Tips on forgiving yourself?

Oh this is my forté! Its one of the few problems I had before diagnosis that I managed to claw my way back from and the real way to forgive yourself is by giving yourself room for a new perspective. Allow me to elaborate; so when I was a teenager and struggling with OCD, I did a lot of strange things both socially and in private to attempt to cope with what I was experiencing and by the time I was an adult that had bled into perfectionism and scrupulosity. I developed a nervous tic from how bad my past made me feel and I was more depressed than I had ever been. One day however, it dawned on me what in hindsight was quite obvious: Everybody has f***ed up to varying extents and most people have the grace for the steep adolescent learning curve. I don’t know very many people who hold this phase of their life in high esteem and thats okay! Life is made for learning, accept that you made mistakes (even if you’re convinced you’re an evil person, the fact that you are taking the time to better yourself already puts you miles and miles ahead of truly “bad” people). Give yourself credit for owning your mistakes and still showing up to be a better person in light of them, thats more than most people do and those folks have people who love them and support them anyways! Take this as evidence that you’ve lived and you are growing and thats amazing! You are already on the way to forgiving yourself my love, keep going!

I feel this big time. one of my biggest triggers is ruminating about the past. I am still working through it in therapy/NOCD so my advice may not be the best but what I have been doing/ trying to do is reminding myself that I needed those past versions of myself to get to where I am now. Without those mistakes, I would have went through life ignorant about poor decision making. At least now I understand the impact those poor decisions had on me and it makes me never want to return to them. Not sure if that helps but it’s what I’ve been trying. I am also not very good at it lol.

I am having the exact same issue with disgusting teenage mistakes. It's really easy to ruminate on the past, but the fact that you're worried and guilty about it already proves that you're a better person than ur teenage self 🫂

It's easy to give grace to other people, but harder to give it to ourselves. However, the reality is that we are still under Grace! In fact, the entire message of the gospel centers around the fact that God does not remember our sins anymore .

Also, you do not have to have any regret over things in the past. Second Corinthians 7 addresses people who were convicted of sin and sorry of it. And the Bible says that they can just go forward with no regret. “Now I am glad I sent it, not because it hurt you, but because the pain caused you to repent and change your ways. It was the kind of sorrow God wants his people to have, so you were not harmed by us in any way. For the kind of sorrow God wants us to experience leads us away from sin and results in salvation. There’s no regret for that kind of sorrow. ‭‭2 Corinthians‬ ‭7‬:‭9‬-‭10‬ ‭NLT‬‬