Tagged: “forgiveness”
Matthew Perry, Shame, and Self-Forgiveness
For many people, Matthew Perry was most well known as the fun-loving, affable, charming Chandler Bing from the iconic 90s sitcom ‘Friends’. As with all people who live their lives in front of an audience, there is always a more complex story and this was no different for Matthew Perry, who tragically passed away recently. Thankfully, he sought to address his personal and relational struggles with honesty and courage and was not afraid to share that journey with others.
Image from Pexels.com
In the aftermath of his premature death, the New York Times posted a guest essay by Heather Havrilesky in which she reflected on some excerpts from Perry’s autobiography that addressed his experience of shame, self-forgiveness, and how his journey of self-forgiveness can be a pathway to becoming more forgiving and compassionate with others.
Havrilesky reflects in the article that Matthew Perry seems to feel a constant sense of shame that he just cannot shake:
In fact, the one person Mr. Perry can’t seem to forgive, at least for a majority of his book, is himself. He casts himself as the person who deserves blame for everything that happens.
She goes on to propose that many of us struggle with a similar dynamic of shame and self-loathing and that we would do well to walk the path of self-forgiveness so that we may find peace and be able to extend that peace to others around us. As she states elsewhere in her essay:
[W]hen you find forgiveness inside your own heart, suddenly, it’s everywhere else as well.
Be sure to read and share the essay as an invitation to experience the healing that self-forgiveness offers!
It appears to me that not all anger is negative. Can’t people find concentration, find energy in their anger, and achieve justice?
Indeed, having anger can serve as a driving force for doing good. However, we must distinguish between anger that stays within healthy bounds (i.e., does not incapacitate us and is not excessive) and anger that escalates into resentment (a sustained and intense form of anger that can cause exhaustion, division, and even medical issues). If we fail to recognize this difference, we risk becoming resentful and believing that it is ultimately beneficial rather than harmful.
Can you very succinctly tell me why forgiving people who hurt us is so important?
Here is my answer from the book, 8 Keys to Forgiveness (page 225):
You are given the joyous opportunity to shed bitterness and put love in its place for the one who hurt you and then more widely to many, many others, as you are freed to love more deeply and more widely.
Can you suggest one good journal article for me to read on forgiveness education?
I would recommend the following meta-analysis of forgiveness education in different world zones:
Rapp, H., Wang Xu, J., & Enright, R.D. (2022). A meta-analysis of forgiveness education interventions’ effects on forgiveness and anger in children and adolescents. Child Development, 93, 1249-1269.https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13771
The more that I take the other person’s perspective, the more I see a nasty person who should not have given in to those inner wounds. In other words, taking this kind of perspective makes me less forgiving, not more forgiving.
When we take the other’s perspective, we do not focus exclusively on that person’s history of being wounded. Yes, this is part of the process, but only one part. We also ask the forgiver to take what we call the global perspective in which the forgiver tries to see that both the one who offended and the forgiver share a common humanity. This, coupled with seeing the other person’s inner wounds, can help soften the heart of the one who is forgiving. We further have what we call the cosmic perspective, if the forgiver has a faith-based perspective, which can include seeing that both the one who offended and the one who was offended are both loved by God.
