Tagged: “Forgiveness Process”

How important is it for me to follow exactly your 20 steps in your Process Model of Forgiveness?

This process model was not constructed to be a rigid model in which you have to follow the sequence in the exact order.  Some of the units will be irrelevant for you and so you can skip them.  Sometimes, as you are near the end of the forgiveness process, your anger re-emerges.  At that point it may be best to cycle back to the earlier units to once again examine and confront your anger.

You emphasize anger in your forgiveness model.  Yet, I am not feeling anger. I am feeling pain.  Might you have missed this in your model?

I agree with you that pain occurs after being treated unjustly.  I think the sequence is as follows: 1) Someone is unfair to you; 2) Next comes shock or even denial; 3) Then comes pain, as you describe; 4) If the pain does not lessen or if you have no effective way of reducing and eliminating the pain, then you may become angry.

That anger can be at the person for acting unfairly, or at the situation, or even at the pain itself that resulted from the unfair treatment.  It is the anger, if it abides and deepens, that can lead to health problems (fatigue, anxiety, and so forth).  So, I emphasize anger within Forgiveness Therapy because it, in the form of excessive anger or resentment, can be dangerous to health, relationships, and communities.

You emphasize love, compassion, and benevolence as part of forgiveness, but not part of the decision to forgive.  Why do you not see these as part of the decision phase of forgiving?

The decision to forgive usually is a cognitive act rather than an expression of the heart, of one’s emotions.  One usually makes a decision to forgive without necessarily feeling love and compassion because we are not yet ready to offer these when we make the cognitive decision to forgive.

Why do you think that people just assume that you can be part of their life again once you forgive them?  To be honest, this kind of assumption annoys me.

I think people assume that they can be part of your life again, once you forgive them, because they are equating forgiving with reconciling.  As you probably know, one can forgive and not reconcile, especially when the offending other person refuses to change unjust and hurtful behavior.

To be sure that I understand you, are you saying that all subjective experiences of forgiveness are irrelevant. Do I understand you correctly?

Actually, no.  Subjective views of forgiveness are very important.  How a person is feeling needs to be honored, especially when that person is in much pain over what happened.  Each person’s subjective experience may be somewhat different in terms of intensity, duration, and kind of emotion experienced when treated badly by others.  Yet, if this person now wants to go on a forgiveness path, it is very important that this person understands what forgiveness is and is not so that a wrong path is not chosen.  As an example, if someone equates forgiving with summarily dismissing another person as less than human, and nurtures hatred within, this person’s subjective experience will need correction to get on the right forgiveness path.