Tagged: “Anger”

Can one begin the forgiveness process without first having a thought about committing to forgiveness?

Yes, one can have an intuitive sense that forgiving is good. One can try to “step inside the other’s shoes” to see the other’s woundedness. These processes actually are part of the forgiveness process, but not everyone is aware of this. As the forgiver softens the heart toward the other, then the commitment to forgive might emerge or develop strongly enough so that the person consciously commits to the forgiveness process.

For additional information, see  The Four Phases of Forgiveness.

I am able to do relaxation training and this reduces my stress and anger. Is forgiveness, then, unnecessary for me?

Forgiveness is a moral virtue and need not occur only to aid a person in reducing anger. As a moral virtue, you can forgive as an end in and of itself, because it is good. Also, try to be aware of what happens inside you once you are no longer relaxed. Does the anger well up inside you again? If so, then the practice of forgiveness might be a more permanent solution to your anger than relaxation training by itself.

Learn more at Forgiving is not. . .

What are some tips you can give me to figure out exactly why I am so angry?

In my book, The Forgiving Life (2012), I have an exercise that I call The Forgiveness Landscape. In this exercise, you start in your childhood and try to recall the central unjust incidents and the people who were unjust to you. You then rate your level of anger on a 1-to-10 scale. You do the same for your adolescence, and the same for your adult years. You then order the people/incidences from the lowest (but still significant in your life) to the highest levels of anger. This will give you a profile of your anger. I then recommend that you start with the lowest level of anger and forgive that person. Move up the anger-ladder until you have forgiven the person toward whom you have the most anger. This should aid you in not only gaining insight into your anger, but also at whom you are angry, and then to rid yourself of that anger.

For additional information, see  The Four Phases of Forgiveness.

I notice at the office that some people just seem to have an angry disposition. It is not as if the job is so bad or the boss is being mean. It just seems to be a life-style for them. Is there a central reason why people like this seem to be angry all the time? And can I suggest forgiveness to them?

When you encounter people who seem to be angry all the time, it is my conjecture (and I have not met them, so I cannot know for sure) that they are harboring the effects of a significant trauma in their lives, a trauma that could go back decades. For example, if a person was abused as a child, the effects of this can be mistrust in general and resentment that is displaced onto others. Being in a marriage in which the partner is continually unjust can lead to the angry disposition which you describe. Sometimes people are unaware that they are giving this signal of anger. If people who have anger abiding in their hearts can be made aware that there is a solution to defeating that anger—forgiveness—they might or might not at first accept this. The idea of forgiveness can make some people even more angry and so you have to be gentle and not insist on their choosing forgiving. They may need time to think about forgiveness, get used to the idea, and then try it as their own free-will choice when they are ready.

To learn more, see Forgiveness Education: A Modern-Day Strategy That Can Improve Workplace Harmony.

Forgiveness Infiltrates Central Asia’s Kyrgyzstan

Alyona Yartseva is spearheading forgiveness interventions in the former Soviet republic of Kyrgyzstan.

Alyona Yartseva moved in 2015 from Russia to Kyrgyzstan (officially the Kyrgyz Republic)–a mountainous country of incredible natural beauty in Central Asia. As she pursued her new life  there, intent on helping others improve their own lives, she quickly came to realize that forgiveness is a valuable commodity not only for helping people overcome personal difficulties but also for helping tame the ethnic, political, and socio-economic tensions that simmered there and in surrounding countries that had all gained their independence with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991.

Since Alyona moved to Kyrgyzstan, she has been on “a forgiveness rampage” that has included:

• Undertaking a 15-lesson online Forgiveness Therapy course administered by the International Forgiveness Institute (IFI) after convincing AUCA administrators to accept it as a fully-accredited graduate degree university course;
• Acquiring the Enright Forgiveness Inventory for Children (EFI-C), translating it into Russian,  back-translating it, and working directly with Dr. Robert Enright, co-founder of the IFI, in modifying that research tool into what is essentially a new EFI Short Form known as the EFI-30;
• Validating the newly-adapted EFI-30 by using it, along with a checklist of physical health symptoms (a new measuring tool that she created herself), in a forgiveness research project with more than 150 participants;
• Participating in a four-month forgiveness intervention internship and conducting post-therapy interviews that “vividly demonstrated” to her the therapeutic effects and positive results of forgiveness; 
• Conducting a hands-on forgiveness training program for her fellow-AUCA students to demonstrate the four-phases of Dr. Enright’s Process Model of Forgiveness and further expand the use of the EFI-30;
• Consulting with “no-charge clients” (as a student she cannot charge for her services) who were able to move towards forgiveness and improve their mental health; 
• Obtaining and starting to translate into Russian Dr. Enright’s Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program; and,
• Writing her thesis on “Subjective Effects of Forgiveness on Stress Level and Physical Health”–a project she conducted involving 150 adults of 3 nationalities and obtaining a Master of Arts Degree in Applied Psychology from the American University of Central Asia (AUCA).

One of the motivating factors for Alyona’s impressive foray into forgiveness activities was what she was unable to find when she was accepted as a graduate student at the AUCA in the capital city of Bishkek. Although she conducted exhaustive literature searches for anything related to forgiveness written in either the Russian or Kyrgyz language, she found absolutely none. 

“As a believer in Jesus Christ, I’ve always understood the value of forgiveness but now I see it from a different professional perspective,” Alyona says. “I want to be able to demonstrate the effects of forgiveness (or unforgiveness) to my colleagues in Russian language publications.”

As Alyona looks ahead to the future, she says that once she completes translating the anti-bullying material she would like to personally introduce it to local school counselors. Following that, she plans to move to Uzbekistan where she wants to popularize forgiveness therapy among local psychologists. She plans to continue her forgiveness research together with a group of colleagues “who have a heart for forgiveness” and is pursuing foundation grants to fund their efforts.

“Dr. Enright’s Forgiveness Therapy is at the very top of my tool box as a counselor,” Alyona adds, “and I believe it is essential to promote and research forgiveness therapy and the positive effects of forgiveness in Central Asia.”

Alyona can be reached at: alyona.yartseva@gmail.com

Kyrgyzstan is a country in Central Asia–a region which stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east, and from Afghanistan and Iran in the south to Russia in the north. The region consists of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. The United Nations also includes Afghanistan as part of Central Asia. The region is also colloquially referred to as “the stans” as the countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix “-stan,” meaning “land of.” ƒ