Not My Circus, Not My Monkeys

When I wrote about forgiving yourself earlier this week, I said:

If I blamed myself for actions that belong to someone else, I can’t let go, because it’s not mine (I stole it). I need to return ownership of the actions to their rightful owner. I don’t need to shame the owner, and use name calling. I need to say their actions belong to them – ownership. Example: They are not a liar, but they did lie. Blaming myself and letting ‘them’ off the hook is not forgiveness.
Emma Swan Johnston

I wanted to unpack that one a bit.

Why I Can Forgive Others and Not Myself?

In theory, you can only trust others as much as you trust yourself. You can only love others as much as you love yourself. And you should only be able to forgive others when you are able to forgive yourself.

But when I’ve asked some of my loved ones about their experience, they say, “no, it’s so easy to forgive other people, but not myself.” As they felt comfortable, they shared experiences where they forgave another and could not forgive themselves. I noticed a trend in a lot of those stories: they blamed themselves for other people’s choices. I saw this in myself too.

I now realize that I try to hotwire forgiveness. I try to pardon another person, by taking on all their junk and garbage. I find really creative ways to take responsibility: I didn’t say it the ‘right’ way, I’m not a very good [insert relationship here], if I was a more skilled communicator that wouldn’t have happened, I must be hard to deal with, I shouldn’t complain, I didn’t say ‘no’.

Good news: I no longer feel anger toward that person.

Bad news: I am really angry at myself. And I’m afraid I might “let” the bad thing happen again.

Shame Resiliency

The first step to not beat myself up was shame resiliency. Even when I am at fault, shame and blame never help. No shame or blame for me or for anyone else. Responsibility and accountability are the opposite of blame. Here is a great video by Brené Brown that explains the two:

I’d rather it be my fault than no one’s fault

Ownership

With shame resiliency I went from “I am the problem” to “I have a problem”. Ownership usually works wonders when something is mine. But in this case, ownership didn’t work because it was not MY problem. I was trying to own something that was not mine.

When I mentally handed the problem over to its rightful owner, I would feel very angry. All that “forgiveness” that I thought I had taken care of simply evaporated. Added to the original hurt, was the pain from all of the years I believed something was my fault. This is when the reall forgiveness began. This is also when new boundaries bubbled up inside of me. I had something new to protect.