How do you forgive yourself?

[Letdown16]

How or what can I say to myself to forgive myself for the absolute shit mess I made of my marriage.

I was abused and traumatised for a decade but now I have to live with the memories of the absolutely awful things I put myself through. I really let myself down and totally believed I was worthless. How do I forgive myself?

You did not let yourself down. You did what you needed to do with the resources available to you to get through a terrible and traumatic situation, despite someone making it their literal life's job to keep you in that position, and you succeeded .

Strong, prideful, intelligent people get sucked into awful situations by manipulative, terrible people. And guess what? Even people who are not inherently strong, prideful or intelligent are worthy of love, self love and above all to live without abuse. There is no excuse for your abuser, and there is no logical route anyone could take to place the blame on you.

I want you to heal and I want you to understand how deserving of peace and forgiveness. I think professional support may benefit you given all you have been through

Focus on now and living for you right now rather than in the past.
I've been going through this a lot recently, although my marriage wasn't abusive, but I feel like I've missed out on so much of my life because of it, we didn't want the same things in life but it was always me who caved and gave up on my dreams and inspirations. In the last wee while I've been really thinking about it a lot and it's been getting me really down and giving me anxiety because I'm not at a stage in life where doing those things is much harder. It was really getting to me and then I just started thinking, fuck it, I can't change my past so I'm just going to make sure I'm making the most of now to make up for it.

You have nothing to forgive yourself for and did not let yourself down. You were in a shitty abusive relationship. It's behind you now so just focus on who you want to be now and what you want your life to be.

It’s not really behind me though as I’m still in the court system, I’m still making up for the mess I’ve made.

I look at my children who currently don’t see there dad for what 18 months now and I see in there eyes the fall out of the mess I’ve made. They will suffer because I didn’t have a handle on my own issues. I went into my marriage with childhood demons I didn’t know about till now. Yes he abused me but I was a mess really, an anxious adult scared to be neglected and I had a very unhealthy relationship with my husband.

I messed it all up and now I’m trying to make it better but it’s bloody hard. My husband traumatised the child in me, maybe another adult wouldn’t have reacted the way I did, I can’t help but think it’s my fault for having complex ptsd and not knowing.

I'm sorry you have been though all this.

Your choice now is to keep beating yourself up about it, effectively continuing the abuse or to forgive yourself, acknowledging that you have survived and will continue to do the best you can.

I hope you find the strength and courage to forgive yourself.