The Courage to Forgive Yourself: Breaking Free from Perfectionism, Self-Blame & Smallness

Struggling to forgive yourself? You’re not alone. Many of us stay trapped in perfectionism, shame, and ongoing self-punishment — and it quietly destroys our confidence.

In this episode of Girl, Choose Yourself!, Eimear Zone explores how to forgive yourself and why self-forgiveness is essential for building authentic confidence. You’ll learn why we get stuck in cycles of self-blame, how perfectionism becomes self-abandonment, and what it takes to finally reconnect with yourself.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

• Why forgiving yourself feels so hard (and the beliefs that keep you stuck).
• How ongoing self-punishment erodes confidence and blocks connection.
• A 3-step practice for overcoming perfectionism and softening your inner critic.
• Why true confidence is impossible without forgiveness.

As poet Danna Faulds writes: “Do you value your reasons for staying small more than the light shining through the open door? Forgive yourself. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain.”

This isn’t about letting yourself off the hook — it’s about letting yourself back into your own heart. Listen now to start releasing self-blame and building the confidence you’ve been craving.

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Transcript

The Courage To Forgive Yourself

[00:00:00] Hi, and welcome back. I'm your host, Eimear Zone, and today we're diving into what I feel is one of the hardest, if not the hardest, practices that there is, and that is the practice of self-forgiveness, which I feel is critical for all of us. Really essential. Really foundational if you want to build true, genuine, authentic confidence, and if you want to truly show up in this world as your most powerful self.

So here's what you're gonna walk away with from today's episode. You're gonna understand the why. The why of why forgiving yourself can feel impossible. Or really, really difficult. You are gonna learn how self-blame [00:01:00], perfectionism, and ongoing self-punishment really keep us stuck, small, and disconnected.

And thirdly, you're gonna get a practical reflection that I'll guide you through briefly, that you can use right away to start. Softening that armor that forms around our heart when we're unable to forgive ourselves as Zen teacher Charlotte Yoko Beck once said, our capacity to know joy is directly related to our capacity to forgive.

So think about that. The joy that you long for is directly tied to your willingness to forgive. Including forgiving yourself. And I think we all want more joyful lives, more peaceful, wonderful lives. So let's [00:02:00] jump in and let's start looking first of all about why self-forgiveness is so damn hard. It's often the last thing, it's often the last thing that we feel that we deserve.

And. I think we live in what one of my teachers, Tara Brach famously calls this trance of unworthiness. This trance convinces us that we are unforgivable, that we are broken in some way. We're defined really by the worst thing that we've ever done, that it's there, it's this darkness, and it's inescapable.

We can't let it go or deny it, and it obviously comes from somewhere. Our culture tells us that we're "bad" unless we meet certain standards, seemingly impossible standards. And [00:03:00] families often reinforce perfectionism, criticism, or blame. And as children, we can internalize that.

We think it must be my fault. I'm not good enough for some reason, for not having met some expectations of a parent or some important influential other. So when we do fall short in our lives, in whatever domain, whether it's in parenting or in our relationships, in our professional lives at work, you know, we're just being bloody human, we carry this weight then of

non-forgiveness, unforgiveness. And I think this is the kicker, we kind of cling to it, not forgiving ourselves because on some level it kind of feels safer, it feels right, and I think there are a number of reasons for that. And here are three key [00:04:00] ones that you may recognize. We think that if I forgive myself.

I'll just do it again. If I forgive myself, there'll be this, the dark or the shadow part of myself, that will come to the fore. The second one is, maybe if I stop punishing myself and not forgiving myself for this thing, then I'll never improve. So it's kind of used as this form of disciplining ourselves.

And the third one is in this category. Listen, if I forgive myself for this thing, then I'm letting myself off the hook. And that's not fair because I caused pain, I did wron,g and I need to suffer for it. And those beliefs, while they sound rational and right, and you may recognize yourself, in some of them, they're really just traps.

And those traps are what? [00:05:00] Keep us circling in this field of shame and self-judgment instead of actually growing, and the cost of it is extraordinarily high. It totally erodes our confidence if we're holding onto things that we feel about ourselves that are unforgivable. Because how can you really, how can we really stand tall, take risks, go after the big goals and the big dreams when the inner critic is whispering internally, saying, you're still not good enough.

Remember that thing, you're not worthy. Who do you think you are? I know the truth. So let's look at this kind of trap of perfectionism and self-abandonment. Really. This is where I wanna bring in the poet Dana [00:06:00] Faulds, whose work I adore, and she writes in one of her pieces this: "Do you value your reasons for staying small more than the light shining through the open door?

Forgive yourself. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain."

Perfectionism is really sneaky, really sneaky. It convinces us that worthiness, our worthiness, is something that we must earn. And then when we inevitably, inevitably fail to meet these made-up, unreachable standards, we should have reached according to that inner critic, we punish ourselves. Over and over again. You're not enough.

Oh my God, you couldn't do that. Everybody else is able to do that. You're so undisciplined. You're not trying hard enough. [00:07:00] You're lazy.

That cycle of self-punishment doesn't make us better. It just keeps us small, and it really is a form of self-abandonment.

And here's something that it took me a while to really grasp, and it feels really true for me. And it's this: we cannot truly connect with anyone when we are in judgment of them. Not our partner, not our children, not an acquaintance, a colleague, or our friends. And that includes ourselves. It erodes true, authentic connection.

When we're in judgment, we don't see clearly,

And when we stay locked in that [00:08:00] self-judgment, we abandon the very relationship that makes confidence possible, and that's the relationship with ourselves to have a warm, loving, compassionate relationship with ourselves to be on our own side, to choose ourselves to see ourselves clearly.

Forgiveness, then, isn't giving yourself a free pass. It truly is an act, I believe, of self-loyalty. It's a way of saying, I'm still here with you. Even in all of this mess, this reality of this human life, I'm still here with you. I refuse to abandon myself.

Let's look now at what is beneath [00:09:00] self-blame.

And here's the thing about self-blame. It's often just a cover. I love this story that my teacher told me once, when I was in my mindfulness meditation teacher training program, and it's about walking in the woods and you see this beautiful dog, and you approach the dog, beautiful dog, and then suddenly the dog lurches at you, snarling and bearing its teeth.

So you go from, oh, a beautiful dog to a bad dog, and then you notice its paw is caught in a steel trap, and your heart softens, and you see the suffering beneath the aggression of the dog. That's us. Our badness is usually [00:10:00] a trapped paw. It's something unhealed. Maybe it's grief, loneliness, fear, shame, emptiness, and the self-blame acts like armor, and it protects us.

It keeps us from touching into, contacting, and knowing those raw, vulnerable feelings that live beneath the surface. And yet when we keep clinging to blame. When we refuse to forgive ourselves, we also keep ourselves cut off from freedom, from joy, from the real fullness of our lives. So the question becomes, what am I avoiding feeling by refusing to forgive myself?[00:11:00]

What am I avoiding feeling by holding onto this self-blame? And that inquiry alone can start to loosen its grip. So let's look now at really what the process of self-forgiveness might look like. How do we actually practice self-forgiveness? And firstly, and very importantly. It is not one and done. It is a practice.

But here is a simple three-step framework that I found very helpful, and so I offer it to you in the hope that it will be of service to you also. So the first step is really to recognize the story. Recognize the story. Notice when the, I'm bad, I'm [00:12:00] unforgivable, is playing in your mind. Awareness is always the very first step.

See it clearly. Step two is turning towards the raw feeling that is underneath. Instead of rehearsing and replaying that blame story, ask yourself. Simply this question: what is this protecting me from feeling? What is this story that this self-blame protecting me from feeling and allow space for that answer to emerge. because you are wise and you have the answer.

Maybe it's grief, maybe it's shame. Maybe it's the feeling of terror that you're unlovable. Allow that to surface [00:13:00] and be seen and known. And then the very important third step is to offer yourself compassion. You don't have to force the words. I forgive myself. Those can be very tricky words for people. So you might like to try something like, I can hold this with compassion, or This hurts and I'm suffering too.

And perhaps a fourth step is really to repeat and return to this practice. Forgiveness by confidence grows with practice every time you. Soften the inner critic. In this way, you're building trust with yourself, and really, you can think of confidence as self-trust lived out loud. You can't be [00:14:00] withholding forgiveness from yourself and be truly authentically confident.

And I wanna share this reminder with you also, that forgiveness. Doesn't erase responsibility, you think? I have used self-blame as self-discipline and felt that if I forgave myself for things, it would lead to me being undisciplined, and I would lose control in some way. I think it's really important. This is really important for me to remember that forgiveness doesn't erase responsibility.

It allows it. It actually allows it, because when you're no longer drowning in shame, you can finally see clearly what is; you see the truth, not the story, and when you can finally see clearly in that way, you can see what needs to be [00:15:00] repaired or what needs to change. And I love this quote from Mahatma Gandhi about forgiveness, and he said, The weak can never forgive.

Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. So it is strong to self-forgive. It's not a weakness. Now I want to offer you. A guided micro reflection. I guess you could call this self-forgiveness. Just something short that you can do while you're listening to this episode. Now, obviously, incredibly smart people, do not close your eyes if you're driving and listening to this.

Um, so if it's safe, you're in the right environment. Let's try something short together. And I want to invite you [00:16:00] to gently close your eyes.

Just take a deep, slow breath, bringing yourself consciously into this moment, deeply breathing, maybe relaxing your shoulders a little.

And I want you to bring to mind something big or small that you've been holding onto, that you've been feeling guilty about, not forgiving yourself, or something you've been blaming yourself for.

And as that Eimearges for you, [00:17:00] I want you to gently ask yourself an internal inquiry.

What belief keeps me stuck here?

Maybe it's. I don't deserve forgiveness.

Or maybe it's, if I forgive myself, I'll just mess up again.

Whatever it is, just let that belief emerge.

And now gently ask yourself, if I let go of blame, what would I have to feel

if I let [00:18:00] go of this blame? What would I have to feel? What's beneath?

Maybe it's grief, maybe it's loneliness, maybe it's fear.

Just open up, allow it, notice it,

and now offer yourself. A compassionate phrase

You could say, for example, I choose to hold this with kindness, or May I hold this with kindness. You might like to put your hand on your heart as you offer yourself a compassionate [00:19:00] phrase. I love you. I'm still here with you. Any phrase that gives you comfort,

and then take one more breath and gently open your eyes.

So here's the truth: self-blame. It's just a trance. It just keeps us small. Perfectionism and the ongoing punishment that's inherent in perfectionism is just self-abandonment, and you're not here to abandon yourself. You're here to learn to grow. To unfold into the most [00:20:00] spectacular, magnificent version of yourself. And that takes the courage that Mahatma Gandhi spoke of, of forgiveness.

And remember also that forgiveness is not weakness. It is the most courageous act of self-loyalty that you can make. And when you practice self-forgiveness, you're not letting yourself off the hook. You're letting yourself back into your own heart, and they want to believe you with this, that it's never too late.

Here's what Rabbi Lanter said. As long as the candle burns, there is time to make repairs. It's never too late to forgive yourself. So this week, I invite you to practice noticing, [00:21:00] noticing where you're slipping into self-blame, catch the story, touch into what's underneath that story, and bring compassion to yourself.

That's the real foundational work of building confidence. Really genuine, true, authentic confidence that can fuel you with that very nurturing, clean fuel that allows you to unfold into that most magnificent version of who you are here to be.

Okay, until next time, go gently and as always. Choose yourself.