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My first post is inspired by Untold: The Girlfriend Who Didn’t Exist, a Netflix documentary about former college football star, Manti Te’o. Naya (Ronaiah* at the time) created a fake online persona, Lennay, and deceived Te’o to the point where he considered Lennay to be his girlfriend. Naya then faked the death of Lennay, and Te’o shared his grief in a national spotlight. The media broke the story of this hoax in 2013, which lead to public humiliation and ruthless ridicule of Te’o. I was especially moved by this interview with Te’o about the effects on his mental health:
Every day, I was just trying to figure out how to get rid of this anxiety, how to get rid of this numbness, this tingling, right? I’m trying to figure out all these ways to reprogram myself. Right? I’m watching inspirational talks. I’m watching old film of me. I’m trying to rediscover who I was before everything. I started calling my agent up and told my agent, “Tom, like I need to see somebody.” I was like, “I don’t know what I have, but it’s something new, and I need help.”
My agent sent me to see this therapist, and we’re just talking in the lobby, just getting to know each other, and I’m kind of laying down. “What’s going on?” In the back of my head, I’m like, “Nobody has a cure for this, man. This guy, he’s not gonna help me.” And at the end, he says, “Let me ask you a question. Have you forgiven him?” I said, “Who are you talking about?” He said, “Have you forgiven Ronaiah* for what he did to you?” And I said, “I did.”
He said, “Okay. Let me ask you a second question. Have you forgiven yourself?” I looked at him. I was like, “What do you mean, forgiven myself?” He’s like, “Have you forgiven yourself?” I said, “Forgiven myself for what?” He’s like, “Somebody like you who’s always been so confident, who’s never questioned anything he’s done, and all his success has been based on him trusting in him, for you to go through what you went through, deep down inside, you’re questioning yourself. You have to forgive that kid. It’s okay, uce. What happened to you is not your fault. It’s okay. Forgive that kid.”
Self-forgiveness was crucial to Te’o’s healing process. Research suggests that self-forgiveness has mental health benefits in circumstances like Te’o’s, where he let go of self-blame while remaining motivated to protect himself from harm in the future.
Too many of us, like Te’o, struggle to forgive ourselves because we feel like we don’t deserve it or we can’t recognize when the pain of self-blame no longer serves a useful function. For example, if I hurt my partner and immediately and automatically forgave myself, I would be likely to hurt him again. Holding on to self-blame in this case would have served a function as a reminder to not hurt my partner again. However, if I hurt my partner, took responsibility, apologized, and reflected on how to prevent that mistake in the future and then forgave myself, both my mental health and behavior would improve.
Are you carrying self-blame that no longer serves you? If you are, try doing what Te’o did and forgive yourself. You can start by reminding yourself that you are connected to all people by a universal truth: We all make mistakes. You literally cannot be perfect no matter how hard you try. The best you can do is to learn from the situation. Think about the circumstances surrounding the misstep. Were you especially stressed? Were you missing information at the time? Are you judging yourself more harshly than you would judge a friend for the same behavior? If so, why is that?
If you’re interested in exploring these ideas more through free self-compassion exercises, check out Dr. Kristin Neff’s website. If you want to read a summary on self-forgiveness research, check out this paper by Wohl and McLaughlin (2014).
I wish you all good mental health this week! Thank you for reading—it means a lot to me!
*Naya (formerly Ronaiah) is a trans woman who transitioned after this catfishing incident and currently goes by “Naya” and she/her pronouns. Te’o was unaware of this at the time of the interview. I am using “Ronaiah” in this post for the sake of clarity in quoting the documentary.