People think that when you’ve been wronged, the main person who needs your forgiveness is the person who did you wrong.
Most of the time, they’re right. But in a situation like this, where the offender built a relationship with the victim and then took advantage of that relationship, the victim is one of the last people you would expect to need forgiveness.
There is a reason why you still feel things like depression, anger, irritability, anxiety, and mood swings even after all ties with the offender have been cut. These are normal feelings, but you might not be feeling them because you think you are.
There is a very good chance that guilt and shame are behind all of these feelings. This guilt is not because you think you did something wrong. It comes from the idea that you did something you shouldn’t have.
You feel bad about being trusting, weak, and putting yourself in a place where you could be easily manipulated in the first place. You feel bad about yourself because you think you hurt yourself. At some point, we’ve all been in this situation. We feel bad that something we did or didn’t do hurt someone else, even if we weren’t directly involved in the act itself. The first thing you need to do is tell yourself that you are not to blame for what happened. You might not be able to change this idea right away, but if you keep telling yourself this, you will start to believe it over time. To make sure you really believe this, you should also remind yourself that the lessons you’ve learned from this have made you better able to protect yourself in case something similar happens again.
The next step is to realize that you can’t change what happened in the past.
It’s over, you’ve learned from it, and you’ve moved on. You don’t have to keep going over the same things over and over again. What has already happened can’t be changed by thinking about what might have happened or what you could have, should have, or would have done. The best you can do is take what you’ve learned and turn it into a new set of rules to live by. Even though you were told lies, you have accepted the truth of the situation with courage. Now is the time to realize that this business is over and will stay over. Even though you’re dealing with the aftermath of the crisis, it’s not still happening. Take each day as it comes and find more reasons to look forward instead of back. If you are worried about the past, you can take a day to act out what happened. One way to do this is to start over in your mind. Write down what you think you could have done differently now that you know everything you do. Then keep going. This exercise is meant to help you feel like you have some control over what has happened. Give yourself back your power and move on.
Now that you’ve changed what happened in the past, it’s time to turn the page and start a new part of your life. Start with what you’re sorry about.
These things tend to make us feel worse. Accept that you did the best you could under the circumstances and give yourself room to grow. Remember that what you did was not wrong. You made the mistake of putting your faith in the wrong person.
Give the right person the blame. Using self-limiting affirmations like “I always choose the wrong person” or “I am so trusting” is a bad idea. Find out where these thoughts are coming from by going deeper into yourself. You won’t be able to get past these negative affirmations until you figure out what’s making you feel bad. And the longer you let yourself say these negative things, the worse your anxiety will get. This is because you might become a little paranoid about your relationships with other people, thinking that your enemies are really your friends and giving every action the wrong meaning.
Last, there’s the question of love. We might be hard on other people, but the person we are hardest on is ourselves. We find it easier to forgive the person who hurt us than to forgive ourselves, and this leads to patterns of behavior that hurt us and those around us. We ruin those relationships even before they start. We destroy new relationships under the guise of stopping another one from being manipulative. The real reason for this is that they no longer love themselves. Deep down, you feel like you don’t deserve love, but you burn bridges because you’d rather hear that from yourself. There are pills that can help you deal with anxiety and depression, but there are no pills that can help you get to the point where you love yourself completely. That would take some work, but it would be worth it in the end.
There are no hard and fast rules about how to start this journey of finding out more about yourself.
But I think it’s a good start to start each day by telling yourself something like, “I love myself and I deserve to be loved.” At first, it was cheesy, but in the long run, it worked very well.
And when you’ve worked out your problems with the past, forgiven yourself, and started to learn how to love yourself, it’s time to let go. All of that hurt, all of that bad news, all of that anger… hold on to it for a second, and then let go.