Home Shortcuts
About Me Shortcuts
Personal Shortcuts
Rants Shortcuts
Sitemap Shortcuts
Other Shortcuts
Can You Forgive Her?
Forgiveness
Forgiveness can mean different things to different people. For some, forgiveness is something to ask for when they upset or harm a friend or family member. This is known as decisional forgiveness, and it is an external process that relieves someone from the responsibility for something they did that hurt another person. This type of forgiveness is focused on healing the relationship that exists between the two people because both people get something. The other person gets to feel better about what they did (assuming they do actually feel bad about it), and you get to feel better about yourself knowing you were the bigger man in the situation. But this is not exactly a win-win situation. The trouble with this type of forgiveness is that it is focused on the wrong thing, and it doesn't do anything to ease the pain for the person doing the forgiving. Like other social constructs, it plays an important role in civil society, but from an individual perspective, it's pretty useless. For me, forgiveness refers to the internal process of making a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment and anger I feel toward someone who has hurt me. This is known as emotional forgiveness, and it allows someone who has been hurt to let go of the negative emotions associated with what happened. Emotional forgiveness has nothing to do with whether they deserve to be forgiven. It's not about denying the seriousness of what happened. It does not obligate the person doing the forgiving to repair the relationship, release the other person from accountability, or even think positively of them. In fact, the other person doesn't even need to know they have been forgiven. Emotional forgiveness focuses entirely on healing the pain caused by what happened. This is very important because, when strong negative emotions are not properly processed, they can easily develop into bitterness, ill-temper, or despair. By letting go of the negativity associated with the pain, the despair and bitterness is easily avoided. Emotional forgiveness is a naturally self-reflective process that involves acknowledging the pain without letting it take control. This allows you to move on from what happened.
Benefits of Forgiveness
When somebody does something to hurt you, it's natural to focus on the pain and anger, but if you focus on the negativity too much for too long, you might find yourself swallowed up by your own bitterness and hostility. Letting go of your grudges, resentments, and other negativity is a much better way of dealing with what happened. Forgiveness is good for both your physical and mental health. It decreases levels of stress, anxiety, and depression, while increasing feelings of well-being. Shedding those negative emotions can lead to lower blood pressure, improved heart health, and a stronger immune system (Stein, 2017). Forgiveness heals the pain. Holding onto resentment keeps the pain alive, and the burden of unresolved emotions can sour the way you view the world. As your worldview sours, your anger and resentment overflows into your other relationships. Building new relationships becomes more challenging as you struggle to trust others. Forgiveness helps you build healthier relationships. It helps you develop compassion for the person who hurt you, and that compassion increases your kindness and feelings of connection with everyone else, which increases your self-esteem. From this perspective, it seems silly not to forgive.
What Forgiveness Is Not
Forgiveness is a complex concept, and many people don't truly understand it. One reason for this is that there are so many misconceptions about it, and even those who understand how important it is often don't know how to do it. For many people, the cycle of bitterness and resentment goes on seemingly without end because they hold an inaccurate view of forgiveness. There are plenty of resources that tell you what forgiveness is, but it is often easier to understand what forgiveness is by understanding what it is not.
Forgetting Forgiveness is not forgetting what happened. In fact, depending on what did happen, you may never forget it. However, by going through the self-reflective process of forgiveness, you will be able to release your attachment to the negative emotions associated with what happened. You will be tempted to hold onto your anger at who did it and the pain they caused by doing it. You might continuously blame, hate, and otherwise keep your attention focused on what happened and who did it. Emotionally, this is the worst way to deal with it. Instead, you must allow yourself to experience these negative emotions but let them go once the healing begins.
Condoning Forgiveness is not condoning what happened. You don't have to be okay with what happened or justify why it happened. You don't have to let them get away with doing what they did. You do have to accept that it happened and realize that you are okay today. You don't have the power to change what happened, but you do have the power to change how you respond to it.
Pretending Forgiveness is not pretending you weren't hurt by what happened or that you no longer feel the pain from what happened. Through forgiveness, you will learn to express your pain as pain, not anger, not bitterness, not hatred. Once you have freed yourself of the negativity that's holding you back, the pain you feel will fade away naturally, not overnight but it will go away.
Relieving Forgiveness is not relieving them of the responsibility for what happened. You don't have to let them off the hook or make things easier for them. You're not saying it was okay for them to do what they did. You can forgive them while also taking steps to ensure they pay the appropriate consequences for their actions. By forgiving them, you release yourself from the thoughts that torment you and the feelings that linger in your mind.
Excusing Forgiveness is not excusing what happened. You don't have to consider if there were mitigating factors that caused them to do what they did. You don't have to ask yourself if you are being too harsh. How you view what happened will definitely change once you have forgiven them, but that will happen naturally because you have chosen to forgive. It is the direct result of forgiveness.
Reconciling Forgiveness is not reconciling after what happened. You are under no obligation to reconcile the relationship you once had with the person who hurt you. In fact, it might be easier if you don't. Reconciling the friendship could prolong the pain, or maybe the other person doesn't feel that they did anything wrong. Or maybe they feel they already apologized and that should be enough. We can't control how others think or behave. We can't force them to want something they don't want. It's okay to want to reconcile the friendship, but don't hold out for it as a condition of forgiveness.
Many of the misconceptions about forgiveness come from our culture, from previous generations that did not have the advantages of modern psychiatry to guide their knowledge of the brain. They often paired forgiveness things things we now know should not be. Forgive and forget, or it's good to forgive but better to forget. For far too long, decisional forgiveness, with its off center focus, was all we knew. The concept of forgive to heal the pain, is a modern concept.
Forgiveness Is a Process
Emotional forgiveness is a process, and it cannot happen instantaneously or even overnight. How long it takes for the process to play out depends on several factors, including the severity of the harm, the closeness of the relationship, and their behavior toward you since they did what they did. There are three major phases involved in emotionally forgiving someone who has hurt you.
Decide The process begins with a conscious decision to release the feelings of anger and resentment you're feeling because of what happened and replace them with peace of mind. Before the process can begin, you must be ready to forgive. This usually doesn't happen until you've sat with the pain for a while, and it starts to fade away. As the pain decreases, so do the negative emotions you feel. This is what allows you to be emotionally ready to forgive and receptive of new and changing perspectives and emotions (Enright and Fitzgibbons, 2015). If you are not emotionally ready to change how you feel about what happened, you are not ready to forgive. The level of acceptance you are capable of plays a critical role in how effective the process of forgiveness will be (McCullough et al, 2006). You must be able to accept what happened and the harm it caused. If you are experiencing denial, disassociation, or any other form of emotional avoidance, you will not be able to fully forgive them for what they did. It's okay if you're not ready to forgive now. At some point you will be ready, and it's important not to rush into this process if you aren't ready to see it through.
Cultivate After making the decision to forgive, you must cultivate empathy. There are many different ways to cultivate empathy, and it doesn't matter how you do it. The point is that, by cultivating empathy, you will be able to view what happened differently. What I do to cultivate empathy is look at my part in what happened. I look at how I could have behaved differently, what actions I could have taken that could have brought about a different outcome. Unless you were robbed, mugged, or otherwise harmed as a result of a random act, chances are there is some part you played in what happened. For instance, there was a time that I needed a roommate and was in a big hurry to find one, so I let someone move in with me without doing any kind of background check. It ended up being one of the worse decisions of my life. Many months later, after it was all said and done, to cultivate the empathy I needed to forgive him, I looked back at the experience and realized that the whole thing could have been avoided had I done a simple background check, asked about him from people we both knew, or even just asked him the right questions before he moved in. The purpose of doing this is to get you to view what happened objectively, without the distraction of all those negative emotions. The idea is to take the focus off of the pain you're feeling and the negative thoughts you are thinking and view what happened from a fresh perspective. From this new perspective, you need to think about what happened, why it happened, and how to prevent it from happening again. You need to realize that the past is the past. It's over and it can't be changed. Whatever happened isn't still happening. Most importantly, you're okay now. You've recovered from the damage, and they can't hurt you again. From this new perspective, you need to try to view it from their perspective. Try to understand why they did, what drove them to betray you. This is not meant to shift blame. It's meant for you to see what happened from their perspective, then move on. This might take some time. Again, this doesn't happen overnight.
Commit What are you doing now? What joy can you find in what is happening right now? Find the joy in life now, as it happens, and stop reliving the past. The final step is simply to commit to forgiveness. Ultimately, forgiveness is a coping mechanism that uses empathy and mindfulness to reframe and neutralize the negative emotions resulting from being wronged by someone (Webb, Phillips, Bumgarner, & Conway-Williams, 2013).
The Perfect Apology
I was a bit of a hot head in my twenties, and very often, I found myself apologizing to a friend for something I'd done that pissed them off. Because I apologized so often, over time I developed the formula for apologizing. A perfect apology consists of three parts: an acknowledgment of the harm caused, an apology, and an earnest commitment to avoid making the same mistake again.
Acknowledgment First, if you recognize that you should apologize to a friend, you should easily be able to determine why they are upset. It is important to start an apology by acknowledging what you said or did that was wrong. This tells the other person that you understand what happened and why it was hurtful. It also tells them that your apology is genuine because you've taken the time to consider their needs.
Apology Second, follow this acknowledgment with a simple "I'm sorry". This is where many people go wrong when they apologize. You should not attempt explain why you behaved the way you did. Not "I'm sorry but...", just "I'm sorry". It should include an admission of responsibility and an offer to make amends, if necessary. Third, you should promise that it won't happen again.
Promise Second, follow this acknowledgment with a simple "I'm sorry". This is where many people go wrong when they apologize. You should not attempt explain why you behaved the way you did. Not "I'm sorry but...", just "I'm sorry". It should include an admission of responsibility and an offer to make amends, if necessary. Third, you should promise that it won't happen again.
Enright, R. D. & Fitzgibbons, R. P. (2015). Forgiveness therapy: An empirical guide for resolving anger and restoring hope. American Psychological Association, 10(6), 194-197.
McCullough, M. E. (2001). Forgiveness: Who does it and how do they do it?. Psychological Science, 10(6), 194-197.
McCullough, M. E., Root, L. M., & Cohen, A. D. (2006). Writing about the benefits of an interpersonal transgression facilitates forgiveness. Journal of Consulting And Clinical Psychology, 74(5), 887-897.
Stein, Traci. (2017). Forgive for Good: The Benefits of Forgiveness and How to Cultivate It. Retrieved from https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/forgive-for-good-benefits-of-forgiveness-how-to-cultivate-it-0824174
Webb, J. R., Phillips, T. D., Bumgarner, D., & Conway-Williams, E. (2013). Forgiveness, mindfulness, and health. Mindfulness, 4(3), 235–245. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-012-0119-0
The design of this webpage is based on a template by Alpha Studio