Tagged: “Forgiveness Process”

What is the appeal of anger that it can become a habit, almost an addiction? Can suppressed or passive anger become like that, too?

August 15, 2019 directorifi No comments

I think the appeal is the adrenaline rush, the feeling of being wide awake and in control, the feeling that others will not take advantage of me. All of this is reasonable if it is within reasonable bounds. By that I mean that the anger is not controlling you, which can happen as people fly out of control with a temper that then is hard to manage.

A habit of anger, when intense, is hard to break, but it can be done with a strong will, the practice of forgiveness, and an awareness of how the anger-habit has compromised one’s life. Passive anger can be habit-forming as well and that is a more difficult habit to break if the person is unaware of it. Insights of unhappiness or of reduced energy can be clues to people that they are harboring passive anger in need of healing.

Forgiving others for injustices that have fostered this kind of anger is an important step in curing the anger.

Learn more at What is Forgiveness?

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Forgiveness Therapy Provides Quality of Life Benefits to Terminally-Ill Cancer Patients

August 14, 2019 directorifi No comments

Dr. Robert Enright, founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, has been called “the forgiveness trailblazer” by Time magazine and is often introduced as “the father of forgiveness research” because of his 30-year commitment to researching and implementing forgiveness programs. A research article published last week in the American Journal of Hospice and Palliative Medicine® aptly demonstrates how he earned those titles.

“Forgiveness and Reconciliation Processes in Dying Patients With Cancer” is an article that was published by the highly-respected palliative care journal on August 5, 2019. It reports on the methodology and results of a research project conducted in a major regional Swiss hospital by a team of 20 oncology and palliative medicine professionals from Switzerland and Austria.

Three interdisciplinary units at the hospital observed 50 dying patients with cancer experiencing severe conflicts with relatives, themselves, and/or with fate/God. Participant observation was combined with descriptive statistical analysis and a semi-structured therapy protocol based on a 5-phase forgiveness and reconciliation model.

After 18 months of working with the cancer patients (22 died during the study), the medical specialists reported these results: “Forgiveness and reconciliation (F/R) may intensify patient–family relationships and facilitate peace of mind and peaceful death. In 62% of patients, F/R processes occurred repeatedly. Patients indicated that imminent death, a mediating third party, acceptance, and experiences of hope motivated them to seek F/R.”

While those results were hailed as innovative and profound by the researchers and others, they came as no surprise to Dr. Enright. He, in fact, not only implemented forgiveness programs with terminally-ill cancer patients more than 20 years ago, he created an instructor’s manual for those treating such patients back in 2002.

Thanks to a research grant funded by the John Templeton Foundation, Dr. Enright assembled a project team in the mid-1990s that included research associates from UW-Madison, Meriter Health Services, and others that was likely the very first study involving forgiveness interventions with terminally-ill patients.

Dr. Enright’s team provided its conclusions in a report entitled, “A Palliative Care Intervention in Forgiveness Therapy for Elderly Terminally-Ill Cancer Patients.” In addition to outlining that the forgiveness therapy group demonstrated significant improvements on all measures compared to the control group, the team also concluded:

“An important goal of palliative care therapy, improving psychological health at the end of life, appears to have been achieved in this study. Older adults, in the last stage of life because of terminal cancer, who experience emotional disruption because of perceived injustices, may benefit psychologically from forgiveness therapy. As part of a comprehensive intervention of palliative care, forgiveness therapy may be effective for improving quality of life at the end of life.”

Following that ground-breaking study, Dr. Enright teamed up with fellow study participant Mary J. Hansen, Ph.D. (Meriter Health Services), to develop The Journey of Forgiveness: An Educational Program for Persons at the End of Life. That intervention manual is designed exclusively for those treating or caring for patients who are near the end of life. Because of the short life-expectancy of those patients, the manual condenses Dr. Enright’s 20-Step Process Model of forgiving (developed in 1991) into four easy-to-conduct educational sessions.

Since 2002, the end-of-life manual has been distributed to and used by practitioners around the world including those at Cancer Treatment Centers of America. In one of the concluding pages of the manual, Dr. Enright writes:

“Forgiveness can bring you emotional healing. When you truly forgive, you give the gifts of mercy, generosity and ultimately, love. The forgiveness paradox is that as you give the gifts of forgiveness to others, you also receive these gifts.” ♥

Learn more at “Forgiveness for Senior Citizens and Those Nearing End of Life”

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Forgiveness is hard for me. Is it all right to start and stop the process of forgiveness?

August 12, 2019 directorifi No comments

Yes, it is all right to start and stop the forgiveness process if you feel that you need a rest from the challenges of forgiving. As an analogy, if we want to be physically ﬁt, we do not work at that ﬁtness 10 hours a day every day. We need to be more temperate than that. So, working on forgiveness for an hour or less some of the days of a week seems reasonable to me. Taking a week off is ﬁne. I was asked by a person if she could take a year off of the forgiveness process. This, to me, would be similar to taking off a year of physical ﬁtness training. One likely would get out of shape waiting that long. One probably would get out of forgiveness-ﬁtness shape as well waiting for a year.

For additional information, see The Four Phases of Forgiveness.

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You say that we should not have excessive or toxic anger. Is some anger ok to have as I forgive? If so, how do I know how much is too much?

August 11, 2019 directorifi No comments

The keys to distinguishing healthy and unhealthy anger are these:

1. Are you in control of that anger or is it controlling you (with a strong temper, for example, or making you and others miserable)? If you are in control, this is good.

2. Has the anger continued for weeks or longer? If so, it likely is unhealthy anger.

3. Are others giving you feedback that your anger is inappropriate? If this message comes from a reliable source, then it may be time to reﬂect on that anger possibly being unhealthy.

Learn more at What is Forgiveness?

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Does forgiveness start with bearing the pain so that pain is not cast onto others?

August 10, 2019 directorifi 3 comments

Bearing the pain is part of the forgiveness process, but it is not the start of that process because bearing the pain is difﬁcult for most people. The beginning of forgiveness is to understand clearly what forgiveness is and is not. To forgive is to make a deliberate choice to be good to those who are not good to you. To forgive is not to excuse the behavior, to abandon justice, or to automatically reconcile if the other’s behavior is dangerous for you. Once the person understands what forgiveness is, I recommend a step prior to bearing the pain: Commit to doing no harm to the one who hurt you.

For additional information, see Forgiveness Defined.

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