Forgiveness is not about accepting or excusing a person’s behaviour. It is about letting it go and preventing their behaviour from dictating your future.
Forgiveness is one of the most misunderstood human acts. People are stuck and weighted down by constant thoughts of blame, grudges, hurt, and anger. It is surprising for people to hear that you can forgive even if they are not sorry.
Forgiveness and Guilt
Guilt is another aspect of forgiveness. What we mean by guilt, is not having the foresight to know what you know now, (hindsight is always 20/20 right?). This weighs heavily on those who feel as if they have somehow caused damage to themselves or others in their lives when all they wanted was to be helpful.
At times, you may question whether you really have to forgive to move on. Stop defining yourself by moments in your past. Forgiveness is a gift you give to yourself because you deserve it even if the transgressor does not; you are freeing yourself from moments in the past. It does not mean you condone the behavior; it just means you don’t want to be imprisoned by what happened anymore.
Tips, because who doesn’t like tips!?
1. Forgiveness is not saying it’s ok.
Forgiveness is often misunderstood as letting someone off the hook or condoning behaviour that is hurtful or wrong. This couldn’t be further from the truth.
Forgiveness is more about letting go of the hurt and not being a victim anymore.
The idea that someone needs to be sorry to be forgiven will keep you stuck waiting for people to change. Some people won’t change, the only person you have control over changing is yourself, and that is enormously empowering. People in your life that have wronged you don’t have to be sorry in order to be forgiven, you can reframe your blame in a whole new light. Once you are able to realize that forgiveness is so much more about yourself than it is about the transgressors, you will feel much better about choosing the path of forgiveness.
2. Forgiveness is a Trainable Skill
Forgiveness might not come naturally to you. Finding out that it is a skill you can learn is very enlightening and also very comforting. In his Standford Forgiveness project, Luskin (2003) offers a summary of nine steps. These pointers taken from his nine-step blueprint can offer some good guidelines while working on forgiveness.
1. Tell at least one or two people about your hurt. Healing is more likely when you share it with others.
2. Make a choice to forgive. Identify what happened, be clear about why you have a grievance, and make it a choice to forgive anyways.
3. Distance yourself from the hurt by taking the life experience less personally.
4. Keep the hurt in perspective, acknowledging that hurt from the past is being kept alive from the thoughts of being upset. Focus on the feelings and thoughts that result from the hurt rather than the acts of the past.
5. Practice stress management techniques to relax and soothe.
6. Let go of the expectation that people can give you what they do not have to give and adopt the perspective that there is hope for a better life without expecting them to change.
7. Build on the experience and make something positive from the hurt.
8. Take your personal power back by focusing on love and beauty in the present moment.
9. Have your grievance story remind you to be forgiving and to see this as a heroic choice.
3. Forgiveness Does Not Mean You Go Back for More
Just because you forgive, it does not mean that you maintain a relationship with the people who have wronged you. You can forgive them for being too unhealthy for you to continue a relationship with them, while also forgiving them for being too impaired to change. Protecting yourself and not allowing yourself to be hurt anymore comes from a position of mental clarity and identification of your right not to be mistreated.
When you make a decision to distance yourself from toxic people in your life, however, sometimes you will not be able to distance yourself completely. Consider the case of dealing with a close family member, such as an adult child. In these cases, setting firm limits and boundaries and not enabling disrespectful behaviour becomes the goal in treatment.
4. Self-Forgiveness is Essential to a Healthy and Positive Life
Perhaps the person that you have the most difficulty forgiving is yourself. Judging yourself for not being the perfect student, worker, parent, child, spouse, friend and so forth is a sentence that people impose on themselves.
Some amount of guilt is of course normal in living a responsible life, but all too often people are too harsh with themselves for their past mistakes, which end up defining them and limiting their ability to move on.
Challenge yourself to have self-compassion as self-compassion is essential to the healing process.
The best way to move on from your mistakes is to learn from them and use better judgement now. You won’t be perfect, but when you are assured that you are a work in progress, you can learn to be easier on yourself. After all, we always have chances to improve on yesterday, no matter where we are in life.
5. Forgiveness is a Choice
Forgiveness doesn’t usually happen you have to choose it. Once you realize that forgiveness is a gift to yourself, and maybe to the other person secondarily, you may have an easier time making the choice to forgive. You have the best chance to reinvent yourself as you age, if you allow yourself to let go of bitterness and slights. This does not mean that the hurt and scars aren’t still there, but they are no longer figuratively picked at and allowed to fester.
In order for us to have new beginnings in life, we can’t be hanging on too much to the old losses, as then we won’t have room for opening our hearts to new possibilities.
Bonus: Forgiveness and Families - Mental Health Edition
Forgiveness is difficult enough as is but when you add the complexity of mental illness within the family structure, it can seem near impossible. Those who are living with mental illness may experience a reality they perceive as accurate however, to others within the family unit they have no idea where their family member living with a mental illness is receiving this information.
It is hard for those within the family unit to understand why their loved one is, for example, accusing them of abuse when in reality there is no evidence to support this claim; or experiencing your loved one living with mental illness continuously verbally abusing you with no prompting. It is understandably difficult to not become defensive and hurt while trying to navigate through these upsetting accusations.
It is important for families to know it is not your responsibility to try and correct their perception, but your healing is your responsibility and healing begins with forgiveness.
One of my favorite sayings I hear from the Families Matter Support Group (FMSG) participants is, “it is not your loved one talking, it is their mental illness.” I encourage you to write this saying down and place it somewhere you will see it daily.
Side note: the FMSG is an amazing support group for individuals affected by their loved ones mental illness. It is facilitated through Canadian Mental Health Association - Saskatoon Branch. I highly recommend the FMSG!
What can I do to get started?
Using Metaphors and Visualizations
Metaphors are helpful in working towards becoming “unstuck” from old habits of thinking by providing a refreshing way to look at things. Metaphors help access emotions in a non-threatening, creative way. Metaphors sound pretty awesome right!?
Hook metaphor: The person stuck in a lack of forgiveness as well as the transgressor are both on a hook, and only by getting the transgressor off first can the other person get off the hook too.
Quicksand metaphor: The more we fight and try to get out of the quicksand, the deeper we sink. However, by stopping the struggle and ceasing to resist it by lying flat, we will be able to stay on top of the quicksand. The more we fight the choice to forgive, the more we sink in deeper in bitterness and pain.
Beach ball metaphor: Resistance to forgiveness is like trying to push an inflated beach ball under the water, it keeps on popping back up!
Forgiveness Affirmations:
Forgiveness is like immersing yourself in an ocean, cleansing yourself of the hurt.
Forgiveness is like taking off a backpack filled with resentments and grudges. The more you take off, the lighter your load will be.
Journaling for Forgiveness
Many forgiveness exercises involve some type of writing. Writing helps to get thoughts out - putting thoughts there and out of your head. For example, have you ever been so stressed about everything you have to complete in a day? (Yup, me too). And only once you wrote all your tasks out and were able to visually see them, you felt less overwhelmed? This works for forgiveness too!
Some events in our life are so hurtful that only by getting them out on paper are we able to let them loosen their hold on us.
Writing helps you be more objective and put your hurts in perspective.
Journal entry suggestions:
o What happened?
o How it hurt before.
o How it still hurts.
o How this hurt has held you back.
o How the hurt has helped you grow.
o Strategies you are using to heal.
o Visualizations and metaphors that help you heal.
o Behavioural steps or goals for letting go of the hurt and anger.
Write a Forgiveness Letter
Writing a letter to someone who has hurt you can be very powerful. These letters are usually not sent allowing you to be completely vulnerable without fear of judgement. You may be asking why you should bother if you are not going to send it anyways, or sometimes the people you are most angry at are no longer alive. Healing does not have to involve the other person; in fact, at times that just complicates matters. Since forgiveness is something you do for yourself, just the act of expressing yourself can be healing.
Additional thoughts:
Your first letter may be angry, “letting them have it”, and that is ok, it’s healthy to get those thoughts out. After that is processed, challenge yourself to write a second letter with the knowledge you have now, with the understanding that although the behaviours were bad, those involved are not really bad, just unhealthy.
After all, people can only act as healthy as they are, and people cannot give you what they do not have to give.
Writing a letter from this perspective can be healing once the anger is expressed in the initial letter.
Keep in mind
Letter writing exercises may bring up a lot of pain as you still have very raw hurt feelings from what happened to you; to conjure it up again is difficult. Keep in mind, you do not have to write all in one sitting. Take your time, walk away and come back to it as needed. This exercise is for you and no one else. You are in control. Lastly, it is never a bad idea to have someone you trust who provides support during difficult times on standby in case you need them throughout this process, and remember, you have the right to share as much or as little of this process with them if/when you reach out.
In the case of self-forgiveness, write letters to your earlier self that did not know any better. In this activity, writing a letter to yourself explaining why you cannot forgive yourself.
Until next time,
Chantel
PS: Test your knowledge: Is Micheal's statement correct? Hint… No, we do not need to wait on an apology to forgive. Forgiveness is for ourselves, we have that power. Pretty cool right?
Source adapted from THE THERAPIST’S ULTIMATE SOLUTION BOOK
Essential Strategies, Tips & Tools to Empower Your Clients. Judith Belmont
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