Ask Dr. Forgiveness

I have a pattern of saying to myself, “I forgive you” whenever someone is unjust to me or even when I am somewhat annoyed.  I now am wondering: Am I actually forgiving when I do this or am I not forgiving?

Forgiving is a process that requires more than a statement such as “I forgive you.”  Your statement to yourself may be more of a promise to now work on the process, to commit to the struggles of seeing the inherent worth in the other person, to bear the pain of what happened, and to be good to the person (within reason; you need not reconcile if the other is harmful to you).  So, try to see the positives in your statement to yourself.  Try to see it as the beginning of the commitment now to follow through with the hard work of forgiving.

My daughter recently divorced her husband.  She wants nothing to do right now with forgiving him.  On the other hand, I am interested in forgiving him for how he treated my daughter.  My question for you is this: Can I forgive him or would I be disloyal to my daughter who does not want to forgive?

You are free to choose forgiveness in this case.  Even though your daughter’s ex-spouse did not hurt you directly, he did hurt you in a secondary sense in that he hurt your loved one.  Forgiving in this context is appropriate.  You are not being disloyal to your daughter if you choose to forgive to rid yourself of resentment.  You need not, then, go to your daughter and proclaim your forgiveness and then pressure her now to do the same.  You can forgive without discussing this with your daughter.  If and when she is ready to forgive, then you can share your insights about the forgiveness process with her.

In your Process Model of Forgiveness, you have one unit called compassion.  I am trying to forgive someone who passed away recently.  Can I have compassion on this person and if so, how does this work?

Compassion includes at least four elements:

1) Sympathy toward the one who hurt you.  Sympathy is an emotional reaction to another’s pain.  For example, if someone comes to you angry that he just lost his job and now is struggling financially, you have sympathy when you feel sorry for the person.  His anger and unfortunate situation leads to a different emotion in you: sadness.

2) Empathy toward the one who hurt you.  Empathy is stepping inside the other’s shoes (so to speak) and feeling the same feeling as the other.  Thus, when the other is angry, you empathize with that person when you also feel anger.

3) Behaving toward the other by supporting him or her in the time of distress.  This could include a kind word or talking about the strategy of solving the job problem, as examples.

4) Suffering along with the person.  This latter point is the deepest aspect of compassion.  It could involve helping the person financially before a new job is secured;  it could involve driving the person to a job interview.

In the case of having compassion for a deceased person, you can have sympathy and empathy (the first two elements of compassion), but you cannot engage in the other two elements because behavior with and toward the other is not possible.  Compassion need not have all four elements to count as compassion.  You can think of the hard times endured by the deceased person and react with sympathy and empathy.  Such compassion may aid your forgiveness.

How important is it for me to follow exactly your 20 steps in your Process Model of Forgiveness?

This process model was not constructed to be a rigid model in which you have to follow the sequence in the exact order.  Some of the units will be irrelevant for you and so you can skip them.  Sometimes, as you are near the end of the forgiveness process, your anger re-emerges.  At that point it may be best to cycle back to the earlier units to once again examine and confront your anger.

How do I “acknowledge the other person’s humanity” when this person acts more like an animal than a person.  Sorry for such a negative statement, but this is how this person behaves.

Please keep in mind the distinction between what Aristotle described as each person’s “potentiality” compared with the person’s “actuality” in behaving in accord with the moral virtues.  The one you described as acting “like an animal” is not actualizing the potential for high level human behavior.  Yet, this person still has the “potentiality” to achieve this, with proper virtues education and encouragement by wise people.  As you see this potential, you are acknowledging the humanity in the other person.