Date Yourself Instead - Forgiving yourself when you've f*cked up

Episode Date: April 24, 2023

What happens when you're the problem? Forgiving yourself when you've made a mistake can be challenging. We all go through periods of time in our live where we're bound to make mistakes, but those mistakes can turn into valuable learning lessons. In this episode, I give various examples of how we can f*ck up and how it can be helpful to just own up to those mistakes and be honest with who you are. Don't beat yourself up too much, you're still human. PS - if you enjoyed this episode, always feel free to send me a DM on instagram @lyss and @dateyourselfinstead.

Today I want to talk about when you're the problem. When you're the insecure, crazy, needy, psychopath person in the relationship or in a friendship, and you're having one of those errors where you're feeling really low and insecure about yourself. Maybe you have low self-esteem, you just feel like you're not yourself, you're not in your element, and you're just having a couple bad months or a bad year or bad two years and you just don't feel like you're really comfortable in your skin and you're acting really fucking crazy to the people around you. And people start to give up on you because you feel like you're acting out of character, you're acting out of line and you're doing things really that you normally wouldn't do,

but maybe you're just going through a depression or you're just shifting as a person. And usually when you're shifting and going through these transformative moments, it often leads to something really powerful, and you actually grow a lot from it, but in the midst of it, it could feel like you're losing your mind. And I've been through a couple of these eras in my lifetime I went through this era in 2020 through 2022 where I was going through a massive shift in my life with my identity who I was as a person and Just changing so many things a lot of crazy should happen to me and my mom was sick. I

Lost my job because of COVID. I wasn't able to travel because of COVID and I was a travel blogger. So that made me super depressed. I fell into a funk. I went through two bad breakups. I got scammed out of $50,000, which maybe I'll talk about publicly on another episode.

Save that for another time, but there was just a lot of chaotic shit happening in my life and I feel like my identity fell apart and I was crumbling and I was moody and irritable and not myself to pretty much everyone in my life. So it was a really rough time and a rocky period of my life where I didn't know who I was. I was lost. I felt confused. I was always crying and I felt like Debbie Downer.

I just felt like I wasn't fun to be around. And luckily I had some people in my life that stuck around and showed me how true of a friend they really were. But there were other people who I lost touch with. There was a lot of people in business that I felt like gave up on me and didn't want to work with me anymore because I hadn't really posted anything on my social media.

I started losing followers on Instagram because I wasn't keeping up with my content and I just felt like I was a worthless piece of garbage to be completely transparent. And obviously I know that's not true and I obviously know that I'm not worthless and I have a lot to offer. But it took me a while to get to that point

where I felt like myself again. That's kind of the point I'm trying to make. So today's episode I wanted to talk about when you feel like you're the problem, when you feel like you're going through your insecurities and you're acting super out of line because you just feel like something's going on, which is totally human. And I don't think a lot of people talk about this side of life enough where we can go through a period of time where we're just changing so much that we might lose a lot of people in our lives and We might make a bunch of mistakes We might fuck up a few times because we're making decisions out of sadness and depression and fear instead of making decisions from a healthy place So we might make some bad decisions during this process. And I've definitely been there.

For example, this is a minor example, but if you've like falsely accused your partner of cheating on you in a relationship, you start to get super insecure, but you have no reasoning why you're accusing them of that. Or you backstabbed your best friend and you started gossiping about them behind their back for no reason. You just started talking shit and finding flaws and your best friend.

You're just gossiping excessively or you're bullying someone else and you're being mean to someone else. You commented something stupid on someone's video and it was hurtful to the other person. Or you're yelling at your boyfriend even though he's doing everything right and you're just in a pissed off mood,

and you're going off on him. I've done this many times where, I mean, aside from when I'm PMS-ing, I think we all get a pass for that, but there's been moments where I've lashed out for no reason, and I know if he did that to me, I would have been like, not forgiving at all, but I was like, oh, I get a pass, because I'm in a bad mood, and I would have been like, not forgiving at all, but I was like,

oh, I get a pass because I'm in a bad mood and I would just lash out for no reason. And I had to really understand that just because we're women doesn't mean we get to yell whenever we want at our man, you know? Like things like that where I definitely had to look within myself and actually understand that the things I was doing might be hurting someone else and to realize that I'm not always perfect and

I'm not always misperfect. And I had this guy once that actually, he wasn't my boyfriend, but we were talking for a while, we were dating for several months. And I kind of called him out on something really briefly that I wasn't okay with. And he kind of told me to look within myself and it really pissed me off. And he said something along the lines of, you're not misperfect. And it always stuck with me for some reason because I think I've always had this, you know, I DN my head that, oh, this guy's the problem because he's an asshole and he doesn't like me, so he's the problem. But in reality, you can't really control who you fall in love with and who you like.

And just because he didn't like me the way that I wanted him to, I thought that he was the problem, but he wasn't really doing anything terribly wrong all the time. I was just finding these flaws in him because he wasn't as into me as I was into him. So there was a moment where he said you're not misperfect and I don't know if he was like half-kitting when he said it. I really don't think he was. I think there was definitely a lot of truth to it and I suddenly had to really face myself and look myself in the mirror and say, maybe I am not perfect and maybe I do have some flaws that I need to work through and maybe I should really try to work on myself

and become more secure because I was going through a really insecure period of time during that period of my life. And I was actively participating in a relationship where I knew he didn't really like me so was he completely to blame if I was the one who was hitting him up, calling him texting him and wanting to hang out, even though he didn't really like me and I knew it and he made it clear, he didn't want a serious relationship. I'm at fault too, right? So we tend to always point fingers and blame the other person or other people in our lives for absolutely everything all the time, but sometimes you gotta understand that you're not perfect either

and there's shit that you're gonna have to work on as well. The reality is we all fuck up sometimes and in today's episode I really wanted to cover the ins and outs of why it's important to acknowledge that we're not perfect all the times. Sometimes no one else is to blame, but yourself, as I just said. And taking real accountability for your actions is really attractive and really healthy.

And it makes you love yourself even more because if you can own up to, if you can own up to your past mistakes and actually learn from them and grow from them, it's so much more attractive and such an empowering thing if you actually learn how to take full accountability. And sometimes it's just so important to face your mistakes head on in order to grow and evolve as a person in order to get to a higher level where you feel more confident and more sure of yourself and you won't make the same mistakes over and

over again. I'm gonna start by giving an example from the past where I made a huge fucking mistake. Actually, it wasn't that big, but it was just embarrassing and I felt like I humiliated myself. I was in a relationship with someone that was super serious, like someone I was deeply in love with, he was in love with me and we were dating for two years and I just didn't feel fully secure in the relationship due to my own issues. I had been cheated on in the past, and I hadn't worked through a lot of issues that I dealt with in past relationships.

I carried it into this relationship, and I bled all these insecurities and problems into this relationship. He's actually super loyal, and he's a loyal person, but I wasn't complete denial, and I was like, no, he's cheating on me, he's a loyal person, but I wasn't complete denial and I was like, no, he's cheating on me, he's doing shady things. Now I was always accusing him of things, like 24-7. And he was so patient about it and so understanding

and he was giving me time to work through everything. And there was not a trace of evidence that he did anything terribly wrong or cheated on me. And I just kept convincing myself mentally that something was off and he was cheating on me because I had been through so many traumatic things prior to being with him and I never healed from any of that. So I was bleeding all these problems into the relationship. And there was a point where I saw a girl liked one of his pictures and I went to her profile and I got in this

toxic rabbit hole of stalking someone that He basically didn't even know I mean he met her once like a years ago apparently and I Was under the impression he was cheating on me with this girl so I messaged her and I just felt so embarrassed and so low-vibre looking back. It was such a silly thing on my behalf. Instead of talking to him about it, I went behind his back and spoke to this girl and by her response and what she responded to me when I asked her if she knew him, I could tell she was being completely honest. She was completely confused as to what I was even talking about and I looked like a fool like I literally just looked stupid and

It was okay. I did forgive myself for what I did But I had to own up to the fact that I shouldn't have done that. I shouldn't have crossed that boundary because there was no Reasoning for me to do that other than me just being paranoid from my past experiences. He gave me no, there was no reasoning behind why I couldn't trust him is kind of what I'm trying to say. So, I was messaging some stranger, some random girl that had no idea what I was talking about. She was like, I haven't spoken in this person in years.

I don't know what you're talking about, whatever. And I realized that I was completely in the wrong. And I know that if it had been the other way around, if he had messaged a guy that had followed me and started accusing me of things falsely, I would have been so pissed. I would have been really hurt and angry that he was accusing me of falsely.

He was accusing me falsely because no one likes to be accused of things they didn't do. So he was still super nice about it when I admitted to it, but I felt so ridiculous, and I felt like I had been super overdramatic, and I had made this big deal out of something that wasn't intended to be like that. And we had to have this huge conversation where he basically said, if you keep, he basically said, if you keep accusing me of things, there's going to be major problems in this relationship because I love you. I care about you so much. And you're projecting all these past trust issues onto me.

It's weighing on the relationship and it's weighing on our connection. And I love you and I don't want to break up, but it's really affecting me and it really hurts me. And I had to come to terms with the fact that I needed to heal myself. And I couldn't continue to project these things onto him. Now there are situations where if you have a gut feeling and you feel like someone's actually cheating on you,

that's totally different. And I've been right about past situations. I've definitely had weird gut feelings about people who were being unfaithful to me and not loyal to me and being shady. And that's different. But that's a totally different situation. If you have valid reasoning and your partners actually doing something wrong, okay, that's fine. But in this situation, I had made a mistake. And I feel like I had crossed a line in the relationship in general. And I really had I had crossed a line in the relationship in general

and I really had to sit with that and unpack it and actually apologize and try to figure out where all these insecurities were stemming from. I've also had moments where I've gossiped about people and I've made silly comments about people that were just not necessary. I've been in girl groups where I started talking badly about people. This was a very long time ago. I've been in girl groups where I started talking badly about people.

This was a very long time ago. I remember in high school, when I was younger, I would gossip. I would talk shit about people for no fucking reason to be cool, to be like, to fit in. And I've gotten a lot better at this. I don't think talking about people ever is worth your energy.

I believe energy is everything. And where you're spreading your energy really matters. And I think it's very valuable. I always hear that expression, your energy is everything and where you're spreading your energy really matters. And I think it's very valuable. I always hear that expression, your energy is your currency and I live by that because it is. And I think when you're spreading your energy around by gossiping and talking negatively, the power of words is just extremely powerful. And I just think it's a waste of time.

And I think you can manifest negative things by talking negatively and I just believe in karma. You know all that stuff that I talked about on the podcast. So I avoid it now at all costs but I used to do this and it was just so unnecessary and I have had moments where I've been talking about someone and they're literally fucking behind me. That's another lesson I learned the hard way. I was talking badly about a girl once and she was right behind me and she heard me. And then I remember I was just like, shit.

I feel like such a fool. I remember I just felt like such an idiot and there was no real reason to even talk badly about anyone. No one did anything to put my life in danger. I think unless someone's putting your life in actual danger and harm, there's no reason to speak a bad word about them. If they talk shit about you, let them talk shit.

If they're mean to you, let it go with grace. I honestly, this is kind of relevant and so funny and might sound really silly, but the whole thing with the Selena Gomez and Haley Bieber situation, everyone's seen it on TikTok going viral, Haley's copying Selena, whatever it is. And Selena just carries it with so much grace and hasn't said a word about it and just telling everyone to spread kindness all the time, she's so classy.

And that's the way that you should live your life because it just makes everything so much easier because the storm will pass and I saw someone post this quote on Instagram recently too. I'm learning so much from social media lately. The quote was every storm runs out of rain and that really sat with me because I realized that even in the worst moments where I feel like so emotional and so angry and so heated and I want to lash out at someone or say something out of anger. I realize that it's never worth it in the long term. There's been times where people have angered me and I've typed out paragraphs on my phone

and I'm about to hit send and then I'm like, wait, let me take a breath, let me take a pause and just really think about it if I want to send this. And then I end up waiting 24 hours and I'm so glad I didn't send the message and I'm so glad that I didn't send them that bad energy and write a fucking essay to them because it really wasn't worth it. And it's just always better to wait 24 hours before lashing out with emotion. I always try to approach, approach situations like that now because it's way healthier and it actually eases a lot of conflict in a healthier way from my perspective. Fighting and arguing and bullying and gossiping, like all those things are just low vibe and just

don't make you feel good in the short term. As much as you might need satisfaction of saying something really harsh and mean to someone, it's never worth it in the long term. It doesn't really add any joy or excitement to my life by being a mean person. It just doesn't do anyone good by doing those things and I've had to learn at the hard way. And I learned a lot of those lessons when I was much younger. I also do believe in karma so if someone's doing you dirty and you know trying to fuck you over and you want to say something or do something to them let karma take care of it, that's my philosophy.

I believe that karma is real and I've had my karma and I think people will get theirs too. So let karma take care of them. I've had people fuck me over really badly. As I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, someone stole money from me and it wasn't fun and also people lied to me in business and have scammed me in certain business deals and things like that where I've had to learn things the hard way.

And it's broken my trust with a lot of people, but I believe in karma. And I think karma will go to those people in the right way that it needs to be dealt with. And I just sit back and let it happen. I don't think it's my job to create more problems in that person's life. Even though they've tried to hurt me, I believe that they're going to get it back in a different

way. And it's not going to be in my hands. Now there's also this great area of messing up and making mistakes, where I don't know how I feel about this honestly, and this could be a very controversial story I'm about to tell you, but there was a guy that messaged me and he was talking about how he fell in love with two women at the same time One of them was his fiance and when he was on a boys trip He met another woman that he fell in love with and now he's in love with two women and with both of them at the same time But he supposed to be marrying this other woman and he was just shraught and asking me for genuine advice and saying how

messed up in the head he felt and how he felt like a terrible person and he didn't know what to do with himself and he didn't realize that something like this would ever happen to him and it was a huge mistake and he feels like he went too far with the other woman. It was this whole story and I really didn't know what advice to give him. I'm being completely honest. I'm usually good at giving advice. Obviously I have a dating podcast. And I just, for some reason, I was speechless.

I couldn't even open the message and give him an answer because he didn't seem like a bad person. I think we often jump to the conclusion that if someone's unfaithful, they're a terrible human being. And usually I was always quick to jump to that conclusion, but then I think there's like this gray area where if we make a mistake and that's that's There's a fucking truck parked outside the studio. Sorry hold on one second. If we make a mistake and

I guess we Are unfaithful to our partner that we love and we actually do care about a lot. What are we? Are we a bad person? Like, how are we defining ourselves then? Are we really a terrible person? What if our whole life we define ourselves as a really, really good, well-intentioned human being and then something like this happens and we felt like we couldn't control it because

emotions and feelings got in the way and maybe it was a wee moment of weakness or whatever it is. If we make a mistake like that, if we're not loyal to our partner that we're engaged to, does that make you suddenly a bad person that's going to hell? I can't answer that. I don't really know how to answer that. I think there's a gray area where you know who you are as a person, you know your heart and you know your intentions and that you might have fucked up, you might have done something really fucking shitty and it's up to you to face that and acknowledge that and do some deep inner healing in order to either recover from that and work on it and couples therapy or you got to make a decision of who you want to be with and obviously

you're gonna cause someone a lot of heartbreak and pain and it sucks. I don't necessarily think you're the worst person in the world for making a mistake like that but I think owning up to it and actually confronting it instead of letting it continue on is the best approach to that situation instead of letting it fester even more into a bigger and bigger issue and two timing two people one that you're engaged to. I think you got to just face it head on and make a decision in order to be fair to both people involved and you're and be fair to yourself. It's a really challenging and tricky conversation to have and I just think coming from a place of if someone were to do that to me, for example,

if a man was engaged to me and then out cheating on me with someone else, and in love with both of us, I just think it would be so disrespectful if he continued it without telling me. I would rather know and move on and heal and learn from that experience, then waste my time with someone who's cheating on me. And I think you owe it to that person to be honest with yourself and with them and address the situation. And whatever outcome it is, that's the outcome you have to deal with. But I truly believe that it's important to be as open and honest with your mistakes as possible, regardless of the outcome. And you might be hurting people and you might have to live with that karma and those consequences.

Inherently, I don't think this person that message me is a bad human being. He seemed like a really nice person, but who the fuck knows? I don't know him personally. I'm just saying, I don't think it's black and white. And this is an excusing infidelity and this isn't excusing cheating because I think it's so wrong and I would never cheat personally, but there's so many different layers to these situations

and it's hard to always jump to a conclusion when you're dealt with a situation like this. So are you a bad person if you're unfaithful to be completely transparent? I think a lot of people do cheat and deeply regret what they've done. But if you continue to do it, if it's a one-time thing, I think that's way different than if you're doing it on a repetitive basis. It starts to get fucked up. And you need to get your shit together and that doesn't mean you're a bad overall person, but I think that means you have a lot of work to do on yourself

and it's not fair. And it's not fair to the people involved and you gotta take full accountability and responsibility for that. What do you do when you're the problem? What do you do when you're looking at yourself in the mirror every day and you're like, am I the problem? And you are having a crisis, like a midlife crisis,

because you feel like you're the one constantly hurting people and fucking up and making mistakes. I think whenever I feel like I'm the problem and I've made mistakes, I just try to be as honest and transparent with myself as I possibly can. And I stopped living in denial a while ago. I used to give myself the narrative that I was perfect and I had no flaws and nothing was ever wrong with me and that everyone else had issues.

But the truth is, that's not true because everyone has their own shit. And I think if you're a good person, all you could do is be the best you could be every single day. And do as much as you can to grow and evolve as a person and if you're making a mistake or you've made a mistake And you feel like you fuck something up the only thing you could do is take those lessons and try to turn them into valuable Learning points in your life If you accuse someone of something falsely if you started a fight you didn't want to fight if you broke up with someone if you You know ended things with a relationship and you didn't realize the consequences,

and you were grit hurting someone deeply, whatever it is, just understanding that maybe there's a valuable lesson in this and that you need to learn from this mistake, that is why you're going through this. You're going through this period of time because you have to learn something. And I try to take everything painful, whether it's me making the mistake or someone else.

I try to take everything that I've been through on this journey of life and turn it into a valuable lesson because it's the only way I can cope with it and move on in a way that makes sense to me. That's the way my brain works. The best way for me personally to handle it is to try to see the lesson in it and try to see the value and what it could take from it. So I don't make the same mistakes in the future and I don't go through the same experiences in the future. There was a moment I deeply regretted where I yelled at someone I was dating and I threw my phone across the room out of anger and I broke my phone like an idiot and I just snapped and I

Went off the deep end that day and I was so overly emotional I was overreacting to everything and I remember I was starting a fight for no reason and I was lashing out and Going crazy and this person was in tears Trying to figure out what the fuck was going on and I just felt like a child that didn't want to listen to anyone talking to me. And I was blacked out angry just trying to tune out anyone who was trying to talk to me that day. And it's happened in me a few times where I get so angry and so heated that I just will shut the world down. I won't listen to anyone else's has to say. And I overreacted completely. And I remember into what anyone else has to say. And I overreacted completely. And I remember I felt so much shame later on after I acted that way. And in order to stop doing this, because I stopped

doing this, I do not let my emotions affect me like that in the way that I used to anymore, I really had to work on myself. I'm not just saying, you know, I did a meditation class. It was like two years of unpacking trauma that I went through. I had to understand where the anger was coming from. I had to understand that the source of my anger was actually coming from not being heard or feeling like I was never understood my whole life. I always felt like people were either misinterpreting

what I was saying at times or they just weren't hearing me out or they didn't value what I had to say. So yelling would be the answer. And once you really get to the main root of where your emotions are coming from, it's way easier to address them and unpack them and work on them so you can grow and become better as a person. And I think that combined with therapy and taking a lot of alone time and spending time by myself and really getting to know who I am and trying to separate my emotions from other people and understand that I need to work on certain things and that I'm not

perfect. It's all a part of that was all a part of my journey and my learning process and there's been a lot of ups and downs and I realized that no one is perfect and everyone has their moments in time where they do stupid shit and they mess up and they make mistakes and I've been there so I hope that was helpful if any of you are going through a period of time where you're trying to forgive yourself and you feel like you've gone off the deep end don't worry I've been there and yeah that's pretty much it. That's pretty much concluding and wrapping up today's episode.

Thank you, as always, for listening to the podcast. It means the world to me. If you haven't already, be sure to rate it on Spotify. And Apple would mean everything. And be sure to check out my YouTube as well. I post videos on YouTube too now. So it's very exciting and I'm very appreciative for all the feedback and the love as usual. I hope you guys have an amazing week. Thanks again and stay tuned for next Monday.