Ask Dr. Forgiveness

My mother robbed me of trust when I was a child by her continual neglect. I never have experienced a mother’s affection and this is affecting my adult relationships. I do not trust others very readily. How can I establish affectionate relationships now when I did not learn this as a child?

First, I am very sorry that you have had such a difficult childhood.  Your thought about affection now being a challenge for you is very insightful.  A key is to start, when you are ready, to forgive your mother.  Let a sense of compassion for your mother come to you, even if this develops slowly.  Try to see how emotionally wounded your mother was to have not given you affection.

As you see her woundedness, try to be aware of even a small amount of compassion building in your heart for her.  This compassion, emerging out of forgiving your mother, can be the building-block for compassion toward other adults now in your life.  That compassion will help you to build stronger, more trusting relationships.  If you think about it, you now have the opportunity to be a deeply compassionate person because of your past pain.

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How can a little anger be beneficial to someone?

When you have anger that is temperate and not excessive, you are showing yourself and the one who offended you that you are a person worthy of respect.  You are showing the other that you are aware that he or she was unfair to you and so you are giving him or her a chance to change.  Excessive anger can consume your energy and your happiness and destroy relationships. Anger within reasonable bounds and expressed reasonably is good and should not be suppressed as something bad.  I am presuming that such anger is short-lived when I use the word “reasonable.”

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On page 39 of your book, Forgiveness Is a Choice, you say, “Forgiveness is free, trust must be earned.” Doesn’t forgiveness come with a cost? It is hard work. How is it “free”?

Forgiveness is free in that the one who forgives may do so unconditionally whenever he or she is ready.  There is no need for the offending person to apologize or to make recompense of some kind before you allow yourself to forgive.  If you had to wait for the other to show remorse or to say certain words, then forgiveness is not freely given…….and then you are trapped in unforgiveness until others decide to do what you think they need to do to set you free.  Is this not another injustice against you?  You are bound in unforgiveness until the other lets you out of that cage of resentment.  So, you are right that forgiveness is hard work and that is the “cost” to which you refer, but forgiveness is “free” in that you may do so when you are ready.

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Do you think that much of the bullying in school stems from a past experience of being bullied? For example, a 5th grade boy bullies a 2nd grade boy because the former was bullied at that age?

I am not sure that the reason for bullying gets so precise that a person bullies another based on the year in which he first was bullied.  Yet, it is our hypothesis that many of those who bully have experienced such unfair treatment by someone (or more than one person) that they are very angry.  Their anger, from past hurts against them, now is displaced onto unsuspecting others in their lives.  A son who is treated cruelly by his father, for example, may bring his pent-up anger to school and start to exhibit bullying behavior.  He needs to forgive his father if his bullying is to stop.

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I have gone through the forgiveness process now a few times with the one who has hurt me and I still have anger left over. It is not as intense as before, but there is anger left over. I am worried that I am not really forgiving. Can you help me with some insights here?

We often find that as people forgive there is anger left over.  As you point out, that anger is diminished; it does not control you.  Please keep in mind that having some residual anger is normal and so you can have confidence that you, indeed, are forgiving when you are wishing the other person well and you can do so with much less anger than before.

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