Which do you think is more difficult; forgiving others who have wronged you or yourself? Why?

Answer 1

As with self love this too is one of the most difficult things to learn. How can we forgive those who have hurt us most in life ? In truth this I found hardest in my own development. So many to forgive , so many that hurt me.
I had to do a rethink on how I was going to achieve this
I learned that if I forgave myself for allowing them to hurt me instead of finding it in me to forgive them , then this was much easier.
I forgave myself for allowing myself to be hurt in relationships , I forgave myself for allowing people to affect me with their words , and the list goes on.
To my surprise, after doing so , I found that these people started to either appear differently to me or that they themselves actually changed.
I also have to add that in retrospect , I have learned a lot about myself from those that have hurt me most.
I have learned I am patient
I have learned that I am strong
I have learned so much more from the hurts in my life than anything else
Perhaps as you reflect on and begin to find forgiveness in past hurts , you could consider what each has taught you and made you the wonderful person you are today.

Answer 2

I find forgiving myself easier. Well because its easy to admit mistakes and be open to yourself and expecting forgiveness all along much the same way you expect God to forgive you even when not ask.

Forgiving others, depends on the gravity of the sin, takes time. The hurt need to be addressed properly, spiritual guidance must be sought. Then forgiveness will come out naturally. The sooner the hurt is let go the better for me.

The above need not necessary for the other party to come forward and apologized. I will forgive too even without them asking.

Answer 3

We come into this world relatively intact, but few of us reach adulthood that way. I think Dr.Phil uses the metaphor of burned skin. Our emotional skin gets burned and, until or unless it heals, we are quite sensitive to hurts, both from others and from ourselves. My hurts are deep. I cannot decide which is more difficult as I have had so little success in forgiving others and myself. It is essential, particularly for someone with deep-seated wounding, to NOT pretend that all is well and forgiven if that is not the case deep within. Every time I think I'm over something, the pain and the anger manifest in some other way. If a man is sick and we only treat the symptoms, his illness is still there and will manifest in other ways. It's only when the illness itself is healed that the man will become well. Superficial forgiveness heals nothing. If anything, forgiveness is not so much a medicine as it is the result of a true inner healing. That inner healing, however, must be asked for, sought, accepted, and endured. For a burned man to heal, he must submit to a scouring of the burned skin from his body. Likewise, true healing scours that which is toxic or dead from the self. Only then do we have within what we need to truly and deeply forgive both others and ourselves.

Answer 4

Oh, forgiving others is much more difficult for me. I can forgive myself easily because if I didn't, I'd feel angry and depressed. But if someone has wronged me intentionally and does not acknowledge that they have done that, then I don't forgive. I move on and remove that person from my mind and I don't obsess over it. But I do not forgive...that's for whatever god they believe in to do.

Answer 5

To forgive yourself and to forgive others is equally difficult. You must learn to forgive yourself before you can truly forgive another. If you do not learn to forgive and love yourself you will either allow yourself to be mistreated or mistreat others (and yes gossip and judgment is mistreatment) and call it forgiveness. My belief here: That is why many religions are based on God forgiving you, to facilitate forgiving yourself; if God forgives you then who are you to not forgive yourself.

Forgiveness is the fragrance a violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.
-Mark Twain

Answer 6

I find it exceedingly difficult to forgive others, especially those who go out of their way to hurt someone; whereas I can forgive myself because I know why I did something wrong and I can take steps to avoid making the same mistake twice.

Answer 7

You know, I struggle with this daily. I have a harder time forgiving others than myself actually. I know my heart and I know that whatever I did- I did not do it to intentionally hurt anyone. My problem with forgiving others, is that I do not have enough information. How many times have they done this to me? Why did they do this to me? If they can do this to me, what else are they capable of? These and other questions tend to delay my forgiving of others.

Answer 8

Yourself. It easy to block out what others have done to you because your night with that person 24/7. But forgiving your self is more an inner battle that is fought silently and restlessly throughout a day. We betrayed ourselves.

Answer 9

Tough question. It would depend on what happened. If someone attacked my family, I would have a very hard time forgiving them. But it wouldn't be hard to forgive myself after I attacked them. (Just giving an example). Now if you had asked if I judge myself harder or others... I would say I judge myself much harder than what I put to others...

Answer 10

My observation has been that people have a harder time forgiving themselves more than they do forgiving others. God forgives us but sometimes we have a harder time forgiving ourselves. I think once a person understands that God loves them, even with all their imperfections, they can finally forgive themselves.