Tagged: “New Ideas”

7 Unscrupulous Traits of People Who are Unwilling to Forgive

September 13, 2018 No comments

Montreal, Canada– A just-released study by PsychTests.com indicates that an unwillingness to forgive others is associated with some rather unscrupulous traits, including a propensity for manipulation and vindictiveness.

Collecting data from nearly 1,000 people who took their Integrity and Work Ethics Test, researchers at PsychTests discovered that those who are unwilling to forgive others exhibit an uncharacteristically high propensity for:

 

  • Vindictiveness
  • Schadenfreude (taking pleasure in the misery of others) 
  • Manipulation 
  • Cynical view of humanity 
  • Disdain for weakness in others
  • Disdain for gullible people
  • Sense of Entitlement 

ON THE FLIP-SIDE

People who exhibit a willingness to show mercy and to forgive, the study revealed, also possess other commendable traits, including:

 

  • Willingness to practice discretion
  • Trustworthiness 
  • Remorsefulness 
  • Accountability
  • Altruism 

“You don’t have to forgive someone who has wronged you — that is your prerogative. But it’s important to understand that forgiveness is a release, a form of catharsis,” explains Dr. Ilona Jerabek, president and CEO of PsychTests.

“When you truly forgive someone, you are essentially giving yourself the freedom to release all the negative energy you have been holding onto — the sadness, the sense of betrayal, the anger, the bitterness, the desire for vengeance,” according to Dr. Jerabek.

“Holding on to these feelings for too long will sap your sense of joy and peace of mind,” Dr. Jerabek adds. “It’s a waste of emotional energy, and serves no purpose but to remind you of the past. The only way to let go of the pain is to learn to forgive.”

About PsychTests AIM Inc. 
Since its founding in 1996, PsychTests has become a pre-eminent provider of psychological assessment products and services to human resource personnel,  executive and life coaches, therapists and counselors, sport psychologists, and academic researchers.

Want to assess your integrity? Take the Integrity and Work Ethics Test

Want to find out how smart you are? Try this IQ test and find out where you stand! Classical IQ Test 

To learn more about psychological testing, download this free eBook: Spotting Diamonds in the Rough

To learn about Dr. Robert Enright’s 4 phases of forgiveness, visit: How to Forgive

Is Forgiveness Transcending the Past…..or Is It More than That?

September 4, 2018 No comments

Recently, I have been hearing people say that forgiveness is transcendence.  By this they seem to mean that as people forgive, then the past injustices do not affect them any more.  They have risenabove the pain, the anguish, the sadness, and the anger.  They have moved on.

If this is all that forgiveness is, then forgiveness is not a moral virtue.  A moral virtue, such as justice or patience, is for people.  It reaches out to people.  It aids and supports people by putting the particular virtue into action and that action points toward people. When I exercise justice, for example, I honor the agreement that is part of a contract into which we both have entered.  I am patient by restraining from harsh words when in a long line or when those who are my teammates at work are slowing things down.

Moral virtues are concerned with goodness expressed toward other people.

If forgiveness is part of love—a moral virtue—then it cannot be only about transcending the past because one can transcend that past by being neutral toward those who have been unfair, who were responsible for the hurt.  The forgiver need not enter into a direct relationship with the injuring person if he or she continues to cause harm.

Yet, the forgiver wishes the other well, as Lewis Smedes in his 1984 book, Forgive and Forget has said.  The forgiver is willing to do good toward the other, if the other changes abusive behavior.  Being neutral might be part of the pathway toward forgiving, but it is not its end point.

 The end point of forgiving is to express love, as best one can, toward those who have not loved the forgiver.  Even if a person cannot develop that love for whatever reason, loving the other nonetheless is the endpoint of true forgiveness.
                                                                                                        – Robert Enright

Transcending the past might be a consequence of forgiving, but it is not forgiving itself…..if forgiveness is a moral virtue.

Robert

Learn more about the definition of forgiveness at Forgiveness Defined  then read Dr. Enright’s best-selling book Forgiveness is a Choice: A Step-by-Step Process for Resolving Anger and Restoring Hope. This self-help book is for people who have been deeply hurt by another and who are caught in a vortex of anger, depression, and resentment. It walks readers through the forgiveness process Dr. Enright developed to reduce anxiety and depression while increasing self-esteem and hopefulness.

People in Chicago again are protesting the gun violence there. Would implementing IFI’s Forgiveness curriculum into all schools & Forgiveness Therapy into prison, anger management, drug and marriage programs help with lowering the violence there? If so what else would this help in Chicago for instance lower bullying, cyberbullying, suicides, etc?

August 3, 2018 No comments
Your insights are very insightful and important.  Yes, we agree with you that IFI’s forgiveness curriculum in all or at least many schools would reduce student anger. Once in their mid-teens, many of the adolescents should have their anger reduced and not at a level that might lead to violence.  Forgiveness therapy in the prison system also should reduce anger so that it is not a motivator to hurt others.  Forgiveness therapy in drug rehabilitation programs and in marriage programs should help reduce stress in those who do this kind of work.

The key issue is not whether or not forgiveness education and forgiveness therapy would work.  Instead, that key issue is this: How can we get the attention of the decision makers in schools, prisons, drug rehabilitation units, and marriage counseling centers so that these forgiveness programs are given a chance to be implemented?  In our experience, leaders need to see the efficacy of forgiveness for it to move forward.  How can we get the attention of the leaders?

Forgiveness, like Dr. Enright’s Model, should be Cultivated on National and International Scales

July 5, 2018 No comments

According to an editorial in the February issue of an international humanities journal, forgiveness interventions like Dr. Robert Enright’s 20 Step Process Model,  should be employed on a much broader basis and, in fact, national leaders should be assessing “when or how it might be appropriate to cultivate forgiveness on national and international scales.”

The influential American Journal of Public Health, continuously published for more than 100 years, further editorialized that:

“If forgiveness is strongly related to health, and being wronged is a common experience, and interventions. . . are available and effective, then one might make the case that forgiveness is a public health issue. . .

“Because being wronged is common, and because the effects of forgiveness on health are substantial, forgiveness should perhaps be viewed as a phenomenon that is not only of moral,  theological, and relational significance, but of public health importance as well.”

“Forgiveness promotes health and wholeness; it is important to public health.”      AJPH

The editorial cites Dr. Enright’s Process Model (also called his Four Phases of Forgiveness) as one of only two “prominent intervention classes” now available. “Interventions using this model have been shown to be effective with groups as diverse as adult incest survivors, parents who have adopted special needs children, and inpatients struggling with alcohol and drug addiction.

“Forgiveness is associated with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and hostility; reduced nicotine dependence and substance abuse; higher positive emotion; higher satisfaction with life; higher social support; and fewer self-reported health symptoms. The beneficial emotional regulation (results in) forgiveness being an alternative to maladaptive  psychological responses like rumination and suppression.”

Read the rest of this compelling editorial: Is Forgiveness a Public Health Issue?

Learn more about Dr. Enright’s Four Phases of Forgiveness

 

A New Approach to School Bullying: Eliminate Their Anger

July 3, 2018 No comments

“Introducing Forgiveness Counseling to the Schools”

If you do an electronic search for anti-bullying programs, you will see three prominent approaches, the 3 P’s:

  • Peer mediation
  • Persistent norms. (This is a “no-bully zone;” we do not tolerate bullying in this school)
  • Punishment.
The rarely-tried approach, one backed by social scientific research, is to eliminate the anger in those doing the bullying (Gambaro, Enright, Baskin, & Klatt, 2008; Park, Enright, Essex, Zahn-Waxler, & Klatt, 2013). Those who are angry tend to displace that anger onto others, who then may displace it onto others, who may pass on the anger once again…and on it goes.

What makes people so angry that they:

          a) retain the anger for a long time, sometimes years;
          b) find no solution to that anger; and,
          c) give the never-say-die anger to others?

We find that unfair treatment from other people is the source of so much anger in this world (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). Anger as a source of inner disruption in the form of anxiety, low-self esteem, and pessimism all too often goes unrecognized. After all, if a person with high anxiety comes to a mental health professional, it is natural to focus on the presenting symptom. Yet, our research and the clinical work connected to it suggest that toxic anger, the kind that is deep and long-lasting, often is at the heart of many psychological symptoms for those who have a history of being treated unfairly.

 

Forgiveness therapy, as an empirically-verified treatment, reduces and even eliminates the toxic anger (Enright & Fitzgibbons, 2015). This is a paradoxical psychotherapy. As the client discussed the unfair behaviors coming from others, the treatment focus shifts from the client’s symptoms to an exploration of who the offending person is, what emotional wounds this person has, the vulnerabilities and doubts and fears that person brought to the painful interactions with the client.

As the client realizes that to forgive is not to excuse or forget or abandon the quest for justice or necessarily even reconcile with the other, then forgiveness therapy can proceed without distortion of what, exactly, it means to forgive. To forgive is to offer goodness to those who have not been good to the client. It is the offering of a virtue that has been around for thousands of years across many philosophies and religions and worldviews. To forgive offers the client a way to eliminate resentment by offering goodness…and it works (see, for example, Lin, Mack, Enright, Krahn, & Baskin, 2004). 

When a student in school begins to aggress onto others, those who use the lens of forgiveness therapy start to ask these questions:

  • Does the one showing the bullying behavior seem to be particularly angry?
  • What is the source of this anger?  Might it be unfair treatment from others in the past, perhaps at home or in school or in the peer group?
  • Might this student be in pain, which emerged from the injustice, and might that pain now have turned to a toxic anger?
  • Might this student be willing to examine who perpetrated the injustice and the subsequent hurt and ask, “Can I forgive this person (or persons) for what they did to me?”

School counselors now have a resource for taking this kind of therapy directly to those who bully (Enright, 2012). Rather than focus on the symptoms of aggression, disobedience to school expectations, or even the student’s own anger, the treatment shifts: Who hurt you? Is this person hurting and vulnerable and confused? Do you know what forgiveness is and is not? Would you be interested in trying to forgive the one who caused you so much pain? This kind of therapy can take up to 12 or more weeks, but that is the blink-of-an-eye relative to anger that can last for years.

As the student’s pain subsides by seeing the inherent worth in the one who was cruel and by fostering compassion toward that person (not because of what was done but instead because of whom the other is as a person), so too does the anger within the one who bullies start to fade, and this takes away the incentive to bully.  The focus is not on the symptoms exclusively any more, nor is it on only creating school norms (which are all too easily ignored by those who bully when they are nurturing a rage inside).

To reduce bullying, we need to see the anger inside those who bully and have a plan to reduce it. Forgiveness therapy, as empirically shown, already has done its job. Now it is time to transport such therapy from the clinician’s office into the school setting for the good of those who bully and for the good of those who are the unwitting recipients of their pain.

Posted in Psychology Today December 17, 2016

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