How to Forgive Yourself for What You Did While Drinking

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You can stop drinking, completely change your life, and become someone you’re proud of…

…and still cringe when you think about some of the things you did.

Maybe it’s the way you treated your spouse. The fights you started. The lies you told. The things your kids saw. The relationships you damaged.

Or maybe you spent years being the person in your family everyone worried about, talked about, or simply didn’t trust.

And now you’re different.

But you still don’t know how to forgive yourself.

That’s what we’re talking about today, because self-forgiveness in recovery is a lot more complicated than telling yourself to “let go of the past.”

You can’t change what happened. You can’t control how other people feel about it. And you certainly can’t demand that everyone forgive you just because you finally got sober.

But that doesn’t mean you have to spend the rest of your life punishing yourself either.

In this episode, we’re talking about:

The distinction that changed how I looked at the things I did while drinking — without letting myself off the hook for any of it.
The uncomfortable truth about why people still may not trust you after you quit drinking — and the mistake we make when we expect them to.
Why quitting drinking may not fix the behaviors that damaged your relationships — even though alcohol was absolutely part of the problem.
The kind of amends that has nothing to do with sitting someone down for an apology — and why it may be far more powerful than anything you could say.

There’s a huge difference between taking responsibility for your past and making your past your permanent identity.

And recovery gives you an opportunity to figure out what that difference actually looks like in your life.

If you’ve ever wondered, How the hell am I supposed to forgive myself for all of that? — grab your coffee and settle in.

This conversation is for you.

Links mentioned in this episode:

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Related Episode: Forgive Yourself

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