Author Archive: directorifi
You talk in your books of a “global perspective” in which a person strives to see the common humanity between the self and the offending other. If a person were to practice the global perspective with most people whom she meets on a daily basis, would this help the person to forgive when it is time to apply this perspective to someone who was cruel?
Yes, this kind of practice on those who have done nothing wrong can be good practice for the time in which there is injustice and pain and anger. Taking the global perspective with others who are not harmful will not lead to an automatic forgiving (toward those who are unfair to you), but it could make the starting of the process easier. It could make the cognitive understanding of the offending other easier as well.
What implications do you see if the offender is forgiven, but refuses to change the behavior?
The person who has forgiven should not reconcile if the offender’s behavior is deeply harmful. An unrepentant offender likely is not going to change that behavior soon.
I am not angry at the one who was unfair to me. I am in pain. You talk mostly about anger and I am wondering if maybe you have missed something here.
I agree with you that pain occurs after being treated unjustly. I think the sequence is as follows: 1) Someone is unfair to you; 2) Next comes shock or even denial; 3) Then comes pain, as you describe; 4) If the pain does not lessen or if you have no effective way of reducing and eliminating the pain, then you may become angry.
That anger can be at the person for acting unfairly, or at the situation, or even at the pain itself that resulted from the unfair treatment. It is the anger, if it abides and deepens, that can lead to health problems (fatigue, anxiety, and so forth). So, I emphasize anger within Forgiveness Therapy because it, in the form of excessive anger or resentment, can be dangerous to health, relationships, and communities.
Is anger really all that bad to have? I find that it energizes me.
We need to distinguish between healthy anger the kind, as you say, that energizes you, and excessive or toxic anger that lasts too long and is too deep. If your anger is not bringing you down, and if it energizes you, then you are right. The anger is not bad, especially if it does not prohibit you from considering forgiveness.
Why We Need Forgiveness Education
Editor’s Note: Just a few weeks ago (Dec. 21, 2016), we announced on this website that Dr. Robert Enright, founder of the IFI, had been selected by two of the nation’s premier blog sites (Psychology Today and Thrive Global) to add his forgiveness expertise as a regular contributor. This week, Psychology Today’s editorial staff promoted Dr. Enright’s most recent blog to “Essential Topic” status meaning that it receives prominent placement on their website along with being featured on the first page of blog topics like “Education” and “Therapy.” Here is that blog:
Why We Need Forgiveness Education
“I was too busy trying to survive. I did not have room to bring forgiveness into my world.”
These two sentences together, spoken by someone who lived with an abusive partner for decades, is one of the strongest rationales I have ever read for forgiveness education, starting with 4-year-olds or 5-year-olds.
Do you see that the person, as an adult, did not have the energy and focus to add something new to her arsenal of survival?
What if forgiveness was a natural part of her survival arsenal starting at an early age?
We do this all the time in education as we help students learn how to speak and write coherent sentences.
We do this all the time in education as we help students learn how to add so that a budget can be maintained.
We do this all the time in education as we help students learn how to be just or fair. Teacher corrections and punishments are swift to come once students enter the school door and then misbehave in the school setting.
I think it is unfortunate that educational institutions and societies fail to make forgiveness a natural part of life through early education. Isn’t a central point about education to help people make their way in society? And isn’t a central point of making one’s way in society having the capacity to confront grave injustices and not be defeated by them? And isn’t a central point of confronting grave injustices the knowledge of how to forgive? And isn’t a central point of knowing how to forgive the 
thinking about forgiveness and the practice of it in safety, before the storms of insensitivity and abuse hit? And isn’t a central point of knowing forgiveness and practicing forgiveness to aid in the survival of people who could be crushed by others’ cruelty?
Why do we spend time helping children learn to speak and write, learn essential mathematics skills, and be just, but completely neglect teaching them how to overcome grave injustices?
Education in its essence will be fundamentally incomplete until educators fold into it the basic strategies for overcoming grave injustice and cruelty so that students, once they are adults, never have to say, “I was too busy trying to survive. I did not have room to bring forgiveness into my world.”
And the educational challenge of this incompleteness is this: We now know scientifically-supported pathways to forgive (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015; Wade, Hoyt, Kidwell, & Worthington, 2014). We have scientifically-tested forgiveness curricula for children and adolescents (Enright, Knutson, Holter, Baskin, & Knutson, 2007; Enright, Rhody, Litts, & Klatt, 2014). Without forgiveness education, a person who wants to forgive may not be able to do so. Without forgiveness education, another person may too easily equate forgiving and reconciling, thus staying in an abusive relationship. With forgiveness education, a person can forgive, not necessarily reconcile, and heal emotionally.
It is time to make “room to bring forgiveness into my world.”
Robert
Posted Jan 15, 2017 – Psychology Today.com
