What sentence will you choose to impose on yourself? Are you willing to stop suffering and making yourself miserable when your sentence has expired? This would at least be a responsible way to punish yourself because it would be time-limited.

You're human. You'll screw up. Denying that is crazy. Forgiving yourself has all the benefits of self-esteem without making you a narcissist that's out of touch with reality.

Depression has been called the worlds number one public health problem. In fact, depression is so widespread it is considered the common cold of psychiatric disturbances. But there is a grim difference between depression and a cold. Depression can kill you.

Surprisingly, it's forgiveness, not guilt, that increases accountability. Researchers have found that taking a self-compassionate point of view on a personal failure makes people more likely to take personal responsibility for the failure than when they take a self-critical point of view. They also are more willing to receive feedback and advice from others, and more likely to learn from the experience.

Forgive yourself and be ready to forgive yourself in the future. You're gonna screw up. It's okay.

Accept yourself. But realize your behaviors can be bad.

It's irrational to assume you can ever truly evaluate yourself as a good or bad human being. You will never have enough information.That "bad person" at work who torments you might be an excellent father to his kids. That other "bad person" at work who screwed up royally today? That error might later lead to a huge breakthrough. We will never have enough info to holistically evaluate a person and score them in totality as "bad" or "good."