How do you forgive yourself for/move past the ways you used to be a rubbish human?

[DanteThunderstone]

I can't seem to get past my dislike of my past actions and choices. In my teens and twenties I wasn't an obviously bad person - no criminality, cheating, deception - but I worked a job that was at times immoral and at its best added nothing useful to the world. I think I was an ok friend but I didn't exercise any discernment in my friendships and therefore spent time with fun but snarky and sometimes mean people and part of our shared humour was being secretly snide about others. Some of my social attitudes from back then (internalised misogyny for instance) fill me with regret now. I dislike the person who acted that way.

I'm in my middle 40s now and behave a lot more positively. I'm not friends with cruel people, I don't work for a shady company and I try to live kindly both within my personal relationships and as a citizen. I'm patient and tolerant and charitable. Also I live hundreds of miles away so can compartmentalise then and now geographically.

But, I'm plagued by this idea that I'm in some subtle way irredeemably bad because of how much of a dick younger me sometimes was. I feel shame looking back and wish I could divorce myself from younger me. Which sounds ridiculously dramatic, I know. It's more just a drip-drip of mild shame leaking into my current life from my past one.

Can anyone relate? Is there a way to come to terms with the fact you used to be vaguely horrible? Is the answer to live altruistically now and hope it eventually persuades you you're not intrinsically a dickhead?

I cringe at my 20’s self, so I know where you’re coming from. I also recognise that feeling of regret about being selfish and bitchy.
but you’re probably also forgetting that many others were the same at that age. If you been the kind, thoughtful person you are now, you’d have been eaten alive!

but take it as a huge positive that you’ve grown and learned how to be a better person. So many people remain the twats they were in their 20’s!

I know how you feel. I treated boys / men really badly when I was in my late teens and early 20s. I look back now and can see that it was all a defence mechanism because my dad treated women and my mum like shit - he had multiple affairs and then left her and she was devastated. I think I just decided subconsciously to never allow a man to treat me badly. I just didn't trust men at all even the ones who gave me no reason not to trust. It took me until my late 20s when I broke somebody's heart really badly and I suddenly had this light bulb moment that not all men are my dad. Sounds so obvious now but I couldn't see it at the time. There are so many boys / men that I would like to apologise to now but I think it's best to let it all lie in the past. The daft thing is that I really loved some of these people and yet I sabotaged each relationship. Anyway, I have learnt now and I am kinder to myself. My behaviour was a reaction to my dad's fucked up behaviour- even though I idolised him which made it worse somehow. It took so long for the penny to drop. And I would never treat anyone like that now. You should be happy that you have insight now into your behaviour ( which doesn't sound that bad anyway!) You sound like a decent person.

I have plenty of stuff in my past that I'm ashamed of. I think it's good to be aware of them, and I hope it makes me more tolerant and forgiving of other people's shortcomings now.

I have things I look back on with shame and regret. I try to be a better person now and hope that those I may have hurt went on to have a good life. I often wish I could go back and change the person I was. It took me a long time to grow up and be responsible and I do look back with shame about the way I treated some people.

You just needed time to grow up OP, you really didn't do anything so bad. Unhappy people hurt other people. If you're a kind person now then be kind to yourself and forgive yourself for the mistakes you made when you were young.

You need to forgive that young, immature you. Then draw a line under it and be proud of how much better you are now.

vegan idea aside i found going to mass and confession helpful.
once you "confess" and are forgiven you are not suppose to beat yourself up over your past mistakes but are suppose to go forward having learned a bit about yourself.
now not dragging it around is easier said than done, but with practice you can come to understand it's all pretty normal to be like that in life.
i think being that better person is that "maturity and wisdom" that comes with age, old age.

I'm feeling this post today. I was literally just thinking about this, cringing about what a twat I used to be. I've been doing a lot of amateur psychoanalysis of myself lately trying to work out why I was the way I was. But ultimately I can't do anything to change it.

The conclusion I came to earlier was that, if I was to go back and change anything then who knows how things would have turned out. What if I hadn't got all my twatishness out when I was younger and was a twat now - that would be worse!

By reading your post I’m sure I’ve done far worse than you until the age of about 36 actually! I was a truly horrible person. Actually in some countries what I’ve done is illegal so I would be in prison now . So don’t feel to bad , people out there have done much worse !