Ask Dr. Forgiveness

Is it easier to forgive a person if you understand their past or might this just make you angrier? I find that sometimes, the more I know about a person, the angrier I get. In other words, I do see their own hurts from the past, but I still find their behavior toward me unacceptable regardless of what they have suffered.

When you look toward the person’s past, do you slip into the error of excusing what the other did?  If you see that you are trying to excuse, that could make you angrier.  After all, past hurts are no excuse to hurt others.  If you can resist excusing and from a position of truly calling the other’s behavior wrong, what happens in your emotions when you see a wounded person, a confused person, perhaps a person manipulated or mistreated in other ways by important people in his or her life?  Does this stir in you a little compassion, as long as you resist the conclusion that he or she just couldn’t help it?

In Chapter 15 of your book, Forgiveness Is a Choice, you talk about false forms of forgiving. For example, a person may say, “I forgive you,” and do so with a sense of power and domination. My question is this: Are there false forms of seeking forgiveness and if so, how can I recognize them?

Yes, I think there are false forms of seeking and receiving forgiveness.  As an example, the offending person says, “I apologize.  I did not mean to hurt you.”  Then he or she continues doing the same kinds of behavior that injured you in the first place.  At that point, it may be helpful to first forgive (so that your deep anger does not come flying out) and say something like this, “You have apologized and yet you keep hurting me in the same way.  What can we do so that the hurtful behavior ends and we can move on well together?”  Apologies are not iron-clad guarantees that the person truly understands the depth of your hurt and the importance of changing the behavior.  A gentle reminder like this might help.

I try to separate the offense from the offender, but I am having a hard time doing that. Do you have some suggestions for me?

Not knowing the concrete details of your particular situation, it is not easy to answer this one.  Yet, here are some questions for you to consider:

• Do you see the person only in terms of the injury against you?
• Is there more to this person than those actions?
• Can you see any examples of when he or she treated you well?
• If you combine the injurious behavior and his or her good behaviors toward you, how are you seeing this person?
• Is he or she more than those injurious behaviors toward you?
• Who is this person when you see him or her more broadly like this?

Understanding the offender seems to be an important ingredient in forgiveness. Yet, what if I never understand why he did what he did? What if I just can’t understand his motives or his background? Is forgiveness still possible?

In the book, Forgiveness Is a Choice, I talk of three perspectives a forgiver can take toward an offending other person: the personal, global, and cosmic perspective.  You basically are talking about the personal perspective in which you see the details of the person’s life so that you can empathize with his or her pain from being wounded by others.  When this is not possible, I recommend a focus on the global and cosmic perspectives.  For the global perspective, try to see your shared humanity with the other.  You share a lot in common: You both need air to breathe and a little plot of land on which to stand.  You both bleed when cut and both of you can be hurt by others.  Try to see these commonalities between the two of you.  The cosmic perspective will depend on your worldview or religion.  Can you see a very large picture of how the two of you fit into a divine plan, for example?  In other words, again depending on your worldview or faith, can you see that both of you are made in the image and likeness of God?  Such a perspective might help to soften your heart toward the other who has hurt you.

I am not sure that you actually can answer my question, but it has to do with trust. How long does it take, generally, to earn back trust? I have an uncle, who does not have much time left, and I would like to patch up our problems before it is too late.

You might want to think of trust in two ways: Trust because of one area in a person’s life (he or she is a compulsive gambler, for example) or trust more generally (the person harms you in many ways and across time).  Does your uncle have a particular weakness, such as we see in the gambling example?  If so, then he would have to start building trust by small steps.  Perhaps you are slowly seeing that he no longer asks for money from you, as an example.  You need time to see that the particular actions are no longer hurtful. That may take a number of exchanges between the two of you before your trust begins to build.  This could take weeks or even months.

If your uncle has general patterns of injustice which have hurt you, then this can take a lot longer.  Try to look for instances of genuine change in him.  Is he beginning to see what he has done?  Is he remorseful by showing an inner sorrow for what he has done?  Has he apologized or expressed regret to you?  If he can give back something tangible to you, has he tried to do that?  Look for what I call the Three R’s: remorse, repentance, and recompense.  If you begin to see these, then your trust may begin to build.