Sweet Forgiveness
Thursday, January 28th, 2010
“Forgive and forget!” you hear all the time. As a Christian, it’s easy: you just pray it away! Except it’s not so easy. It’s not easy for a non-Christian, either. You hear how important it is for your mental health, but how do you do it?
The first thing to know what forgiveness is not. Forgiveness is not:
- Forgetting
- Condoning
- Never thinking about it again
- Letting someone get away with something/being a doormat/pardoning
- Excusing
- Denial that the offense occurred
- A moment (as in, for some larger offenses, forgiveness is a process that one may have to go through multiple times)
So what is forgiveness?
Forgiveness is letting go of Awful Thing That Someone/Something Did and moving on with your life past the hurt. Most people don’t want to hang on to past hurts. It makes us bitter and isolated, as people don’t want to be around those who can’t let things go (which is a problem I run into on my blog–I don’t want to live in the past, but I want to be honest about my experiences for those still going through them and for those who don’t know what it was like to grow up fundamentalist or be in the ministry). The stress from constant, smoldering anger can cause physical illness as well. But the stress from trying to figure out how to turn off your emotions can be aggravating, too!
So what to do?
- Realize forgiveness is a process, and sometimes takes multiple times. You might succeed at letting go of the anger, just to see that person a week later and have to go through the process all over again. That’s okay! It doesn’t mean you haven’t really forgiven or that you have turned into a bitter person. It just takes awhile. Obviously, some things are easy to let go. The person apologizes and tells you their viewpoint, or it wasn’t that big of a deal. I’m talking about the stuff that’s really hurtful.
- Recognize it. Make a list of everything bad that happened because of it. Write down everything you can think of. It’s okay if you contributed to the problems, too. Right now, play the blame game.
- Get angry and/or sad. Allow yourself to feel everything. Write down or talk out whatever it is that is on your mind: any anger or sadness you feel, guilt, good feelings, anything. Don’t force anything to come that doesn’t (like trying to focus on the positive).
- Grieve. Go over that list and grieve for it all. Set a certain amount of time every day to sit there and think about it and determine to really think about it during that time. If you need an hour, take an hour everyday just to cry, write in a journal, talk on the phone to someone, or pretend you’re talking to the person who hurt you. If a thought creeps up when it’s not grieving time, save it. Say to yourself, “I’ll think about that at 2:00 tomorrow, and not until then.” And at 2:00, you better let yourself think and feel anything and everything. Don’t hold back: let it all hang out. Yell and scream if you need to. Find a place where people won’t try to give you a Haldol if you act a little mental. It’s okay. The important thing here is to take the entire amount of time you have allotted. You want it to get too long. You want to eventually not want to spend an hour every day wallowing. Take the entire hour (or however long you think you need) and get it all out. And then some.
- Confront the person (or object). This isn’t always possible to do in person, especially in cases of death, abuse, crime, or when the thing you’re angry at is a thing, so if you can’t, write it out or talk it out to the person as if they are there. Write a letter you will never send, talk to an empty chair pretending it’s the person, or talk to the person directly. What to say? Outline the ways that person has hurt you, and calmly explain what has happened. In an ideal world, they will feel remorse, but it’s not always an ideal world. If they become angry or try to engage you in an argument, refuse to fight back lest you have something new to forgive. Tell them they are more than welcome to respond to you (after all, we are often in the wrong at least a little bit ourselves, though please know that I am not talking about abuse or crime when I say that), but only if they can calmly. Stay calm yourself, but do let them get a chance to speak if this is about repairing a relationship. If it’s just about confronting them for your own healing, then say what you need to say and walk out. If there is a chance for the relationship to be salvaged, however, try to have some dialogue.
- Forgive yourself. Recognize how you contributed to the problem (if applicable), and try to think of the lessons you can learn from this experience. If you can and need to, approach the person and apologize for your part in what happened, even if they don’t apologize back.
- Let it go. Shrink your grieving time. Go from one hour per day one week, to 50 minutes the next, to 40 the next, etc. Don’t let the grieving process take forever. Some things will take longer than others. If you need help figuring out a time limit, ask a therapist or a very trusted friend who will know you well enough to know whether you are dragging something out unneccessarily. And if this is the second or third time you’re going through this list, try to make the length of grieving time shorter each time, so if you started out at an hour at the beginning of the first time, try 50 minutes the second time. Also, let go of the guilt if you have any. Use your grief time for guilt time, too. Try to trim that back and let it go. We all make mistakes. Also, recognize if you are feeling guilt for something that is not your fault. Many of us tend to blame ourselves, too, for situations out of our control. Try to let that go as well.
- Live. Focus on the positives. Is there a way you can turn this into lemonade? Reach out to others in the same situation? Strengthen a relationship? Try to find some way that this experience can enrich your life rather than tear it to pieces.
Why is forgiveness important?
In The Human Condition, Arendt wrote, “Without being forgiven, released from the consequences of what we have done, our capacity to act would . . . be confined to a single deed from which we could never recover; we would remain the victims of its consequences for ever.”
When you don’t forgive or in some way let whatever happened go (whether you want to call it forgiveness or something else), you have given that person the power to make you miserable. I don’t want the people who hurt me to have that kind of power. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they affected me and the quality of my life.
A lack of forgiveness, or refusing to move on with your life can lead to depression, anger, anxiety, insomnia, emotional instability, rage outbursts, and low self esteem. This even includes forgiving yourself for what you may have done to hurt others. Nobody’s perfect, and we’ve all made mistakes. In one study done by Hathaway and McKinley, forgiving oneself was inversely related to depression, paranoid ideation, interpersonal sensitivty, and psychoticism.
Not to mention possible health benefits of forgiveness. Bitterness can exacerbate cardiovascular problems. In fact, one German study concluded that it should be considered a medical disorder, Post-Traumatic Embitterment Disorder.
Other tips and tidbits:
- There are different degrees of forgiveness. For some offenses, like a violent crime, simply moving past the hurt may be good enough. For a close relationship, however, restoring trust and intimacy may be part of the forgiveness process. Sometimes, thinking of a goal (ie, what do you want to happen with this person? How do you want to feel when you have forgiven?) can help get you there.
- On God. Interestingly enough, for those of us with negative religious experiences under our belts, the act of forgiving God can have some positive mental affects. That doesn’t mean you have to believe in him, but it does mean that letting go of the religious hurt and the broken promises can be beneficial to you personally.
- If it’s still happening: try to find a way out of the situation. You do have a choice whether or not to put yourself in certain situations. Sometimes it means trading one bad situation for another bad situation that has more hope, or doing things we don’t want to do, but you always have a choice. Sometimes you just have to get creative, do something unpleasant, or take a risk.
- Reach out. Don’t be afraid to ask for help from friends, family, or counseling services. Sometimes, we just need a little extra help.
Know that these are just basic guidelines. Everyone’s situation is different, and I understand I probably didn’t cover everything exactly so. Modify or completely ignore anything listed in this post as it works for you. This is meant to help get you startred if you’re ready to move on with your life. So often, people want to move on, but don’t know how. Hopefully, this will help.
I’m working on writing some letters, but I haven’t done it yet. Mostly because I just haven’t felt upset or sad enough to lately. I am taking that as a good sign, but I also know that there are some things coming around the bend that will caues me to probably need this process soon. Which is another thing about forgiveness: sometimes, there are multiple things with the same person to forgive, and they’re all related. Like, I can forgive Bob for the things that happened to end our marriage and admit my own fault. I do still have a problem with some parenting issues. And when I think about those parenting issues, guess what else I think about? Everything else (though it’s getting better). Multi-phasic forgiveness can take a long time. That’s okay: there are no time limits set in stone. What’s important is that you continually work on it.
Sources:
The Handbook of Positive Psychology, p446-447, 451
This article, previously linked, but I used a few other things from it as well.
My psych degree! I finally found something useful for it!
Tags: forgiveness, how to forgive
Loading ...
January 28th, 2010 at 3:51 am
One thing I’ve noticed about religious people is the everything is very binary. And I think this is reflected in this post.
You either hate someone who has done you wrong, or you forgive them.
This is also reflected in their morality – abortion, for example, is wrong, or it is not. There is no middle ground, or empathy with another’s point of view.
If someone has done me wrong, I can get to a point where I tolerate their existence. And this is generally not because I am a great spiritual dude, but because the negative consequences of their wrong doing have diminished – for example, if someone steals from me, I might have gotten to a stage where I’m no longer trying to replace what is missing.
I don’t think anyone holds onto anger deliberately, except in my experience, dogmatic people who cannot make the jump across the chasm from not forgiving to forgiving. They should of course just use the footbridge and walk across.
January 28th, 2010 at 4:46 am
In order to forgive, there has to be a person asking for forgiveness. If no one is asking for forgiveness, then there is nothing to forgive.
I think the above definition is basically a call to forget something that one does against you as you stated. When you hold onto anger, it harms you so it is best to forget those things that you hold in your heart towards others.
I think in order to forget, you have to know the love of God. God is love and His love has to be present in your life in order to let go… If you don’t have the love of God, you can never see past yourself and your desires; however, if you walk in the love of God, every wrong becomes an opportunity to bless. As the Bible says, “Bless those who curse you…pray for them…” I personally have not met an atheist who is able to do this..
God Bless…
January 28th, 2010 at 5:01 am
There doesn’t have to be a person asking for forgiveness. There are many Christian stories, even, of people who walk up and tell someone who didn’t ask for it that they are forgiven and greeeat things that happen because of it. (It’s usually told for proselytizing or preaching purposes.) Only Jesus is so petty.
And forgiving isn’t forgetting. If so, nobody would be forgiven.
And blah, blah, blah, yeah, we’ve heard it.
January 28th, 2010 at 7:20 am
I really believe that there is a lot of misunderstanding about forgiveness. I think some people see Jesus saying 70 times 7 and think forgiveness doesn’t require someone asking for forgiveness. I don’t think Jesus had this in mind at all.
Jesus had to die on the cross so that our sins could be forgiven. Forgiveness of a debt means there is a debt to forgive. Forgiveness of a sin means there is a sin to forgive. However, there always has to be a person who is receiving that forgiveness.
I think past hurts are what you are talking about. How do you get past the hurt of someone who has hurt you? This is something that takes place inside of you and really has nothing to do with the other person (other than that they are responsible for the hurt).
If I take your definition and apply it to reality, this is what happens for example. If you person sticks a knife in you, do you forgiven them immediately. Well, if you do, they may just stick another knife in you. You then forgive them…but then they stick the knife in you again. I think this is a great way to get killed not just physically but emotionally. I don’t think forgiveness means simply overlooking someone’s sin against you without them asking for forgiveness. It just doesn’t follow reason.
Forgiveness has to be something different than dealing with a hurt that someone has caused in the past.
The Bible says it differently, When someone does not act in love, you are suppose to love them. Love means sacrificing your self-interest and doing what is best for the other person. However, the idea of ‘best’ is defined by who God is!
In other words, the best way for you to get over Bob is to begin loving him which means hoping the best for him, praying for him and seeking to find people who can help him. He is a sick man who needs help so perhaps giving him helpful ideas that he can use to get some help. The fact is that he is going to hurt the woman who he is now married to unless he find the love of God in his life. As you were hurt, she will be hurt too. Until he finds love, he is going to be hurting people over and over because he is driven by his selfish interest which leads to hurting others.
The best way to overcome pain is to love; however, to love, you have to know God. Love when known can change a person, city, state, nation and ultimately the world. In fact, it could change Bob. I know for a fact that love will change you…
God Bless..
January 28th, 2010 at 8:26 am
for me, ‘forgiveness’ has been connected too much to hurt and pain in my life….
hmmm, maybe I need to “forgive” forgiveness. But I don’t really think so– I’ve let go of the hurt and moved beyond it, but I still have no inclination to use that word in reference to my experiences, at least the “big” experiences. Little slights and omission, fine, but huge hurts, I can’t “forgive” because the word itself when applied to big hurts and in the context of “god” and the mindset I left behind would need to be left behind and gotten beyond.
January 28th, 2010 at 9:14 am
Excellent post!
I can see that some folks don’t care for the term “forgiveness” but “do onto others” or “don’t be a: self-righteous, self-pitying, freaking hypocrite all the time because it annoys the crap out of everyone” works just as well and covers most of the same ground, imo.
The idea of rectifying a situation rather than seeking retribution is not only at the heart of Christian theology but is, essentially, the foundation of civilized society.
January 28th, 2010 at 9:33 am
Hmm lets see, god’s forgiveness, how does that work.
God who made everything and can control everything that makes up our environment, all of the environmental and innate factors that shapes and forms our psyche, is going to forgive us for following our innate nature he created, and if we don’t succumb to his wishes, he will torture us for all eternity.
How big hearted of him..
January 28th, 2010 at 11:44 am
zdenny -
1. That is absolutely UNTRUE that “there is nothing to forgive” if the the offender does not ask forgiveness. I was deeply hurt by a friend once and it was 12 years before he apologized and asked forgiveness. Suppose I had held onto that hurt and anger for that long because “he had not asked my forgiveness.” It would have only hurt me and eaten me up inside.
2. The Bible does not say “forgive and forget.” Anywhere. As a fellow Christian, I ask you to please know what your Bible says before you start quoting it [or thinking you're quoting it!].
3. Forgiveness is not about crawling back for more abuse. It is about letting go. As Anne Lamott wrote [paraphrased], “It doesn’t mean you want to take the other person to lunch. It just means you no longer feel the need to fight back.”
Mark Twain put it another way: “Forgiveness is the scent the violet sheds on the heel that has crushed it.”
Whether you are a Christian, a Buddhist, or an atheist, the concept of forgiveness is simply about moving on with your life and choosing not to be defined for the rest of your life by one incident or one person who has hurt you.
Great tips, Laura – thanks!!!
January 28th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
I think one issue that is not addressed is this, Expectation.
Imagine if your dog peed on your favorite rug. You’re angry but you have low expectations for a dog, so you forgive him in an hour or so.
Suppose your new next door neighbor came in for a visit, and in front of everyone, pee’s on your favorite rug. You’ll maybe forgive him in ten or twenty years if ever.
Suppose that neighbor is a 16 year old severely mentally handicapped boy who is going to die soon. You’ll forgive him with tears in your eyes.
As you can see, the forgiver’s expectations and compassion figures heavily into the equation.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:33 pm
I think for many of us who grew up in Christian homes, the term “forgiveness” does have some negative connotations to it and a lot of frustrations tied to it as there are many misunderstandings about what forgiveness is from a psychological/counseling viewpoint vs. from the Bible (see zdenny, no offense to you! Not that every Christian misunderstands the concept of forgiveness, see Leanne). You can call it “letting go” if you want, but it’s pretty much the same thing and the process is the same. In the psych world, we still call it forgiveness.
And zdenny, pretending for a moment that I’m still a Christian: even if you do ask God for forgiveness for your sins and ask Jesus into your heart, what happens if you sin and forget to ask for forgiveness later? Does he send you to hell because that sin is unforgiven?
Mlee: yeah, I didn’t say that directly, but I did allude to it here and there. Good way to phrase it.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:35 pm
RE: ZDenny
“I think in order to forget, you have to know the love of God. God is love and His love has to be present in your life in order to let go…”
Noooo .. I forget things all the time.. It just becomes of less and less importance to me until it is forgotten.
” If you don’t have the love of God, you can never see past yourself and your desires; however, if you walk in the love of God, every wrong becomes an opportunity to bless.”
Atheists have empathy as well, and atheists can emotionally grow when “wronged” by someone else.
“As the Bible says, “Bless those who curse you…pray for them…” I personally have not met an atheist who is able to do this..”
True! an atheist can’t sincerely pray! Duh! But we can be and are just as compassionate as any theist.
January 28th, 2010 at 12:52 pm
Laura,
This is one of my favorite blogs. Zdenny is a bit fun here, where I can actually confront and query his ideas. Unfortunately, I live in a town surrounded by ZDennys who would hunt me down and destroy me if they knew my real thoughts. Almost all of my high school friends on facebook are zealots who seem to try to outdo each other with their posed piety. Even in my professional life I have to hide my sanity. I’ve also made the decision not to confront my parents, (I’m a PK) and any of their friends while they’re living. So I’m a bit pent up. I’m proud of your courage to think for yourself.
January 28th, 2010 at 2:51 pm
mlee, that must be tough. I do understand what it’s like to not feel that you can be yourself around the people who are supposed to love you the most. It’s very difficult. I know I couldn’t handle it because I didn’t. I got depressed and then divorced.
January 28th, 2010 at 5:03 pm
Hey, I just realized Zdenny is a classic mansplainer: http://shakespearessister.blogspot.com/2010/01/it-looks-like-were-going-to-have.html
It all explains so much…
January 29th, 2010 at 3:37 am
Laura, this post had great timing for me. Thanks! To be brief, my husband and I are separated now after 13 years of marriage. Simply put, we didn’t “grow up” together. Now we are apart so we can see if we want to make the effort to reconcile and “grow old” together. There are so many factors in this situation…we are simply, very complex self-aware and emotional creatures.
Anyway, I decided just a couple of days ago that I am tired of the wallowing in pain and self-pity. I saw plenty of bitterness in my future if I didn’t start forgiving MYSELF. (Dang that indocrinated sarcophobia). I’m glad you highlight the points that forgiveness is a process that may have to happen lots of times and that it is multi-phasic over time. This was validating and encouraging.
Z – “If no one is asking for forgiveness, then there is nothing to forgive.”
Thank you. You have just eased my mind. If I don’t ask God for forgiveness of my sins, then my sins, including rejection of God, don’t exist. Surely God won’t send me to hell for nothing. (Hope that makes sense. It’s late and I’m not sure my logic circuits are all online…remember when we used to say “firing on all cylinders?”)
January 29th, 2010 at 3:50 am
Kathryn, you might be right about the mansplaining.
January 29th, 2010 at 3:51 am
Julie, I am glad that this post was helpful, but I’m sorry that things are so rough, too. If you ever need to talk, feel free to email me!
January 29th, 2010 at 7:39 am
Kathryn,
That is funny, and I’m not offended, but..
Beware of any ideology that claims that a person’s genitalia caused defective ideas. The website you linked specifically denied any opposing viewpoints in the comments. That closed mindedness is more like ZDenny than any other characteristic I can think of. I’m being sexist if I claim that a woman is a nurturer, because not all women are, and this blogger is being sexist by saying that “Mansplaining” is a purly male trait. I have a “Womansplainer” Here at work, a lady named Rosa. She’s a staunch xtian funamentalist too, surprised?
While one could say that the trait is predominately male, claims on percentages like that could also be made of races of people, fostering racism. I think its a bit tacky, but hey, I’m a “mansplainer”.
January 29th, 2010 at 8:32 am
no, it’s not that the trait is predominantly male, it’s that the gender neutral term is a different word. Society has male privilege in it, and a “mansplainer” has his privilege and society to back him up in a way, to an extent, not totally, but in the attitudes it encourages in both men and women. (“let the boys look smart, then they’ll like you. You can’t make them look bad” is a message pretty much all teenage women get to a greater or lesser extent, and the boys do too. In messages such as “don’t be a pussy” “don’t throw like a girl” they are taught that to be “shown up” or be proved wrong by a girl is the Worst Possible Thing.)
Mansplaining *only* occurs in such a society, and it occurs because of the gender inequality in that society. You are talking about a different phenomenon, one that could occur in an equal society. That phenomenon is not named “mansplaining” because it could not possibly exist in that society. But it does exist in ours.
Likewise, “womansplain” isn’t what that woman is doing, unless she lives in a matriarchal society that teaches girls being beaten by a boy in a race or a sport or even a test to an extent, is the worst insult, that boys should be timid and keep quiet about their knowledge in order to get dates, etc. That’s not the world she lives in, so she is not a “womansplainer.”
January 29th, 2010 at 9:50 am
jemand,
Well explained, thanks, I hadn’t thought of it in that light. (Are you male? Ha Ha)
But, There are both local “societies” and greater societies. So as this Blog is dominated by females, would it be possible for a woman here to be guilty of “Womensplaining” or not?
January 29th, 2010 at 12:20 pm
@mlee, I don’t know. Probably not *this* blog specifically, because I think it is both too small and too new to have built up enough of a culture so that said culture could project certain power assumptions onto a single interaction between members in the same way. Also, it wouldn’t just have to be the development of a culture, but a particular type of culture, one in which the group actually has some negative or demeaning messages for a particular type of person, as well. And as much as Zdenny is annoying, the commenting consensus seems to be that it’s just him, not every single religious person. Etc. (Atheist-splaining anyone? find me an example? lol)
Shakesville, being bigger and older (I think) *might* get there? At least, allowing for the possibility of the phenomenon. I’m not sure enough that there has been enough of a history even there that there could be unspoken contextual issues with broad understanding. There’s also the issue that it takes a second to join, which is not enough time to fully acquire all the cultural baggage which might even be building up there…
Thanks for the food for thought
January 29th, 2010 at 12:37 pm
jemand,
I take it you speak German.. I took several years of it in College but am completely amazed at how much I’d forgotten it. I had to pronounce your username in my head to remember what it meant.
January 29th, 2010 at 1:04 pm
ah, I’m not fluent, definitely. Took a couple years of it and traveled to Germany and Austria once but… I can manage written much better than spoken, and even that is iffy. I still like the username though. The original story was that one of the first sites I was signing up with already had “someone” and “algien” taken lol. Then it just grew on me.
January 29th, 2010 at 5:54 pm
Laura, you stated, “And zdenny, pretending for a moment that I’m still a Christian: even if you do ask God for forgiveness for your sins and ask Jesus into your heart, what happens if you sin and forget to ask for forgiveness later? Does he send you to hell because that sin is unforgiven? ”
Laura, you already know the answer to that question. When you place your faith in Jesus Christ, your sins are forgiven, past, present and future! You have made your relationship with God right and that is the point of forgiveness.
I think you raise a good point though that I had not considered. An atheist can only see themselves and their own life. I call it the bubble of self which is the heart of selfishness. As a result, forgiveness would have to be defined in terms of a personal relief since no one else really exists in the life of an atheist. The only thing that is meaningful is the meaning you give to things. You never receive meaning from others which makes forgiveness a meaningless term since right relationships are irrelevant in the atheistic worldview.
A Christian on the other hand is called to pop that bubble and love others. Others are meaningful because they are made in the image of God. As a result, forgiveness is righting a wrong relationship since relationships are meaningful since both people have meaning which has been given to them by God.
I never really thought about the difference before, but it really became clear for me as I read through your post and the comments. I am constantly learning about my faith simply by reading post like yours and then contrasting it with Scripture.
God Bless…
January 29th, 2010 at 6:13 pm
Zdenny, I was asking your opinion. Not everyone believes the forgiveness for sins past, present, and future, and I was wondering what you thought. So I really don’t know how you got what you did from my question.