Tagged: “Anger”
As another question that I have about forgiveness therapy, does the amount of time spent in this form of therapy matter? In other words, is longer better?
Yes, longer is better. Baskin and Enright (1994) showed that forgiveness therapy lasting 12 weeks or longer seems more optimal than short-term therapies. Longer therapies as more effective than short-term therapies also was supported by the meta-analysis by Aktar and Barlow. The references to these two journal articles are as follows:
Baskin, T.W., & Enright, R. D. (2004). Intervention studies on forgiveness: A meta-analysis. Journal of Counseling and Development, 82, 79-90.
Akhtar, S. & Barlow, J. (2018). Forgiveness therapy for the promotion of mental well-being: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, 19, 107-122.
Even if my view of the one who walked out on me is too narrow, as you say, it is the truth. Why play games with a fantasy of who she might become?
Seeing her as more than the behaviors of walking out on you is not fantasy. I think it is a higher reality than seeing her only in terms of current behavior. As I said earlier to you, would you want all of your family members to define you exclusively by the times when you had a really bad day, with insensitivity to some family members? Do you think this misbehavior is the exclusive truth about who you are as a person?
I read your published article in the journal, Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy, in which you helped men in a maximum-security prison to forgive people who hurt them. What is your next step, to open all the jail cell doors and let out everyone who has ever been hurt?
You are confusing forgiving and abandoning justice. You can forgive a person and then seek justice. As people in correctional institutions learn to forgive those who brutalized them when they were children or adolescents, this can lower their rage, making them less dangerous. Advocating for their forgiving does not mean advocating for their release from the institution.
Doesn’t forgiving go against our biological nature of the survival of the fittest? Don’t we want to step up with courage and stop bad behavior rather than acquiescing to it?
When we forgive we do not excuse what the other person did. We can forgive, know what the other did was wrong, and take steps to exercise the moral virtue of justice. Forgiving and justice seeking can exist side by side.
How is forgetting what happened part of the forgiveness process?
In my experience working with people who forgive, they do not forget what happened to them. Instead, they remember in new ways. As they occasionally look back on what happened to them, they do so without the heightened emotions of deep anger or very deep sadness as was the case prior to forgiving.
