Self-awareness itself is an important part of self-development, but it can be an awfully painful process.
I’ll be blunt; there have been occasions in the past where we were bad people. This isn’t a nice pill to swallow, but it’s true. For differing reasons, including survival and not knowing better, we have hurt someone, told a lie, or engaged in other behaviours that our current selves can only cringe at.
Does that mean that we are bad people? No. We’ve chosen to learn and grow from this situation, despite the pain and shame that we feel over the past version of ourselves. We would be bad people if we continued on the same path without acknowledging our flaws.
I have found journaling to be an effective method for building self-awareness. In fact, I’ve had my biggest breakthroughs during my copious journaling sessions in the past. An example I feel comfortable sharing is how I let my past feelings of being hurt end up with me ghosting someone because things weren’t progressing the way I wanted them to, and I didn’t know how to process those feelings other than by running from them and ignoring them.
I also blamed an old friend for giving me the idea to ghost this person, but they didn’t make the decision for me. I was the one who acted on the advice. I’m working on forgiving myself for my actions here, but I don’t expect complete forgiveness for the person on the receiving end of my behaviour. They’re entitled to feel hurt, and I am not owed forgiveness from them.
Depending on your perspective, time may not be our friend. We can’t change it to return to previous events and change the outcome. Once we’ve done something that we’re not proud of, it’s lost to time.
All we are able to do is work on ourselves, learn from our past selves, and build awareness of what led us to behave this way. Be kind to yourself; nobody is perfect.
Life Through My Lenses 
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