Tagged: “Forgiveness Process”
Okay, I admit it. I am stuck. As much as I try to forgive one of my parents from childhood, I just can’t make any progress. In terms of negative affect, I remain angry and this is not shifting. In terms of positive affect, I have no positive feelings. So, now what?
Sometimes, when people are having trouble forgiving someone, I recommend that they try the forgiveness process first with a different person toward whom they do not hold as much resentment. This practice can prepare forgivers for the other person toward whom they hold the deeper resentment. As Aristotle taught us from ancient history, as we practice any of the moral virtues, we become more proficient in them.
I have ordered and received your free anti-bullying guide for schools. Thank you for writing this and for giving it away at no cost to schools. I now want to approach my school principal to recommend that we use this in our school counseling programme. Do you have a short summary of the importance of using forgiveness as part of the anti-bully initiatives in schools that I could share with my principal?
Yes, I have written a short essay for the Psychology Today website. Psychology Today is a popular national magazine in the United States. Here is a link to that essay:
Please let me know if you have any further questions as you move forward with this.
I have engaged in the exercises of your Process Model of Forgiveness, trying to see the woundedness in the one who hurt me. Yet, I am still very angry. I want to be nasty to this person so I can get even. What advice do you have for me on this?
One homework assignment that we give to those who are in the process of forgiveness is to “do no harm” to the offending person. In other words, you make a commitment to yourself not to retaliate, even with words, so that the other person and you do not keep passing the pain back and forth. As you commit to “do no harm,” this tends to start reducing your anger. It also serves as a protection for the other person.
When she hurt me over and over……and over, it is difficult to see her emotional wounds. I get angry and depressed when I attempt to look at her wounds because of all the time that was lost and the pain that was caused. I do see some movement in myself in the forgiveness process in that the anger is going down, but not deeply or fast enough for me. Will I be able to get past this and find relief from forgiveness?
Yes, I think that if you have a strong will, you will overcome this. As you say, you are making progress even if it is slow. I recommend that you not give up, even if it means fighting for your healing and enduring with a lot of patience. Don’t have high expectations too soon. The process of forgiving someone is a journey and sometimes a difficult one. However, as you practice, you gradually reduce your anger until you can see the results. As you offer mercy, that mercy likely will come back to you.
To be honest with you, I am kind of skeptical about practicing empathy toward the person who was deeply unfair to me. Here is what I mean: If I see his emotional struggles, his confusion, and his pain, I may begin to say to myself, “Oh well, under this circumstance, I can let the circumstance go and just forget about it.” Empathy, in other words, lets the other person off the hook. What do you think?
When we forgive, we start with this assumption: What the other person did to me was unfair, is unfair, and always will be unfair. Our forgiveness of the other does not excuse what was done. We can be kinder to the person even though the actions were unjust and will remain so. This makes forgiveness a very special moral virtue because we are doing our best to be good to those who are not good to us.
