Tagged: “Perseverance”
In Chapter 5 of your book, Forgiveness Is a Choice, you talk about overcoming anger. I am wondering: Do I overcome the anger **before** I forgive, or is the anger diminished as I go through the process of forgiveness?
Your anger diminishes as you go through the process of forgiveness. If you think about it, how would you overcome the anger **before** forgiving? There are no known psychological approaches to reduce the anger and keep it away for a very long time other than forgiveness, in my opinion. As an example, relaxation training can reduce anger, but once you are no longer in the relaxed state, and you think about the injustice, the anger can return. Relaxation focuses on anger as a symptom and covers over that symptom in a temporary way. Forgiveness has you confront that anger and heal from it so that when you recall the unjust event and the person, the anger is diminished. This does not mean that all anger vanishes, but it does mean that the anger no longer is in control.
For additional information, see The Four Phases of Forgiveness.
Those who are in positions of authority at my work are overbearing and angry. I just can’t see how I can survive this even with forgiveness. After all, I go in every day to their anger and more anger. I feel like giving up. Can you help me?
I hear this very frequently from people who are in challenging marriages as well as difficult work situations. My advice is this: It becomes more imperative that you practice forgiveness every day.
Start the forgiveness process as you make your way into work. Be ready to talk from a position of care and civility as you bear the pain of their anger. As you go home after work, spend some time in forgiving. I know it is hard work, but you now have this challenge and one way to overcome your own anger and frustration is to forgive. Even if you were to leave the company for a new career, your inner world still likely will be disrupted. Forgiveness then can help you even if you are gone from your current position. Also, your consistent practice of forgiving may help you to endure and overcome the frustration as you stay in your current position.
For additional information, see Choose Love, Not Hate.
How do you know that you can skip a step in your Process Model of forgiveness without it affecting the success of that process?
We tend to rely on common sense in this situation. For example, in the Uncovering Phase, one unit in the process is to see if you have been comparing yourself with the offending person, with the false conclusion that you are less of a person than the other. If you do not make such comparisons, then you can skip that step. There are parts of the forgiveness process that seem essential to us such as:
- seeing the other person as more than the hurtful actions against you;
- being aware of a softened heart within you as you progress in forgiveness;
- bear the pain of what happened so that you do not pass that pain back to the offending person or to others.
For additional information, see The Four Phases of Forgiveness.
Are there acts so terrible that you should not, as you say, “give a gift to the other?”
Some people will not forgive certain people for certain acts. Yet, other people will forgive others for the exact same kind of act. Thus, it seems to me that it is not the act itself that is out of bounds to forgiveness. Instead, the one who was injured is not ready to offer forgiveness. We have to be gentle with people under these circumstances. We are not all ready to forgive others at the same point of the injury. We have to be careful not to condemn those who need more time or who are ambivalent about forgiveness in a particular circumstance.
For additional information, see Forgiveness Defined.
I have seen in the definition of forgiveness that to forgive is to offer love to those who have acted badly. Could you please explain further what is meant here by the word love?
First, we have to make a distinction between what forgiveness actually is and how we imperfect people go about forgiving. In its essence, forgiveness is the heroic moral virtue of seeing the inherent worth in the other (not because of what was done, but in spite of this) and then the offer of a caring concern for that other. The caring concern can start as respect and compassion. At its highest level, that concern centers on agape love (the Greek term) which is to try to aid that other person despite one’s own suffering. We imperfect people do not always reach this highest level of forgiving, but it can be a goal toward which we strive.
Learn more at What is Forgiveness?
