First I'll ask for your forgiveness up front cuz I haven't had enough sleep, 2 cats making too much noise had me up waaaaaaaaaaaay too early this morning. In fact, I'm so tired I'm going back to bed but thought I'd make some sort of attempt at replying this anyway. I hope I don't screw it up.

I agree, you do not have to be actively involved with someone to forgive them. It is an internal action. For me, I have to examine whatever the situation was and process it, then I'll be able to forgive them. I've been thinking a lot about forgiveness lately, especially in therapy. I think most times something has happened between myself and someone else, I don't look at it as having to forgive someone else, which is probably not a good thing, because that means that I'm putting the blame more so on myself and therefore I need to forgive myself. That is much harder for me to do. I know I am not always or maybe never the only one who is at fault and I need to remember that. But I guess this is where my self-hatred comes into play and if I blame myself then it gives me all the more reason to hate myself. Why do I want to do this? I don't really know to be honest. You would think I would want to look for reasons to like myself instead of the opposite. Why do I let the other person off the hook sometimes? Of course, there are times I do see some of the fault lying with the other person. I guess the severity of their transgression is considered on how quickly I can forgive. It would also depend on who that other person is, how close I am to them and how badly hurt I am. Geez, it doesn't sound like I do too well in the forgiveness issue. I thought I did but now typing this out, I'm starting to question myself but I do agree it's an internal process that doesn't even require the other person whatsoever. It also doesn't require the other person apologizing for me to forgive them. Sure that would be nice but it's not a necessity. Even if I find it difficult to forgive someone, I always wish them well. I'm not a vindictive person, never have been, never will be. I wish everybody well. I'm sure that I have, in fact, I know that I have hurt others badly and that rips apart my very being. Not healthy at all for me and something I have been working on in therapy. I'll do whatever I can to avoid hurting someone, even to my own detriment. But that's not to say that it doesn't happen anyway unintentionally because it's unavoidable. My problem is that I can't live with myself afterwards. It all comes back to self-forgiveness, extremely hard for me. I find it a LOT easier to forgive someone else before I can ever forgive myself. So, I don't get the healing that you are able to acquire.

I think I can support and encourage others very easily. To me that is a totally separate issue than forgiveness, whether it be to someone else for myself. As I said, forgiving others comes a lot easier than forgiving myself. Why? because I can't live with myself knowing I've hurt someone. I guess I almost feel like I'm unforgivable, I don't know, maybe I don't feel worthy enough for forgiveness, maybe it's because I just don't like myself enough to forgive myself. "Sometimes" on these boards, I "almost" feel like I'm the only one who deals with this, although I know it's not true because I've read other people's posts where they say very negative things about themselves. But there seems to be a lot of people, like yourself, that appear to have no problem with liking themselves and self-esteem. Either that or it's never posted. Not sure which.

So bottom line is I rarely feel good inside. I don't like myself enough for that. I need to find that from within, I know that, but I'm not there yet. At this point, I'm looking at outside forces to help me feel that way and I know that's not supposed to be how it works.

I've talked about this in therapy and my therapist said that all of this comes from my childhood and the way I was raised. Never being told that I was loved, never being hugged, etc and whatever I did was never good enough. Therefore, all of that has carried with me throughout the years. So, I know what I do wrong, I know why I do it, now I have to figure out how to fix that. It won't happen overnight. I have to unlearn the way I was brought up so that I can be nice to myself. No small order.

I hope I replied in the manner in which you wanted. My brain is still asleep and my eyes barely open, heading back to bed. Sorry if I didn't make any sense, talked in circles and/or wasn't even on topic.