self forgiveness

Tap Into the Immense Power of Self-Forgiveness

When you make mistakes, how do you respond? If you are good at forgiving yourself, that’s a positive aspect of your existence. On the other hand, if you struggle to forgive your blunders and errors, your psyche may experience negative effects.

The Cause May Be the Voice Inside Your Head

An inability to forgive ourselves may be rooted in our formative years. We develop our internal voices during this time. A journal article published last year in Psychology Research and Behavior Management covers a study of 908 adolescents.

That study offers meaningful findings:

  • Self-criticism increases the relationship between stressful events and depression.
  • Meanwhile, self-compassion buffers stressful events’ impact.
  • Improving self-compassion skills may lower the potential for self-harm.

By forgiving yourself, you take care of yourself.

Who Do You Hear When Your Inner Critic Speaks?

You may think your inner voice is, well, you. In fact, the voice within your head may belong to a dominant parent or an elder who made a lasting impression on you at a young age. Think about the things you most often tell yourself inside your mind:

  • Whose voice do you actually hear?
  • Does your inner voice say things similar to those a strong influence in your life has said?
  • Is the voice usually critical?

Perhaps, you’ve just realized that the voice inside your mind sounds a lot like an adult who was typically quite critical of you during your youth. To grow into a space where you feel that you are worthy of forgiveness, you’ll need to train that negative self-talk out of your psyche.

At first, retraining the voice inside your head may sound daunting. Try to remember a time when you felt unsure about learning something that is now old hat to you.

We bet you’re an expert at one or more pursuits. Before you were an expert, you had to move clumsily through a learning phase. Reshaping your self-talk is similar.

Initially, you’ll feel uncertain. As you incorporate these techniques into your daily life, you can grow into a mindset that features supportive self-talk:

  • Practice daily affirmations.
  • Catch negative thoughts, and replace them with positive statements to yourself.
  • Throughout each day, review your self-talk patterns, and adjust toward a positive pattern whenever necessary.
  • Give yourself grace when you realize a negative thought pattern.
  • When you deal with your thoughts and actions, pretend you’re dealing with a beloved friend.

Appreciate the Benefits of Self-Forgiveness

Our multifaceted world includes Carole Pertofsky, MEd, who has dedicated her professional life to human happiness, personal forgiveness and resilience. Scope, a health magazine from Stanford Medicine, published a piece on self-forgiveness that relies heavily on Pertofsky’s expertise.

If you read that article, you’ll find rich insights regarding the value of forgiving yourself. “Self-forgiving people recognize that a lack of self-forgiveness leads to suffering,” Pertofsky told the publication. “They are kind to themselves, which reduces their anxiety and related depression.”

Is Treatment-Resistant Depression Blocking Your Ability to Forgive Yourself?

We can think of self-criticism and depression as a vicious circle:

  1. An inability to forgive yourself sows the seeds of depression.
  2. As depression deepens, the struggle to forgive yourself worsens.
  3. Rinse, and repeat.

In this moment, we encourage you to give yourself grace. A past of being unforgiving to yourself is unimportant. Right now, only the current moment matters. You can start forgiving yourself today.

Naturally, practicing self-forgiveness may be difficult at first. We’re all novices when we take a new direction.

If this moment makes you feel overwhelmed, it’s a good moment to address recurring depression. At WIN-TMS, we call it treatment-resistant depression.

You could benefit from our modern therapy if other treatments have not solved your depression symptoms. Our therapy, transcranial magnetic stimulation, is unique:

  • Medication-free
  • Covered by insurance
  • Convenient
  • Beneficial to 83% of patients
  • As painless as visiting a hairstylist

In TMS therapy, we use a small electromagnet to reset your brain’s timing. Our therapy sessions are shorter than a sitcom, and most of our patients can easily drive after each session. Your depression symptoms can improve within several sessions, and you can expect to carry on with your normal day immediately after each visit.

Millions have benefited from TMS therapy, and you can join them at any of our four locations around Milwaukee.

Making a mistake simply means you’re human. Do a very human thing right now. Start your path toward self-forgiveness. Book your TMS consultation today.

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