Archive for July, 2018

Forgiveness, like Dr. Enright’s Model, should be Cultivated on National and International Scales

According to an editorial in the February issue of an international humanities journal, forgiveness interventions like Dr. Robert Enright’s 20 Step Process Model,  should be employed on a much broader basis and, in fact, national leaders should be assessing “when or how it might be appropriate to cultivate forgiveness on national and international scales.”

The influential American Journal of Public Health, continuously published for more than 100 years, further editorialized that:

“If forgiveness is strongly related to health, and being wronged is a common experience, and interventions. . . are available and effective, then one might make the case that forgiveness is a public health issue. . .

“Because being wronged is common, and because the effects of forgiveness on health are substantial, forgiveness should perhaps be viewed as a phenomenon that is not only of moral,  theological, and relational significance, but of public health importance as well.”


“Forgiveness promotes health and wholeness; it is important to public health.”      AJPH


The editorial cites Dr. Enright’s Process Model (also called his Four Phases of Forgiveness) as one of only two “prominent intervention classes” now available. “Interventions using this model have been shown to be effective with groups as diverse as adult incest survivors, parents who have adopted special needs children, and inpatients struggling with alcohol and drug addiction.

“Forgiveness is associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and hostility; reduced nicotine dependence and substance abuse; higher positive emotion; higher satisfaction with life; higher social support; and fewer self-reported health symptoms. The beneficial emotional regulation (results in) forgiveness being an alternative to maladaptive  psychological responses like rumination and suppression.”

Read the rest of this compelling editorial: Is Forgiveness a Public Health Issue?

Learn more about Dr. Enright’s Four Phases of Forgiveness


 

Please follow and like us:

I have forgiven my partner, but I find that I am constantly being careful around him.  Am I not forgiving?  Should I practice re-forgiving him or is there some other process going on?

Your question focuses on the classic distinction between forgiving and reconciling.  When you forgive, you are practicing a moral virtue in which you try to reduce resentment and show goodness of some kind to your partner.  You try to do these unconditionally while, at the same time, striving for fairness (exercising the moral virtue of justice alongside forgiveness).  In contrast, when you reconcile, you are not exercising a moral virtue, but instead are engaging in a negotiation strategy of working your way back to mutual trust.  When you say you are “being careful,” you are showing that your trust is not yet strong.  Do not expect the trust to be re-established immediately.  Try to see instances of when your partner now is being trustworthy.  Let these instances grow in you until you see that your partner has changed and can be trusted.  Of course, given that we are all imperfect, no one will behave in such a way as to earn perfect trust in all areas of life.  Use your wisdom here: Is he sorry for the past hurt?  Is he trying to change?  Is he making progress?  Your forgiving may help you to be patient as he changes.

Please follow and like us:

A New Approach to School Bullying: Eliminate Their Anger

“Introducing Forgiveness Counseling to the Schools”

If you do an electronic search for anti-bullying programs, you will see three prominent approaches, the 3 P’s:

  • Peer mediation
  • Persistent norms. (This is a “no-bully zone;” we do not tolerate bullying in this school)
  • Punishment.
The rarely-tried approach, one backed by social scientific research, is to eliminate the anger in those doing the bullying (Gambaro, Enright, Baskin, & Klatt, 2008; Park, Enright, Essex, Zahn-Waxler, & Klatt, 2013). Those who are angry tend to displace that anger onto others, who then may displace it onto others, who may pass on the anger once again…and on it goes.

What makes people so angry that they:

          a) retain the anger for a long time, sometimes years;
          b) find no solution to that anger; and,
          c) give the never-say-die anger to others?

We find that unfair treatment from other people is the source of so much anger in this world (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). Anger as a source of inner disruption in the form of anxiety, low-self esteem, and pessimism all too often goes unrecognized. After all, if a person with high anxiety comes to a mental health professional, it is natural to focus on the presenting symptom. Yet, our research and the clinical work connected to it suggest that toxic anger, the kind that is deep and long-lasting, often is at the heart of many psychological symptoms for those who have a history of being treated unfairly.

 

Forgiveness therapy, as an empirically-verified treatment, reduces and even eliminates the toxic anger (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). This is a paradoxical psychotherapy. As the client discussed the unfair behaviors coming from others, the treatment focus shifts from the client’s symptoms to an exploration of who the offending person is, what emotional wounds this person has, the vulnerabilities and doubts and fears that person brought to the painful interactions with the client.

As the client realizes that to forgive is not to excuse or forget or abandon the quest for justice or necessarily even reconcile with the other, then forgiveness therapy can proceed without distortion of what, exactly, it means to forgive. To forgive is to offer goodness to those who have not been good to the client. It is the offering of a virtue that has been around for thousands of years across many philosophies and religions and worldviews. To forgive offers the client a way to eliminate resentment by offering goodness…and it works (see, for example, Lin, Mack, Enright, Krahn, & Baskin, 2004). 

When a student in school begins to aggress onto others, those who use the lens of forgiveness therapy start to ask these questions:

  • Does the one showing the bullying behavior seem to be particularly angry?
  • What is the source of this anger?  Might it be unfair treatment from others in the past, perhaps at home or in school or in the peer group?
  • Might this student be in pain, which emerged from the injustice, and might that pain now have turned to a toxic anger?
  • Might this student be willing to examine who perpetrated the injustice and the subsequent hurt and ask, “Can I forgive this person (or persons) for what they did to me?”

School counselors now have a resource for taking this kind of therapy directly to those who bully (Enright, 2012). Rather than focus on the symptoms of aggression, disobedience to school expectations, or even the student’s own anger, the treatment shifts: Who hurt you? Is this person hurting and vulnerable and confused? Do you know what forgiveness is and is not? Would you be interested in trying to forgive the one who caused you so much pain? This kind of therapy can take up to 12 or more weeks, but that is the blink-of-an-eye relative to anger that can last for years.

As the student’s pain subsides by seeing the inherent worth in the one who was cruel and by fostering compassion toward that person (not because of what was done but instead because of whom the other is as a person), so too does the anger within the one who bullies start to fade, and this takes away the incentive to bully.  The focus is not on the symptoms exclusively any more, nor is it on only creating school norms (which are all too easily ignored by those who bully when they are nurturing a rage inside).

To reduce bullying, we need to see the anger inside those who bully and have a plan to reduce it. Forgiveness therapy, as empirically shown, already has done its job. Now it is time to transport such therapy from the clinician’s office into the school setting for the good of those who bully and for the good of those who are the unwitting recipients of their pain.

Posted in Psychology Today December 17, 2016


References:

Please follow and like us:

What can one do to get rid of guilt?

You first can become ready to approach the one whom you hurt. The point of approaching the other is to seek forgiveness.  Seeking forgiveness includes: 1) remorse or an inner sorrow for having hurt the other; 2) repentance or saying you are sorry (apologizing); and 3) making recompense within reason.  If you are a person of faith, then seeking forgiveness from God is important.  Finally, practicing self-forgiveness should reduce the guilt.  Self forgiveness is not letting yourself off the hook, but instead is unconditionally loving yourself despite what you did.   When you seek forgiveness from the other, when you seek forgiveness from God, then you are not engaging in letting yourself off the hook when you self-forgive.

Please follow and like us: