Author Archive: doctorbobenright

Tips on Reconciliation

Inez: Reconciliation cannot be the same as forgiveness because reconciliation is not a moral virtue. It does not originate within a person, but is a set of behaviors between people.

Sophia: Well said.

Inez: You mentioned trust in the context of reconciliation, but you have not mentioned that word in the context of forgiveness. Can I forgive and not trust the person?

Sophia: What do you think? How do you read this?

Inez: I suppose that if someone were a compulsive gambler, I could forgive that person and then not trust him with the checkbook.

Sophia: Right. You would not trust him in that one area, but this is not an excuse to write the person off as having no possibility of being trusted in anything at all.

Enright, Robert D. (2012-07-05). The Forgiving Life (APA Lifetools) (Kindle Locations 1752-1761). American Psychological Association. Kindle Edition.

My husband is really “into” forgiveness, reading lots of books and viewing documentaries. He has had a big problem with his mother since he was young. He now says that he forgives her completely but I can sense the anger deep in him. His pride, I think, is keeping him from the truth that he still needs work on forgiving. What do you suggest?

Denial of anger, especially toward a parent, is not uncommon.  There is a little test of forgiveness, the Personal Forgiveness Scale, in Appendix C of the book, The Forgiving Life.  You might want to ask your husband to fill this out first on his employer (as a warm-up to familiarize himself with the scale).  Then ask him to fill it out toward his mother as he thinks of one incident that he deems as unfair from the past.  The explanation of the scores is in Chapter 9, starting on page 156.  If he scores between 18 and 63, he likely has some forgiveness work to do.  He should then consider doing some of the work in Chapter 10 of that book.

Once Again Bullying Behavior Destroys a Life

BBC News reports that bullying behavior has claimed yet another victim, Izzy Dix, age 14, who apparently killed herself after struggling with cyber bullying.  This kind of tragedy must end.  We at the IFI just recently have published an Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program focused on helping those who bully to forgive. You see, those who bully usually have pent-up anger…..and they displace their own wounds onto others. Our program is meant to take the anger out of the heart of those who bully so that they no longer bully others. Here is information on that life-giving program, which we hope gets into as many schools, internationally, as possible.

What is particularly sad is that we posted a very similar blog in October of 2012….and the tragedies continue.

Robert

Worth-less or Worth-more?

“As we continually live with love withdrawn from us and a resulting resentment (with the short-term consequences of thinking with a negative pattern, thinking specific condemning thoughts, and acting poorly), we can settle into a kind of long-term distortion of who the love-withdrawing person is, who we ourselves are, and who people are in general. The basic issue here is that once love is withdrawn from us, we can begin to withdraw a sense of worth toward the one who hurt us. The conclusion is that he or she is worth-less. Over time, we can drift into the dangerous conclusion, ‘I, too, am worthless.’ After all, others have withdrawn love from me and have concluded that I lack worth, therefore I do lack worth. Even later, we can drift into the unhealthy conclusion that there is no love in the world and so no one really has any worth, thus everyone is worth-less.” Excerpt from the book, The Forgiving Life, Chapter 1.

Robert

A Specific Forgiveness Exercise for Couples