Through the story of Jesus' crucifixion and his proactive forgiveness to those murdering him, we discover the boundless mercy and love God has for us, even in our darkest moments. If Jesus extends that kind of forgiveness to that group of people, we can trust him when he says "if we confess sin, he is faithful and just to forgive."
When we choose to trust the promise of scripture, when we choose to trust the character of God, we can then move on to forgiving ourselves. As we've learned, forgiveness is not forgetting. So, we will always have some sort of memory of the times that we've found ourselves in need of forgiveness (from God and from other people). However, there's a process in which the forgiven need to live in forgiveness. If we go through the process of confessing sin, we also need to go through the process of self-reflection to say "If God has forgiven me, how can I choose to forgive myself when the sting of my sin starts to gain a hold on me again."
