It's Okay to Be the Self Who Can't Forgive — Why You Don't Have to Blame Yourself

"After what they did, maybe the small-minded one is me, for still not being able to forgive." Rather than the person you can't forgive, you find yourself blaming yourself. Plenty of people fall into this.

But the self who can't forgive is fine as it is. In this article, we'll talk calmly about why you don't have to deny the part of you that holds a feeling it can't forgive.

Not forgiving isn't a sign of a small heart

When a person feels they "can't forgive" someone, there is usually something precious that was trampled on. You believed in them and were betrayed. You engaged sincerely and were treated lightly. A line that should have been kept was crossed.

In other words, the inability to forgive is proof that something you held as "important" truly existed. People don't get angry at those, or things, they don't care about. Before dismissing the self who can't forgive as "small-minded," try looking at it and asking: what was it that I valued?

Holding a feeling and hurling it are different

When you feel guilty for being someone who can't forgive, underneath is the assumption that "feeling unforgiving is itself wrong." But feeling "I can't forgive" inside and hurling it at the other person are entirely different things.

Simply feeling it hurts no one. If anything, putting a lid on a feeling makes it more likely to burst out later in an unexpected form. So first, it's fine to let yourself quietly receive the feeling of not being able to forgive. That isn't weakness — it's being honest with yourself.

Easing away from self-blame

The habit of blaming yourself was built up over a long time. So you don't have to erase it in one go. When you're about to blame yourself, just notice: "ah, there I go blaming myself again." That alone gradually opens a small gap between you and the feeling.

What helps open that gap is "writing it out and setting it outside." Write down what you can't forgive and how you felt at the time, on the premise that no one else will see it. Rather than replaying it endlessly in your head, getting it onto paper where you can look at it tends to make it more manageable.

Yurusen is a ledger-of-judgment app for exactly this — "recording and letting go while staying the self who can't forgive." File the person you couldn't forgive quietly into a ledger only you can read. When you want to look again at the "type" of person who hurt you, take a peek at the Wraith Codex. Instead of blaming the self who can't forgive, try starting by gently tracing the outline of that feeling.