Forgive Yourself Advertisement You might feel you shouldn't try to move forward after disappointing yourself or others, but try to avoid using your disappointment as ammunition to keep yourself down. Give yourself permission to get off your back and let yourself move on. You did the best you could with what you had at the time. You might like to write a letter to yourself saying why you deserve forgiveness, and list the things you’re grateful for and admire in yourself. Another option is to look in the mirror and make eye contact with. Making peace and moving forward is often easier said than done. Being able to forgive yourself requires empathy, kindness, and understanding. Whether you’re trying to work through a minor. One of the “truths” concerning gambling that we didn’t know was brought up in an article titled, “Gambling’s Impact on Families.” It is put together by Ronald A. He wrote: “A University of Nebraska Medical Center study concluded that problem gambling is.

Learning to forgive yourself is essential as you begin to do more self-healing in your recovery. We often have a tendency to hold ourselves to such strict standards that we find no reason or justification to forgive ourselves. Maybe you’ve found yourself in a certain situation, able to forgive someone else for even the harshest of pains yet you may be torturing yourself over a lesser offense. It is common to hold on to past mistakes that we feel are not forgivable out of fear of forgetting the hurt and repeating the behavior. So, we torture ourselves by replaying the feelings, punishment or guilt over and over again. Staying in this cycle keeps us stuck. It is nearly impossible to truly move through the stages of healing while holding onto the notion that we are unforgivable.

How To Forgive Yourself For Gambling

Let’s clarify one thing; forgiving doesn’t have to mean necessarily forgetting. Let’s view it as learning how to stop bringing up past mistakes in negative or condemning ways. It’s about learning how to grow from the experience and let go. After all, we are human. Mistakes are inherently part of our growth and connection to others.

In life we are given an array of choices. We have opportunity after opportunity to change the direction of our day, week, year and ultimately life. Every decision and choice we make can take us in a positive and healthy direction, or it can steal precious opportunities for self-growth and healing. The act of forgiving ourselves doesn’t make us weak and it certainly doesn’t justify what was done. Instead it is a choice that takes courage, requires us to be brave and vulnerable. Doing so gives us the chance to overcome obstacles and mistakes rather than remaining stuck in that situation.

Here are 4 ways you can start working on forgiving yourself and moving forward in a positive direction toward healing:

1. Identify your core values and morals

One of the reasons we experience guilt over past situations is because it doesn’t necessarily line up with our current morals. The not so good choices from the past can actually provide a place in thought to begin thinking about what really matters. By identifying your key values and morals, you can begin to further reveal why you may be continuing to hurt over things of the past (whether that be your own actions or someone else’s). This is a great place to start implementing change.

2. Identify the past mountains

This may require some deep work supported by a therapist, group or trusted friend. What this may look like is doing a bit of soul searching, taking responsibility and then moving on. In life there are those defining moments…some great and some not so great, each impactful in its nature. When there is something in the past that may have involved others whom we wish to clean the slate with, it may involve bringing this hurt back onto the table and apologizing. This doesn’t mean hashing out the opinions and details over and over again but rather accepting responsibility and genuinely making things right – to the best of the relationship’s ability.

3. Taking steps toward forgiveness

At some point we must acknowledge that the past is in the past. We typically handle situations with the current set of tools we have. At some point in our life, maybe when we didn’t have the right tools, we became accustomed to the wrong tools and, as a result, we may have acted in ways we wish we hadn’t. That’s ok! We have new tools now, new values, new morals, which means new opportunities to respond and live out relationships as we truly desire. It is important in this step to not drag our old “baggage” along with us. We can learn from it, process it and handle it in a healthy manner but then it’s time to turn the page.

4. Have compassion for yourself

It is important to realize we are all a work in progress…and progress is made over time. Hindsight is usually 20/20 so we can often look back at areas of our life we wish we had made different choices. Use this insight to be able to make better choices in the future. Practice staying present, and living a life that aligns with your morals and values. Be patient with yourself and remind yourself that perfection is not expected…it’s about the journey!

What Can You Do, to Give Yourself the Best Chance of Recovery?

Gamban has been designed by people (gamblers) with first-hand experience in problem gambling. While our primary focus is software development and creating practical barriers to online gambling, we wanted to share some of our own ideas for recovery and minimising the risk of gambling relapse.

Gamban can remove the gambling temptation

Before we started Gamban we heard stories of people freezing credit cards in blocks of ice to create a ‘temptation buffer’ and a lady who, knowing she’d gamble only on weekends, would send her payment cards in the post to herself on a Friday, so they would arrive on Monday. We experimented with parental control systems where a friend was needed to look after a code and we explored other, more expensive and restrictive gambling-blocking software. We hope, with Gamban, you don’t feel you need to resort to these methods. We also hope, in time, that you don’t even need Gamban. We see Gamban as a tool that can help people on their path to recovery, quite possibly alongside other forms of treatment. Like the dating site, Match.com famously celebrate drop-offs in user numbers as a sign that people are finding love, we like to think that those who no longer require our software are out of the ‘danger zone’. That said, many choose to keep Gamban on their systems for ongoing peace of mind. After all, the cost of Gamban is negligible compared to the cost of online gambling addiction.

Here are some ideas that you may find helpful:

A new email address

You may continue to receive gambling-related emails and enticing 500% bonus offers after closing your account. It may be easier to start using a different ‘clean’ email address. Give yourself a fresh start – but don’t forget to update your Gamban account with your new email.

Self-compassion

Learning to understand, tolerate, like and love yourself is a crucially important aspect to recovery. It’s important to understand that self-compassion does not mean self-indulgence. The objective is not to give yourself permission to gamble but to forgive yourself if you fall. Setting unreachable standards can be less than useful in recovery from gambling addiction. For more information on self-compassion and for some useful exercises visit http://self-compassion.org/ (one useful, if a little strange, exercise involves sending a letter to yourself from the perspective of a close and empathetic friend).

Draw a line

It’s OK; you’re never going to get that money back. It’s gone. The worst thing is to continue chasing. Learn and move on. You may be searching for someone to give you that reassurance that everything will be OK. If you are reading this with that mindset, then take this onboard: it’s what you do now that matters.

Know you will never win

You might win occasionally but what you win is almost certainly going back… and then some. One of the worst things that can happen to a gambler is a big win. You’re either chasing losses or worse, chasing wins. The best advice is to stay away completely. The cost of advertising, licensing, buildings, salaries – you gamble long enough, you lose – it’s that simple. This alone probably isn’t enough to make you stop – and we understand that.

Give control away

You may need someone to handle access to money in your state of vulnerability. Discuss this with parents, friends, family, partners – anyone you completely trust. Failing this, being accountable to someone else by showing them your bank statements means there is someone else included in your path to recovery.

Distraction

It may be too hard to stop ‘cold turkey’ with no other distractions or alternatives to gambling. Quite simply, you aren’t going to find anything to rival gambling in terms of excitement. It’s designed to transition you from a high to a low and back again. Try to reduce the requirement for stimulation from an activity by engaging in more activities that involve ‘flow state’. Get ‘absorbed’ in video games, play cognitive strategy games or engage in something more meditative like puzzle games. The jury’s out on free-to-play gambling games and whether they act as a relapse risk or as ‘methadone-to-heroin’.

Mindfulness

How To Forgive Someone

Using an application like Headspace can be extremely helpful in understanding your mind and slowing the response between thought, feeling and behaviour. Countless medical professionals suggest mindfulness as an effective option for problem gamblers. For more general information on Mindfulness (and getting better sleep!), visit https://www.nestmaven.com/sleep/aids/mindfulness/

Create digital barriers

By signing up to GAMSTOP (Spring 2018), you reduce the options for gambling with UK based gambling sites and with Gamban installed you reduce access to all gambling sites and applications. Download Gamban at https://www.gamban.com/register

How To Forgive Yourself Psychology

Create physical barriers

Where do you gamble? In the bedroom? In the lounge? Then ban your computer from the bedroom and lounge. It may be easier for you to set rules on where you use your computer than how you use your computer, to help combat the urge to gamble.

Shaving is saving

By ‘shaving’ off the middle 8 digits and security code of your credit or debit card, you remove the ability to make online payments. This may not be possible if you do the majority of your shopping online but if you can remove the ability to spend online then this might help. You may also need to close PayPal and other payment methods to enforce this barrier.

Talk

How To Forgive Yourself For Gambling Addiction

Whether you want to talk on the phone, message via live chat, email or talk face-to-face, there are plenty of options available. It is entirely likely that your gambling activity is symptomatic of another [deeper] problem and for this, we highly recommend therapy. Some helpful resources include; The National Gambling helpline, Gamblers Anonymous and GamAnon.

Ultimately, we believe there is a place for will-power – or more accurately, ‘won’t-power’ – but effective barriers can be helpful on the path to recovery from gambling addiction. Download Gamban at https://www.gamban.com/register