Our Forgiveness Blog

Why Forgiveness Brings Joy

Forgiveness brings joy? Where did I come up with that, the skeptic might ask. Well, our forgiveness research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, since 1993, has shown that as people take the time to forgive others for deep injustices the following tends to happen for the forgiver: lower anger, anxiety, and depression, and higher self-esteem and hope for the future. Are these fancy psychological ways of saying, “My joy has increased”?

Maybe not. Perhaps there is much more to forgiveness than a change in one’s emotions and in one’s perceptions of the self. In reflecting on this issue lately I have come to a new conclusion: Forgiveness brings joy because of what the future holds for those who routinely forgive as part of The Forgiving Life.

Here is what I mean. When we forgive and make it a part of our very being, we start to give a high priority to love in our relationships. By love, I mean the kind that is in service to other people for their good. We first love through forgiveness by looking back, by seeing who was back there in our past to make us miserable, and we respond by trying to love them, not for what they did, but in spite of this.

Eventually, we realize that not only can we go back to our past and love those who may not have loved us but also we realize that we can bring that love into the present. We can exercise this love-as-service-to-others not only toward those who have offended us, but also to all whom we meet today. We can smile at the person who looks lonely as we pass him or her on the street. We can offer kindness to a co-worker. We can love.

Even more eventually, we come to realize that our future is very, very bright. When we get up in the morning, our way of relating is through love. And it will be that way tomorrow and a hundred tomorrows from now. We have learned to love and it is now part of us, regardless of the injustices we might face.

Forgiveness may bring joy when we have some emotional relief from others’ unfairness. Forgiveness brings more decided joy when we live a life of love. Try it. You can’t wait to get up in the morning once you live life through the lens of future forgiveness.

Dr. Bob

Treat the Cause, Not Just the Symptoms of Bullying: Encourage Those Who Bully to Forgive

A story in yesterday’s newspaper and a conversation with a doctoral student today has led me to this conclusion: Well-meaning people are making progress in confronting the student-bullying problem across the world…..and yet most of these professionals are not looking closely enough at the real problem to find the best solution.

The newspaper article, “Bullish on anti-bully business,” appeared in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

One main point of the article is that some professionals are offering solutions in schools to those students who have been victimized. As one example, encouraging the bullied students to find ways to calmly stand their ground when being bullied can be a way of diffusing the bullying behavior. It seems to work.

When I talked with the graduate student today, she had just finished a masterful review of the bullying literature in the psychological sciences. She reported that a key research topic presently is to examine the coping strategies of those being bullied. Those who seek social support from friends and teachers, for example, cope better with the effects of bullying than do those victims who cry.

The newspaper article and the research documented by the graduate student converge on the same theme: Help the victim.

We continue to suggest the untried theme that may seem counter-intuitive today, but will appear obvious to many in the future: Yes, help the victim, but also help the one who is bullying to get rid of his or her anger, which is fueling the bullying.

Those who bully have been victimized by others. Help them to reduce their resentment toward those who were the victimizers and the bullying behavior will melt away. Why? Because wanting to harm others comes out of a position of profound woundedness within. Angry people are wounded people and angry, wounded people are the ones who lash out at others, even when these “others” did nothing whatsoever to provoke the verbal or physical attack.

We point principals, teachers, and parents to our Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program, intended to melt that anger in the one who bullies…..so that victims are no longer victims…..because the one bullying has no need any more to throw his wounds onto others. Forgiveness heals those wounds.

It is time.

Dr. Bob

9/11 and Forgiveness

I have been reading some comments across the Internet about how we ought to respond to the 9/11 attacks. Here are five of them:

1) Forgiveness is only for the unintended slights, not for the malicious who desired to hurt.

2) It is time to put it all behind us. Forgiveness does that.

3) Win the wars that we started after 9/11, then let us talk about forgiveness.

4) Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all value forgiveness in the Torah, the New Testament, and the Qu’ran. Let us embrace that common ground.

5) We should forgive. It is good for us.

I offer comments on each point:

1) Forgiveness is so easy when the other did not intend it. Forgiveness belongs to the heart torn apart by injustice, but it should never be forced. This has to be a time of gentleness as we in America and those who join us across the globe react in our own way. Some are still fuming, others mourning, still others trying to move on and forget, while still others have forgiven or are on that journey. None of these needs our judgement today.

2) Forgiveness does not necessarily “put it all behind us.” Sometimes, forgiveness puts it all in front of us, opening up the pain as we look at those who planned and executed the crime, and those who looked on in triumph or indifference. We can forgive those who, in the aftermath, did not call evil by its name.

3) Winning wars as a prerequisite for forgiveness confuses this: People can strive for justice and forgive at the same time. They are not mutually exclusive. When we forgive, sometimes what we request in the name of justice changes and for the better.

4) Those who embrace one of the monotheistic traditions indeed share this: The ancient writings across all three honor forgiveness. For those who recognize this, perhaps it is time to open the dialogue so that a deeper appreciation of “the other” emerges across cultures. Forgiveness education can help here.

5) “We should forgive” has a sense of pressure as I hear those words. We do not want to pressure others to forgive. “We should forgive” also has a sense of challenge. This I like. Let us challenge without pressure. We at the International Forgiveness Institute built this site for you, the reader, so you do not feel alone when it is time to forgive. We are here for you, even on the solemn days when forgiveness seems so hard and so many questions about it arise.

Dr. Bob

The $40,000 Cost of One Student Bullied. The Best Solution: Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Curriculum.

A 14-year-old Georgia girl contemplated suicide because of the intensive and persistent bullying she received at school. Her ears were different. It was enough to lead to bullying and to profound abuse of this innocent victim. ABC News reported on this bullied teen story.

The girl qualified for plastic surgery from a foundation that helps children with birth defects. The cost? About $40,000, and it did give her a new image. It did give her more confidence. The bullying is likely to stop. She has forgiven….it seems with some residual anger, but that is understandable because forgiveness takes time.

We at the International Forgiveness Institute surely do not oppose the plastic surgery as one solution to a horrendous bullying problem, but we would like to take this time to proclaim—as loudly and as persistently across the globe as we can—this message: “The primary solution to the bullying is to get to the heart of the anger inside those who bully.” Most of those who bully have been bullied, and not necessarily in school as the first experience.

Consider an analogy. Suppose we are in the film, The Time Machine, in which the Morlocks are continually bullying the more gentle Eloi. The Morlocks kidnap some of the Eloi at random and cannibalize them. What if our first line of defense was to go into the cave, find the captured Eloi, and release them? While this is well and good, it misses this critical point: We have not gotten to the heart of this problem, which is the hearts of the Morlocks who see the Eloi as fresh meat. We have to change the hearts of the Morlocks so that they see the Eloi, not as fresh meat, but as precious persons, special, unique, and irreplaceable. And this takes time….lots of time…. to change hearts in this way. It takes practice in forgiving those who have abused them so that they begin to “see with new eyes” the true humanity in others, all others, even those who are now seen as fresh meat.

We at the International Forgiveness Institute have a curriculum to help those who are angry, who are abusive, who see others as fresh meat. It is a new Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Curriculum available in our store. This 8-lesson program is intended to focus on the anger inside of the one who bullies, to understand that anger, fix it through forgiveness, and then use these insights to encourage those who bully to now use this surgery-of-their-angry-hearts for good in the world, specifically toward those on whom they have been displacing their toxic anger.

Plastic surgery? OK. Surgery of the angry heart? Yes, without question…and the sooner the better in every school in the world.

Dr. Bob

The Toughest of All — Forgiving Oneself

I was talking yesterday to a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who is starting a study on the psychology of forgiveness. She asked people about their experiences in forgiving, especially for serious offenses.

Her interviews led to this conclusion: The hardest person to forgive usually is oneself. Why is that?

It seems to me that we are a lot harder on ourselves than we are on other people, even those who behave very unjustly. We hold ourselves to a much higher standard.

So, here are some helpful forgiveness hints for you if you are trying or in the future are in a position to forgive yourself.

First, try forgiving someone other than yourself. The point here is to try to get a sense of the the process of forgiveness. Once you have forgiven another, ask yourself these questions:

Have I seen this other person as someone of worth?

Do I have a softened heart, at least to a degree, for this person?

Have I tried to bear the pain of what happened so that I do not take it out on that person or others?

Now, turn this learning toward yourself and try to:

• see yourself as possessing worth
• soften your heart toward yourself, just as you did for the other person
• bear the pain of what you did so that you do not keep beating yourself up over it.

Then add the following:

If you have offended anyone else by your actions, go to him or her and apologize. Seek forgiveness. Make things right.

If you are a person of faith, see what your next step is in the bigger picture.

Resolve to change your ways…..and then go in peace.
Dr. Bob