Many addicts in recovery struggle with the question of how to forgive themselves for the things they did while using.

Although not directly addressing people in recovery, Sam Harris recently addressed the issue of how to manage painful and embarrassing memories.

Sam recommended mindfulness meditation to avoid unnecessary suffering caused by regrettable memories.

Is mindfulness meditation the key to forgiving ourselves?

I’ve had some time to think about the role of mindfulness meditation in helping us forgive ourselves. In this post, I want to share both the pros and the cons of mindfulness meditation. And I want to share some ways I think Christianity can offer additional support to anyone struggling with how to forgive themselves.

PROS. Mindfulness Meditation is especially helpful when you are the only one upset by your actions. Imagine that you are late to turn in a report at work. In this scenario, neither your boss nor your coworkers were upset about the lateness of the report. Maybe you had a family emergency and everyone at the office understood—and the lateness of the report didn’t affect anyone.

If you can’t forgive yourself—and you beat yourself up for days about the lateness of the report, you are beating yourself up necessarily.

In that case, Mindfulness Meditation can teach you how to detach from the guilt and savor the present moment. You’ll learn to view thoughts as mere thoughts and to pay more attention to what you experience through your 5 senses. You may still experience the guilty thoughts, but you won’t believe them as much as you did before you learned mindfulness meditation.

That’s not bad advice.

Mindfulness meditation is also particularly effective when you can’t change what happened. In that case, learning to accept what you can’t change can be important. Mindfulness meditation can show you how to stop struggling to change what can’t be changed. And it can even teach you how to stop struggling with feelings of guilt. Instead of vigorously attempting to repress the memories, or struggling to forgive yourself, you will learn to accept the sensations of guilt and remorse. You’ll “sit with them” rather than try to control them.

Mindfulness can also teach valuable lessons about pain. Through mindfulness meditation, it is possible to see pain, not as something to avoid, but as a pathway toward healing. For some, avoidance of painful memories has kept them locked away from the world—frightened to be triggered into remembering unpleasant events. Perhaps “embracing the pain” states it too strongly—but something like “being willing to experience pain” can be a powerfully transforming idea. Especially if being willing to experience pain means that you begin to engage in life despite uncomfortable feelings and thoughts. The subtitle of a book on Mindfulness meditation sums up the goal: “Get out of your head, and into your life”.

Cons. Mindfulness Meditation takes time and effort to learn. Thus, the benefits are not immediate.

I would think that mindfulness is less effective in people with low intelligence or high distractibility. Also, people who are sick may find it difficult to practice this skill.

Mindfulness doesn’t give you a pathway toward fixing problems. (Although it may help you achieve a state of mind that is conducive to problem-solving).

Mindfulness meditation underemphasizes the importance of the real-world consequences of reputation and status.

CHRISTIANITY.

When we say we need to learn to forgive ourselves, we often mean that embarrassing and painful memories haunt us—and our conscience accuses us. These painful memories surface because our mind is trying to warn us not to do shameful and embarrassing things. After all, the loss of reputation and status is deadly. People with high status live longer and are more healthy on average, than those on the bottom rung of society’s ladder. Moreover, loneliness does as much to shorten lifespans as smoking does. Thus, we instinctually fear doing things that hurt our reputation or status. Perhaps it is with an understanding of the impact of status and reputation on our health and survival that the Bible tells us to avoid gossip and to never bear false witness against our neighbor.

In any case, the Bible recognizes the impact of the loss of status and reputation whereas the scope of mindfulness meditation is limited to the processes of our own minds. It does nothing to directly impact our social world.

When we can’t forgive ourselves, Christianity emphasizes making amends to those we have hurt. In Luke 19, the Tax Collector Zacheus, exclaims that he is giving half his wealth to the poor and that he will repay those he has cheated. In many other passages, the Bible encourages people to be reconciled to one another. But mindfulness is silent on the topic of repayment, reconciliation, or other acts of contrition. This is too bad because when making amends is possible, it may be preferable to mindfulness meditation. Each case is different, but certainly, there must be situations in which positive action will help you forgive yourself better than mindfulness meditation.

When we can’t forgive ourselves, Christianity teaches us to do more than accept the things we cannot change. We learn to hand over our guilt and shame to a loving and powerful God. Through faith, we “let go and let God,” We also have hope that God can make things right when we can’t. That hope extends beyond the limits of this world. So that even if we die unreconciled, we have hope that in heaven, God will make all things right.

When we can’t forgive ourselves, we can experience comfort and empathy from Jesus. Jesus understands the pain that comes from rejection and the loss of status. On his life on earth, he was rejected and scorned.

He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

Surely he took up our infirmities and carried our sorrows, yet we considered him stricken by God, smitten by him, and afflicted.

But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed. [Isaiah 53]