hey there I'd like to welcome everybody today's presentation on six ways to
forgive yourself for not knowing what to do I'm your host Dr Donnelly Snipes
when something happens we often reflect on not knowing what to do in the moment as either
making the wrong choice or just freezing up think about times that you may regret you may
still be holding on to regrets about you wanted to be the best parent or the best spouse or the
best friend and you didn't know what to do to make that happen and you looked back and you're
like well I Shoulda Coulda Woulda done all these things and then you start beating yourself up
because you didn't respond the way you now know you could have now remember hindsight is 20 20.
when we're looking back over something we've grown we've learned since then we may not have had that
knowledge back then we may not have had some of the abilities we needed back then so we and and we
may even if you did have those not that knowledge and those abilities in the moment it's not as
easy to see all of your options as it is when you're standing out an armchair quarterbacking
so maybe you reflect on times where you didn't know what to do to effectively manage your
emotions and you lashed out or you acted in a way that was not helpful okay it happened you may not
have known what to do in order to helpfully maintain your boundaries so you were either
aggressive and pushed people away or passive and started getting resentful at others you may not
have known what to do to help somebody in distress they were just really struggling and you're like
I don't know how to help you and I feel bad about that I regret not taking these steps
I now know I could have or responding to something during a traumatic event
maybe you were in the middle of a trauma and you look back and again hindsight's 2020 when you're
in trauma when you're experiencing a trauma that fight or flight reaction is on that means we're
not in our wise mind we're not thinking with our executive control Network we are in fight
or flee I want to stay safe so responding during a traumatic event you may look back and go well
I should have and I know a lot of people in certain news stories that are going on right
now are armchair quarterbacking what somebody should have done in a particular situation
and it's important that we step back and say you know if I was in that situation would I have known
what to do what might have I what might I have done differently and recognizing that when that
fight flee or freeze uh situation occurs you don't necessarily have control over it so if
you freeze then it's important to recognize that that's a a natural part of the stress reaction
anger is a response to a threat so if you're resentful or regretful or angry about
what you didn't do or not knowing how to respond okay so anger is our overriding
emotion depending on what you want to call it guilt is anger at yourself so think about
that situation how were your actions or are your actions a threat to yourself or self-esteem if
you're angry at yourself for not responding in a particular way how does that memory that you have
reflect on potentially not who you want to be now grief and and regret is often kind of
a combination of guilt and grief in my experience grief is anger plus depression you're angry about
what happened and how you apparently responded incorrectly or didn't respond
um and you're reflecting you're starting to begin to explore how this memory might represent
a threat to your self-esteem and depression is a sense of hopelessness and hopelessness
so how does this situation that you didn't know how to respond in how does this situation
represent a loss that you blame yourself for and it could be a loss of self-esteem it could
be you know a loss of a friend so if you are feeling depression over it and you look back
and you say you know I didn't know how to manage my emotions effectively and I lashed out and I
was really not pleasant to be around during this time in my life and I pushed a lot of people away
and I regret that okay so there's a lot of losses there to grieve and to deal with and recognizing
that is going to be important because it's going to be part of the healing process
it's also important to recognize that when things happen we often have to make decisions and those
decisions are not always right even if you have time to sit down and think about them in your
wise mind they may not be right in retrospect but that's that hindsight thing again did you
have the ability to make a different choice or take a different action at that point in time
and when I say the ability I don't mean you know stepping back and thinking well could I have done
this if you were in fight flight or freeze and you were frozen you didn't have the ability to
do something else at that point your body had done taken over so did you have the ability to
make a different choice or take a different action if so okay let's look at why you might not have
in what way was the choice you made the least unpleasant of your options
and you may have made a choice based on what had worked for you in the past to help you stay safe
you may have made a choice and and a lot of our choices aren't even necessarily conscious choices
they're reactions but you may have reacted based on your past experiences and those
things that were more prominent in your memory versus those things that you would like to do
forgiveness means using your energy to learn from the experience so it doesn't
happen again instead of continuing to use that energy to beat yourself up
what's a more effective way of moving towards your rich and meaningful life
one of the things that you can use your energy for is accepting powerlessness over the things
that were out of your control in that situation you didn't know what to do or maybe you look
at the situation and you think I made the wrong choice well could you have predicted the future
could you have predicted what was going to happen if you could have
you may have made a very different choice but sometimes we can't
and or did it have to do with someone else and accepting powerlessness over the things out of
your control means accepting that you can't change other people even if somebody that you love dearly
is struggling with addiction or depression or something and you truly want to help them but
you don't know what to do to help them or you're doing everything you know how to do and it's not
working all right well you know what you're not able to change somebody else so accepting
the fact that sometimes there are no answers really sucks but it's one tool in the toolbox
so what parts of this situation that you're having trouble
forgiving yourself for what parts were out of your control and what parts were in your control
forgiveness also means using your energy to learn to identify the motivations of your actions
I did not know how to do it so I I didn't know how to cope with this feeling I didn't know how
to accomplish this goal so I just didn't do it even though people were telling me
I didn't know how to actually do it so I just didn't or I was overwhelmed by having to try to
figure it out you know it's easy to look back and go okay in this situation you should have done x y
and z but that is just looking at that person in a vacuum you're not considering all the other stuff
you had going on all the other stuff that you were trying to contend with at that point in time
you can look back at it and say I wish I would have done X but I didn't and we can't change
the past and I will take this knowledge I will take this experience and in the future
I will try to respond this way and I emphasize try to respond because remember sometimes that
default mode Network kicks in and you are in your responding mind you're in your
emotional mind and you are going to fight flee freeze Fawn or just forget about it
before you can get into your wise mind explore how many people would have encountered difficulty in
the same situation how many people have been through something similar and may have looked
back 10 15 days or weeks or years later and said gosh I wish I would have made a different choice
explore the reality of the losses and the damage
from not knowing what to do and what aspects are able to be fixed
sometimes things happen and you don't know how to respond and you
feel guilty for making some of the choices that may have led up to that
and it's important to reflect on what actually or the consequences sometimes we can start
attributing negative things or negative outcomes to this particular event and it really doesn't
have that much to do with that event or we had no control over that event but if there are things
that can be fixed maybe you had difficulty you didn't understand what emotional dysregulation was
and you've been dysregulating for a long time however there are relationships that still exist
to some extent that you want to repair okay you know so can those relationships be fixed
you can beat yourself up until the cows come home over how you acted and interacted in the past
but that's not going to change anything it's not going to help them feel better and it's going to
make you feel worse or you can use that energy to say okay let me try to show you this new way that
I am acting and reacting reflect on how holding on to regret is negatively impacting your life
holding on to this anger at yourself for not knowing what to do how is that
benefiting you and how is it keeping you from moving toward your rich and meaningful life
floor Wyatt's scary to tell yourself you know what
it's okay you did the best you could with the tools you had at the time
and I've said this three or four times already in this presentation but hindsight is 20 20.
and we mustn't minimize the impact that everything had on that led up to that decision yeah you
didn't just suddenly get plopped into a situation and have to make a decision there were things that
led up to it there were things that were going on at the same time and then there were consequences
so we need to reflect on how was the choice I made how did I how was I doing the best that I could
explore who beside yourself is still judging you for what you didn't know or didn't know how to do
likely nobody or or very few people and for those people who are still judging you is likely if they
understood What You Now understand they may be able to work toward forgiveness as well
ah in summary I guess stop holding yourself to a higher standard than everyone else
most of us if a friend or a loved one or even a stranger on the street
is faced with a situation and they don't know what to do we don't hold it against them
even if bad things happen as a result we don't hold it against them at least not
for a long time and so it's important not to hold ourselves to that higher standard and continue to
beat ourselves up instead of learning from it and using that energy in a positive direction
stop being angry at yourself for not knowing what you didn't know one of the regrets that
I struggle with is I really didn't know my family my grandmother um I learned more about
her at her wake than I learned from her in the 22 years that she was in my life and I really
regret that but I didn't know what questions to ask I had no no idea to ask questions about
yeah anything you know and I was a child at that point you know most of those 22 years I
was a young child and saying hey Grandma tell me about what it was like growing up being you
isn't something that's going to pop into the mind of an eight-year-old or at least not
most eight-year-olds so stop being angry for at yourself for not knowing what you should have done
start using the lessons that you are learning now from that hindsight to improve your future
and start recognizing that you know what nobody knows the right thing to do in every situation
it may appear some people do but in my opinion I think some people get lucky a
lot but nobody knows everything and nobody knows all the right answers all the time