How does one forgive oneself for making mistakes?

It's healthy to feel guilt over small mistakes. To learn from your mistakes and let it go. But shame isn't normal. To start blaming yourself and thinking you're defective or not worthy of being alive. It's not normal to hang on to shame for long periods of time over small mistakes. It's called toxic shame. Googling toxic shame brings up a bunch of different things that explains it better than I can

Reading about it helped me realize that it was my parents and the way they raised me that made me (not) cope with mistakes this way. They never allowed me to make a mistake or taught me how to deal with the aftermath in a healthy way. Mistakes just Weren't Allowed and love was withheld as punishment if I made a mistake. They expected me to know things I never could have known without them teaching it to me. Sometimes they would punish me and make me guess what my mistake was for weeks without telling me. All very toxic. Maybe your parents were similar

I'm just explaining all the things I had to unravel to get to a better place with it mentally. For me, understanding why I do it in the first place has helped me reason with myself better over time. I can catch myself when I'm doing it and realize it's the abusive brainwashing that's caused this. But literally everyone makes small mistakes all the time. That's part of being alive. To punish children for being human is fucked up. To abuse them for so long that you've brainwashed them into hating themselves for being human for the rest of their lives is evil.

/r/CPTSD Thread