Delusionally Self-Forgiving

Quick question before we start: have you forgiven yourself for something you’d swear, under oath, you’ve already let go of?

Sit with that for a second. I’ll wait.

I ask because it wrecked me not quite long ago listening to Chase Hughes.

I’ve been following Chase Hughes long enough that this shouldn’t surprise me anymore. At this point he’s probably cost me a small fortune in books, courses, notebooks and enough Google searches, all starting with one perfectly innocent question. I’m a huge fan of his work by the way.

I should qualify that before “huge fan” gets misread as “agrees with everything the man says.” I don’t, ok?. As a counsellor, there are moments listening to Chase, particularly on persuasion and influence, where I think, hmm, I’m not sure I’d go that far. We often arrive at human behaviour from different directions. He’s interested in how behaviour can be read, predicted, influenced. I’m usually interested in what happened to the person in front of me, what it means to them, and what becomes possible when they’re given room to understand themselves.

Those perspectives don’t always meet eye to eye. But that’s probably why I’ve learned so much from him. I don’t need someone to agree with me to find them useful. If anything, I’m more interested when they make me question something I thought was already settled. Chase does that remarkably well. Sometimes he gives me an answer. More often, another question. Unfortunately, questions tend to be expensive. They usually involve books and courses.

Not very long ago, he did it again.

I was watching him on The Diary of a CEO, talking about presence. His argument: one of the fastest ways to actually enjoy the moment is to become so self-forgiving it’s almost delusional. That we spend so much time looking backwards with regret and shame, replaying what we did, what we didn’t do, what we should have done differently that we’re not fully available for the life happening now. His advice was to keep forgiving yourself until even you think you’ve gone too far. 

Now there’s an idea. He did’t say forgiving or very forgiving. He said delusionally self-forgiving.

Chase meant it as a tool for staying present. Naturally, I found another question instead. Because if you’d asked me whether I’d forgiven myself for the mistakes, the awkward moments, the questionable decisions, the assorted episodes of being spectacularly Aleye, I’d have said Haba…Haba, but of course, without hesitation. Next question. I’ve spent years reflecting on my life. Journalling. Reading. Questioning. Trying to understand why I made certain decisions, stayed in certain situations, reacted the way I did. Understanding things is one of my favourite hobbies. Possibly an unhealthy amount of one. Give me an interesting question and there’s a reasonable chance I’ll surface hours later with three books and more questions. I mean, it’s a real dilemma!

So yes. I understand quite a lot about myself.

But Chase’s phrase made me wonder whether I’d confused understanding myself with forgiving myself. Because if I’ve truly forgiven myself, why do some things still carry shame?

And then the question that actually got me:

If I’ve forgiven myself, why do I still doubt myself?

At first I couldn’t see the connection. Self-forgiveness belongs to the past, right?. Self-doubt belongs to the present. And for f@*k sake, what does one have to do with the other?

Then I started wondering whether shame doesn’t just keep us looking backwards. Maybe just like Chase said, we drag it forward with us. Here’s what I think is actually happening, for you and for me. When something goes wrong, we store the event and draw conclusions from it. I made a poor decision. I should have known better. I trusted the wrong person. I froze. Those are descriptions of things that happened. But shame being such a busy body turns them into descriptions of the person who did them. And you and I know that once that happens, the past acquires a rather impressive CV, one that can produce evidence any time we’re facing something uncertain. You got that wrong before. Remember what happened last time? Oh well!

I’m noticing this now because I’m doing something that requires a different kind of trust in myself: I’m starting my own private counselling practice.

To be clear: I haven’t woken up one morning, bought two comfortable chairs and a lamp, and decided I should probably start counselling people. I’ve worked as a counsellor within an agency for years. I’ve sat with clients, done the work, having regular supervisions, I’ve been challenged, sometimes baffled, and trusted with people’s stories. I’m not standing at the edge of private practice wondering if I can counsel. I blooming well know that I can.

What’s changing is the umbrella. An agency gives you a structure you barely notice until you imagine stepping outside it. The room exists. The referrals come through a system. There’s a name above the door that’s not yours, saying: you belong here. You still have to show up and do the work (nobody sits in that room counselling for you), but you’re doing it inside something that has already vouched for you.

Private practice is different. I’ve been preparing the room, building the website, setting up social media, designing flyers, wondering whether anybody still reads flyers, slowly turning AB Counselling from an idea into something a stranger can actually find. And somewhere between choosing fonts and writing website copy, I realised what makes this feel so exposing, and if I might add, scary. This time, I’m the one saying you belong here. That takes a different kind of trust. You choose the room. You decide what your work stands for. You put your name behind it. And at some point you have to stop rearranging the website and open the bloody door.

There’s risk in that. It might work beautifully. It might grow slowly. I will almost certainly make mistakes, decisions I’ll look back on and think, Aleye, what the heck was the thinking there? Well, I guess that’s business. That’s life. Or is it?

But uncertainty has a funny habit of waking up old memories. The opportunity I didn’t take. The conversation I wish I’d handled differently. The decision that made complete sense at the time and looked questionable three years later. None of them had anything real to say about whether I’m a good counsellor. I already have evidence for that. But they weren’t really arguing about competence. They were testing whether I trust myself when I’m the one making the call.

Suddenly, Chase’s idea started to make sense to me: making sense in a new place. If I haven’t genuinely forgiven myself for the times my judgment was wrong, every new risk gives the past another chance to testify. Self-doubt asks: can I trust myself to do this? And shame answers: well, let’s look at your record.

There it is. That’s the connection I couldn’t see at first: some self-doubt is not asking whether we’re capable, but rather, whether we’ve forgiven ourselves for the times we weren’t.

Where I part ways slightly with Chase’s version is pretending the mistake didn’t happen. The idea that you can reach a point where everything you’ve done is fine, or even hilarious. I don’t know that I’d go that far. Some things should trouble us. Some require accountability, an apology, real repair. Regret can be useful. It tells us something didn’t sit right with who we want to be. I wouldn’t want self-forgiveness to become a clever escape hatch from responsibility.

But once you’ve taken responsibility (learned what there was to learn, repaired what you could, changed what needed changing), then what? What is continued self-punishment actually achieving at that point?

Maybe that’s where “delusional” earns its place. Ordinary forgiveness still keeps a ledger: I forgive myself, but I must remember. I’ve moved on, but I shouldn’t forget what that says about me. Delusional self-forgiveness refuses the ledger altogether. It doesn’t mean pretending I made brilliant decisions when I didn’t; that wouldn’t be forgiveness. It means keeping the lesson, keeping the wisdom, and finally not needing to keep the shame as proof I’ve learned it.

Which brings me back to something I’ve spent years doing very well: understanding. I can explain a lot of my past. Contextualise it. Trace the patterns. See exactly why I did what I did. I’m learning that you can spend years making sense of something and still not have made peace with it.

I don’t think Chase’s sentence disturbed my confidence to start a private practice. There are perfectly sensible reasons to feel uncertain about starting a new venture, and nobody knows how AB Counselling will unfold. But uncertainty about the future and distrust of myself are not the same thing. Maybe self-forgiveness is what lets me hold one without sliding into the other. To say: I’ve been wrong before. I’ve misjudged things before. I’ve made decisions I wouldn’t make today. And I can still trust myself now.

I’m still not sure what being delusionally self-forgiving looks like in practice. If I could ask Chase, I blooming well would. But I think I finally understand why the idea intrigued me. It has nothing to do with really becoming delusional, like really delulu. I think it’s refusing to let shame keep masquerading as evidence.

So here’s the question I’ll leave with you, since it’s the one I can’t stop turning over: where in your life is old shame still showing up dressed as present-day doubt? if you want one: think of the last time you hesitated on something that mattered. Was the hesitation about the decision itself, or was it your record being read back to you? You don’t have to answer that right away. I certainly didn’t.

Thanks, Chase. I suspect you’ve just cost me another notebook.