Maybe I’m Not That Person Anymore

What is the benefit of not forgiving yourself?

I’ve been thinking about this question a lot lately. I am by no means a perfectionist. I make mistakes. I say the wrong thing. I make decisions I wish I could take back. I’m human. But when I make a mistake, I tend to fixate on it. I think I’ve discovered two things fueling that behavior: OCD and shame. Let’s chat, because I know I’m not alone.

1.) OCD

My brain wants to analyze my mistakes, dissect them, replay them, question them, and find some kind of certainty or resolution. I can’t just acknowledge a mistake and move on. I replay what I should have done differently, what I could have done differently, and what I should have known. And once something gets lodged in my brain, it can stay there for years, making me feel stupid. I really don’t like that word and I never use it around my kids but it’s the only word I can think of to describe how I feel after a blunder.

I’ve struggled with this feeling for as long as I can remember. It started early on when school was extremely difficult for me. I would try just as hard if not harder than most of my friends but could never seem to fully catch on or up. Even so, I was an above-average student who graduated college, yet I still considered myself dumb. Even as an adult, I’ve carried this feeling that I’m somehow behind—like everyone else was given an instruction manual for life and mine got lost somewhere along the way. OCD knows exactly how to use that insecurity against me.

When I make a mistake, I don’t just think, I made a mistake. I think, Of course you made a mistake. You’re stupid. I have the perfect example of this.

A few years ago, I went out to eat with a girlfriend. Neither of us checked the forecast. When I arrived at the restaurant, it was sunny. By the time we left, a huge snowstorm had rolled in. On the way home, I hit a turn, slid on the wet snow, and ended up in a big ditch. I called my husband in a panic. He couldn’t get my car out, so we had to call a tow truck, and my father-in-law had to come stay at our house while my husband came to rescue me.

My brain didn’t say, The roads were bad and you misjudged the conditions. No, it said, Caitlin, your car slid into a ditch because you’re stupid. You should have checked the weather. You should have known how to drive a car in snow. Look at how much trouble you caused. Suddenly, the mistake became evidence. Evidence that I’m careless. Evidence that I’m behind. Evidence that I don’t have common sense. Evidence that maybe there really is something wrong with me. And that’s where the cycle of non-forgiveness begins.

2. Punishment and shame

I’m ashamed of some of the mistakes I’ve made in my life. And honestly, some of them, rightfully so. I think we have all done things we wish we could take back, and I believe in taking responsibility for those things. But let’s go back to the snowy ditch because that is a more lighthearted example.

I still drive that same road today. Every single time I pass that ditch, I remember what happened. For a brief moment, I feel like an idiot. Nothing is actually happening. I’m not in danger. No one is judging me. My brain simply attached shame to that place. And that’s what I’m starting to understand about shame: Sometimes the mistake ends long before the punishment does.

So I’ve basically convinced myself that if I relive something enough, maybe I won’t repeat it. If I feel bad enough, maybe that proves I’m truly sorry. But what happens when feeling bad becomes the punishment? What happens when you’ve acknowledged the mistake, taken responsibility, apologized if necessary, learned from it…and you still won’t let yourself move on? Shame takes I made a mistake and turns it into I am a bad person because I made a mistake. And then the cycle begins:

Replay it. Analyze it. Question it. Feel guilty. Feel ashamed. Punish myself. Replay it again.

What is the benefit of this? Does beating myself up change what happened? Does feeling guilty for the hundredth time make me more accountable than I was the first time? Does refusing to forgive myself somehow prove that I’m a good person? Or am I just hurting myself because I haven’t learned how to believe that I can make a mistake, take responsibility for it, learn from it, and still deserve compassion? Maybe self-forgiveness isn’t letting myself off the hook. Maybe it’s recognizing that I don’t have to remain on the hook forever.

I think the hardest piece of all of this is my past.I made a lot of mistakes in my 20s due to mental health struggles, PTSD, and immaturity. One after another. I carry a tremendous amount of shame about that time. I think that’s a huge reason why messing up today feels so awful. It’s not just about the mistake in front of me. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I’m afraid one mistake means I’m going backwards, that I’m undoing all the progress I’ve made. That I’m becoming that version of myself again.

Some of the decisions I made back then were completely out of character for me, particularly the ways I coped with severe depression. I can see that more clearly now. I was struggling in ways I didn’t fully understand at the time, and the trauma and mental illness I was carrying affected the way I thought, behaved, and functioned. That doesn’t erase what happened. But it does give it context. After I got help and started medication, little by little, the fog lifted. Little by little, I made fewer mistakes. And the mistakes I did make became the normal mistakes everyone makes. The thing is, that was almost a decade ago. At some point, I have to stop living as though I’m still that person. Because I have proven myself. I have proven to the people who knew me then that I am not the same person I was during those years. But more importantly, I have proven it to myself.

I am not my mistakes. I am not my trauma. And I am more certainly not the worst version of myself that existed during the hardest years of my life. Sometimes when we experience extreme trauma, we do things that are completely out of character—not because that is who we truly are, but because we are trying to survive something we don’t yet know how to survive. That doesn’t mean we don’t take responsibility. It means we allow ourselves to understand the whole story.

I think it’s time to finally put down the weight of the past—not because I’ve forgotten it, but because I’ve learned from it. I don’t need to spend the rest of my life making up for who I was in my 20s. I’ve spent enough time looking backward, trying to punish myself into becoming someone better. But the truth is, I am already someone better. Not because I punished myself enough, but because I did the hard work. Because I faced the things that hurt me. Because I sought help. Because I learned, I took accountability, and I kept going. Maybe I don’t need to keep proving that I’ve changed. Maybe I can finally permit myself to believe it. I don’t have some magic answer for how to quiet the part of my brain that wants to dwell on every mistake, replay every detail, or see a trigger around every corner. I’m still figuring that out. But I do know this: I won’t ever stop trying because you cannot fully become who you’re meant to be while constantly trying to return to who you were. Maybe I don’t need to keep punishing the old version of me. She got me here. Now it’s time to let her rest and give the woman I’ve become room to live.