How Do Self-Forgiveness and Forgiveness of Others Differ? |
The Importance of Forgiveness
Take our Empathy Test
Find a therapist near me
Not all forms of forgiveness are the same; this is the case between forgiving others and forgiving oneself.
Both forgiving others and the self involve working to offer mercy toward the one who offended.
Forgiving the self, however, may need more work because it is often misunderstood regarding what is involved.
Over the past three decades, forgiveness has taken its place among the therapeutic approaches to trauma, particularly when a person is treated unjustly. This is because forgiveness is a scientifically supported approach to reducing the resentment that can build in someone who has been unjustly treated (see, for example, Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015/2024).
Recently, I have been asked: What is the difference between forgiving myself and forgiving others? This post explains how these two processes are not quite the same. Before examining these differences, let us define what we mean by forgiving. Whether we forgive others or ourselves, when we forgive, we are offering goodness, in the form of mercy, toward the one who was not good to the forgiver. This is done without excusing the wrong or abandoning a sense of justice. The common link between the two forms of forgiveness is that the forgiver works on being merciful to others (when they treat us unfairly) or to the self (when we offend ourselves).
We now turn to the differences between the two. We address this with three points.
1. Self-forgiveness can be more easily misunderstood than forgiving others.
In my experience, some people think it is impossible to forgive oneself for at least three reasons. First, some people reason this way: When I treat myself........