Tagged: “break free from the past”

If forgiveness is a gradual process when deeply hurt, how can one sustain the effort?

Let us take an analogy. Suppose you start a physical fitness program. How do you sustain it? There are at least three important components. First, you need a strong will to stay on task. Second, you need to see several months down the road so that you can be aware of likely improvements as a motivation to continue. Third, if you have a workout buddy, this person can help you continue going to the gym. It is the same with forgiveness. You need the strong will to persevere. When you see that in the months to come you can be free from challenging resentment, this becomes a strong motivation to continue. Having someone support you on the journey should be helpful, whether it is a friend who stands by you, an author of an effective self-help book, or a mental health professional with experience in Forgiveness Therapy.

Isn’t reconciliation more important than forgiveness because reconciliation draws people back together again? All forgiveness does, if I understand it correctly, is reduce my inner pain. 

You have separated reconciliation and forgiveness, treating them as independent concepts. When people have been hurt in a relationship, forgiveness, as being deliberately merciful and good to the other, greatly assists with the reconciliation process. Without forgiveness, when there is deep hurt in a relationship, reconciliation may be somewhat superficial as the people are guarded and possibly still resentful. Forgiveness and reconciliation are a team.

Revisiting the Question: ‘Do I Really Want to Forgive When Traumatized?’

Note: When I posted the blog essay below on September 27, 2017, as an excerpt from my book, The Forgiving Life, published in 2012, I had no idea how a backlash against forgiveness would emerge in the published literature.  There appears to be an association between the increasing popularity of forgiveness and the publication of criticisms against it.  As one rebuttal here, I have reproduced the essay from 2017.  It is even more relevant today, in 2025, than it was eight years ago.

Do I Really Want to Forgive When Traumatized?

Image by Leeloo the First, Pexels.com

Why would anyone want to forgive when another has traumatized you?

I would like to suggest a different perspective on trauma and forgiveness. It is not forgiveness itself that is creating the sense of fear or disgust or danger or moral evil. Instead, it is the grave emotional wounds which are leading to these thoughts and feelings about forgiveness. When people are wounded they naturally tend to duck for cover. When someone comes along with an outstretched hand and says, “Please come out, into the sunshine, and experience the warmth of healing,” it can be too much. We then blame the one with the outstretched hand or the warmth of the sun or anything else “out there” for our discomfort when all the while the discomfort is what is residing inside the person, not “out there.” And this reaction is all perfectly understandable, given the trauma.

If you experience a blown out knee while working out, and it is gravely painful, is it not difficult to go to the physician? There you face all the sharp white-lights of the examining room, and the nurses scurrying about, and the statements about surgery and recovery and rehabilitation. It all seems to be too much. Yet, it is not the physician or the nurses or the thought of the scalpel or the rehab that is the ultimate cause of all the discomfort. That ultimate cause is the blown-out knee. Isn’t it the same with forgiveness? You have within you a deep wound, caused by others’ injustice, and now the challenge is to heal.

Forgiveness is one way to heal from the trauma which you did not deserve. Like the blown-out  knee, the trauma needs healing. So, I urge you to separate in your mind the wound from forgiveness itself. My first challenge to you, then, is this: Is it forgiveness itself that is the basic problem or is it the wound and then all the thoughts of what you will have to do to participate in the healing of that wound?

Forgiveness heals. Forgiveness does not further traumatize. To forgive is to know that you have been treated unjustly and despite the injustice, you make the decision to reduce your resentment toward the offending person and eventually work toward mercy for him or her. That mercy can take the form of kindness, respect, generosity, and even love. Do you want that in you life—kindness, respect, generosity, and love? Forgiveness can help strengthen these in your heart or even begin to have them grow all over again for you.

– Excerpt from the book, The Forgiving Life, Chapter 2.                                                                                    

Why is forgiveness so difficult, especially when deeply hurt by others?

Forgiveness is a moral virtue, as are justice, patience, and kindness, as examples. All moral virtues have at their core the principle of being good to others. For example, in the context of justice, if you contract with a carpenter to build a chair for you, then you pay for this once it is done. You get the chair and the carpenter receives the money. Both are satisfied because both share in the moral good of the event. With forgiveness, one person has behaved without good and the other person, the forgiver, responds deliberately with moral good. It is hard to be good when that goodness is not reciprocal. This is why forgiveness is such a heroic moral virtue. Through one’s own pain, the forgiver offers goodness.

You say that forgiveness is a choice, but from what I can tell, Forgiveness Therapy is superior to all other mental health options when faced with growing resentment from being treated unjustly. If this is the case, then there really is no other alternative. If I want to be healthy, I must choose forgiveness. What do you think?

Even in the situation that you describe, the client still makes a free-will decision to engage in Forgiveness Therapy or not. It is this free-will decision that still makes it the client’s choice.