Power of Forgiveness, The Healing Power of Forgiving Ourselves

Your math teacher hurt you once. But how many times have you hurt yourself since then?

Most of us understand forgiveness as something we extend to others. But there's another person who needs your forgiveness far more desperately. Someone you've been punishing for years. Someone who can't escape the sentence you've handed down. That person is you.

What This Episode Explores

George and Liz continue their two-part series on forgiveness by turning the conversation inward. This episode digs into why forgiving yourself is so difficult, what it actually looks like in practice, and why self-forgiveness might be the key that unlocks everything else.

The Lessons That Matter

You Hurt Yourself More Than They Ever Did

George realized something important about his math teacher. The man who told him in front of the entire class that he would never amount to anything. The words that sent George spiraling into dropping out of high school.

"My math teacher hurt me once," George says. "I continue to hurt myself over and over and over again."

For years, George ran the same narratives through his brain. Why would you do that? Why are you that stupid? Why would you let somebody else impact your life? Now what are you gonna do? You can't even read or write. Your grammar sucks. You're bad at math.

"I'm purposely running through narratives that would go through my brain for years years years," he says. "And I was like, I can't live in this mental waste dump."

A pastor at his grandparents' church had a conversation with him about forgiveness. Not just forgiving the math teacher, but forgiving himself for the actions that followed. That was the beginning of understanding that self-forgiveness was part of the package.

But here's what George wants everyone to understand: there's a difference between realizing something and implementing it. He was 20 when he first realized self-forgiveness mattered. It wasn't until about a year and four months ago, when Liz asked him what it looks like to show up as a whole ass human, that everything finally clicked.

For you: What narratives are you still running about yourself? How many times have you replayed someone else's one-time offense and turned it into a daily beating?

The Affirmation Test

George reads a list of self-forgiveness affirmations during the episode and asks Liz to close her eyes and notice what happens in her body.

I am worthy of forgiveness. I am human, and sometimes I make mistakes. I can learn from my mistakes. I forgive myself for what I did. No one is defined by one mistake or one incident. I can let go of feelings of guilt and shame. I deserve to treat myself with compassion and kindness. I love, forgive, and accept myself with all of my imperfections.

Liz's response is immediate and honest.

"I felt immediate anxiety starting to gather in my chest," she says. "I could feel the immediate resistance of this is okay for others, and this is not okay for me."

George had a similar experience when he connected the affirmations to his old self. The phrases "I am worthy of" and "I deserve to" triggered something. His brain pushed back.

"We spend so much time on the exterior, and we need to spend so much more time on the interior of ourselves," George says. "We try to stay so clean and so neat and so tidy on the outside because then it's like this perfect fortress of a human that everybody's like, oh, they have their shit together. Yet inside, it's this messy, toxic waste dump."

For you: Try reading those affirmations out loud to yourself. Notice where your body tenses. Notice where you resist. That's where the work needs to happen.

Clean the Lens So Your Light Can Shine

George uses an image from Iron Man to describe what self-forgiveness does.

Think about Tony Stark and the arc reactor glowing in his chest. That light is supposed to shine outward. But when we carry unforgiveness against ourselves, that lens gets cloudy and dirty. Stuff gets in the way.

"As I would clean up my ish, all the stuff that I wasn't forgiving myself for, it was almost like I was cleaning that lens," George says. "We as humans are supposed to shine our light, who we are. We're supposed to give it to the world. We are a gift. We are a blessing. It's hard to be that gift. It's hard to be that blessing. It's hard to shine that light if your lens is dirty."

The other thing that happened when George finally unlocked self-forgiveness was what he calls a giggle moment. He posted on social media about being a Jesus loving, cigar smoking, whiskey sipping, Fast and Furious watching, Tupac listening, Chris Tomlin singing human.

For years, his brain told him those things had to be in different compartments. Only show certain parts to certain people at certain times. But that's not how he was made. They were all in there. They were all him.

"Being able to show the world, like, this is really me and not care if I got judged," George says. Then he pauses. "What I meant is that I would not judge myself for the things that I had become or who I was."

For you: What parts of yourself are you hiding because you haven't forgiven yourself for being a whole, complicated human?

Sometimes There's Nothing to Forgive

Liz shares something that shifted her entire perspective.

At 14, she was sent from living with her mother to living with her father. Her mother had suffered a mental health crisis. The state of Virginia made the decision. Years later, when Liz and her mother reconnected, her mother said she could never understand why Liz had to step away.

For decades, Liz carried guilt. Why wasn't I more understanding about complex mental health issues as a 14 year old?

Then the script finally flipped.

"I had to go through this whole thing of understanding that I need to stop seeking forgiveness from her and realize I need to forgive her for this blind spot and move on," Liz says. "Sometimes the sources of information that feed us this narrative of there's something to forgive are sometimes not accurate. Sometimes they are coming from people who are not able to forgive themselves, so they are passing those savings on to you."

George agrees. Sometimes what we're labeling as things we need to forgive ourselves for might not be that at all. But it's always going to be a lesson that can be learned.

For you: Are you carrying guilt for something that was never yours to carry? Is someone else's inability to forgive themselves making you feel like you need forgiveness?

The 4 R's of Self-Forgiveness

George shares a framework from the research that gives people a rubric to work with.

Responsibility. The person seeking forgiveness takes responsibility and does not lay blame elsewhere. You own your part. No excuses.

Remorse. Work through difficult emotions like shame to more offense-specific emotions like guilt. Shame says "I am bad." Guilt says "I did something bad." Guilt is more likely to motivate you to make things right.

Restoration. Actively try to make things right. Repair relationships. Reaffirm any moral values that were broken. And remember: you have an internal relationship with yourself that needs repair too.

Renewal. This is the destination. Self-forgiveness. Renewed self-compassion. Self-respect. Through this process, you achieve moral growth.

"You truly can love yourself to the layer or levels that you need to when you get all of this crap out of the way," George says.

For you: Which of the 4 R's have you been skipping? Where in the process are you stuck?

Quotable Moments

"My math teacher hurt me once. I continue to hurt myself over and over and over again."

"Forgiveness is giving up the hope that the past could have been any different. It's accepting the past for what it was and using this moment and this time to help yourself move forward." — Oprah

"The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely." — Carl Jung

Your Next Move

George ends the episode with a question for anyone still struggling to forgive themselves.

God loves you. God forgave you. If God can forgive you, why can't you forgive yourself?

The thing is, you can. So the real question becomes: Why are you choosing not to?

Life is a set of choices. Good ones. Bad ones. But right now, listening to this conversation, if there are things keeping you from being who you want to be, who you should be, who you've always felt destined to be, you need to ask yourself why you're choosing not to set them down.

"For me, I look at this, and I realized I reached a point in my life where I went from 'who would and why would they forgive me' to 'why shouldn't I?'" George says. "And there was no good reason why I shouldn't."

Ready to hear the full conversation? Press play above. George and Liz go deeper into the affirmation exercise, the stories that shaped their relationship with self-forgiveness, and the moment everything finally clicked.