Lydia Woodyatt

An Evolutionary Approach to Shame-Based Self-Criticism, Self-Forgiveness, and Compassion

Why does self-criticism arise and why might we get stuck in it? This chapter explores the physiological, social-cultural, and evolutionary theories that may help us to understand the experience of self-criticism. Experiences of stigma, shame, guilt, and self-criticism are embedded in innate potentials for human experience that are social. Motives for both competition and caring have evolved within humans. Competition motives shape our experiences of shame, humiliation, and self-criticism, while caring motives may shape our experiences of guilt, compassion, and empathy. Understanding these contrasting motivational underpinnings can help to tease apart the different facilitators and inhibitors of self-forgiveness. This chapter also explores self-compassion as a component of self-forgiveness and how this is a key resource for addressing unhelpful or hostile self-criticisms.

Working Through Psychological Needs Following Transgressions to Arrive at Self-Forgiveness

Moral failure—transgressing against moral codes and values, and hurting others or oneself—implies several psychological threats to self, specifically to one’s need for personal agency, moral identity, and social belonging. Self-forgiveness is an effortful process that may address these needs, not by diminishing the failure, but rather through acceptance of failure and responsibility, and their integration into oneself. Though this path may be psychologically taxing, it allows offenders to restore their relationship with the victim and their place within the broader community in a way that is empowering rather than defensive. In this chapter, we discuss the psychological threats that arise when we commit transgressions, particularly the underlying threats to the needs for moral-social identity and agency. We discuss how taking responsibility for misdeeds is a first step to processing these needs, and we identify barriers to responsibility-taking. We conclude by exploring ways of reducing these barriers, including value reaffirmation, as a means of moving toward self-forgiveness.

Orientation to the Psychology of Self-Forgiveness

In this introductory chapter, we provide an overview of the history and context of self-forgiveness research within the field of Psychology. We discuss definitions of self-forgiveness, with emphasis on theoretical and empirical quandaries that have characterized the field. We examine contexts in which self-forgiveness has been examined as a natural process, and how the process depends on factors including age, gender, and religious/cultural identity. We summarize the promise of emerging interventions designed to promote self-forgiveness. Overall, this chapter will deepen and broaden the scope of your understanding prior to engaging with the innovative, challenging, and rigorous scholars whose contributions to this handbook follow in the remaining chapters.

Self-Forgiveness at Work: Finding Pathways to Renewal When Coping with Failure or Perceived Transgressions

At work we can fail, and we can fail to act. Sometimes we harm others by our actions or inactions. How we come to terms with our wrongdoings and failures at work can have an impact on our psychological, relational, and organizational well-being. Ineffectively coping with these experiences can lead to reduced productivity, relational strain, increased perceptions of stress and, ultimately, burnout. Working through these experiences of failure and wrongdoing can be difficult. In this chapter we integrate the current research on self-forgiveness and well-being at work. We explore how the need for self-forgiveness can arise in the workplace. Finally, we outline a process whereby people can work through both transgressions and perceived failures, and we describe contextual factors that may encourage or inhibit self-forgiveness at work.