrament, we’re better off keeping the same spirit: finite repair, clear change, then letting the wound close so life can move forward.
As long as you don’t forgive, who and whatever it is will occupy a rent-free space in your mind.
— Isabelle Holland
5. You prefer to live in denial.
A denial is a form of defense mechanism that involves rejecting the reality of a situation to avoid anxiety.
When in denial, you try to protect yourself by refusing to accept the reality about something that has happened or is happening in your life.
In some instances, an early short-term denial might seem useful, as it gives you some time to adjust to an unpleasant or stressful situation.
But in the long-term, it harms you because you do not want to accept the truth and are always in an escape mode from handling the troubling issues.
As a result, the issue grows too big to deal with at your level.
If you do not own up or let it ever sink in that you made a mistake, then what is there to be forgiven for? So, where’s the question of forgiving if no sins were committed?
You deny it to yourself, and you deny it to all others who come to confront you on it.
In some probability, you’d even pass a lie detector test while denying it, because your mind doesn’t believe it happened because of your fault.
He who cannot forgive breaks the bridge over which he himself must pass.
— George Herbert
6. You are a narcissist.
Narcissists find it hard to forgive people even for minor faults. In fact, the greater the narcissism, especially the grandiose form, the greater the inability to feel guilt (and therefore, to forgive).
The reasons are one, they lack empathy for others, and two, they have a bloated sense of self-importance.
In fact, marriage and family therapist Linda Graham writes:
In my clinical training, I learned the short-cut diagnosis for a narcissistic personality was someone who could never say “thank you” or say “I’m sorry.” You may encounter people like that on a daily basis; you may work for them or live with them.
A grandiose narcissist truly believes they are too good to make any mistake of their own accord, and it’s always the other people, or the rest of the world, who are at fault. It is they who always make the narcissist do that.
They are the ones to blame for the wrong. So, why should they forgive themselves for another person’s sin?
Worse still, they consider themselves above all mistakes, as they are too perfect for doing something wrong. Everything they do seems justified and above any blame.
Now, you might be a covert narcissist and take extreme caution to hide it from the world. But, in your heart of hearts, you know who you are.
So, while the wound of that past sin keeps on festering, you can’t bring yourself to forgive yourself even in your personal space.
7. You practice living like an idealist.
You don’t think it’s righteous for you, the judge, to forgive you, the sinner. That whole thing of self-forgiveness is akin to moral depravity in your idealist view.
To such a person, self-forgiveness creates a sense of cognitive dissonance, which is an uncomfortable feeling when your actions do not match up to your beliefs.
Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.
— Paul Boose
What Self-Forgiveness Is Not
Self-forgiveness does not involve denying, minimizing, or punishing yourself indefinitely. It does not mean treating yourself with anger and resentment for your mistake. It is also not merely saying, “I forgive myself.”
Why You Must Forgive Yourself
Refusing to forgive oneself can build toxic regrets, which prevent growing and evolving into a better person. A 2020 study found that forgiving others and self-forgiveness can reduce emotions such as anger, guilt, regret, and overthinking.
Forgiveness can help us get the better of physical issues, besides healing our emotional wounds. It also provides a restful mental state that promotes sound sleep. Researchers found that forgiveness was also linked to a longer lifespan.
It can lower the risk of a heart attack, improve cholesterol levels and sleep quality, and reduce pain, blood pressure, anxiety, stress, and depression.
Final Words
Did you know that forgiveness is recent in human history? Forgiveness did not exist in ancient Greece, Rome, or Egypt. But punishments were around much earlier.
The modern concept of forgiveness appeared late in the 17th century. Forgiveness was also not fully present in the early Jewish and Christian commentaries on the Holy Scriptures (Konstan, 2010).
Accepting that it’s only human to make mistakes, we can begin the process of forgiveness. Thereafter, when we have forgiven ourselves fully, we can truly move on in life.
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√ Also Read: How To Forgive Yourself In 7 Steps?
√ Please share this if you found it helpful.