How do I forgive myself?

[Shaishai]

Sorry, this is a bit all over the place. My head is a bit of a mess at the moment. I was in a very traumatic relationship which is one of the worst my therapist has experienced, yet to me it’s normal. He is really good with the help he is giving but it just doesn’t seem to be working enough. He is going to look at other options for me. Today our session was hard and the main thing I need to try working on is to forgive myself. I blame myself for the abuse and think I deserved it. I can’t stop thinking like this even though my inner reasoning for it is getting weaker. Part of me is scared to accept it wasn’t my fault because then I have to admit it was as bad as it was and he is a sadistic c**t. It was my first proper relationship so I was young and accepted it as ‘normal’. I’m scared I won’t be able to cope if I accept the reality of it and forgive myself. If I think about this happening to someone else I can rationalise it and see they are not to blame and no-one deserves this level of violence.

How do you forgive yourself? How do I get past it and let myself move on?

[Eggshells]

Hi my lovely,

I think it is really hard but I also think that self esteem has a lot to do with it.

We often go into abusive relationships when our self esteem is low. Getting to the route of what has caused that is incredibly difficult but very important.

Low self esteem = low self worth.
Therefore it’s far too easy to feel responsible for all sorts of bad things that just aren’t our fault. Abuse is one of those things.

It will take time but time is on your side. You didn’t deserve what happened to you. xx

[Shaishai]

Thank you Eggshells. I guess I think that if I haven’t forgiven myself by now that I’m never going to be able to. It happened a couple of decades ago and I was only living with him a few years. It just got really bad, really quickly. I was young when we got together. I’m so angry at him. I have such bad ptsd from it that I feel like I can’t be fixed.
I just want to stop hating myself. Before I got with him I was fairly confident but I found myself with nowhere else to go, or so I believed at the time.

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