Tagged: “resentment”
In forgiving, how can we balance self-care and dealing with continued verbal abuse from the person who just will not shut off that kind of abuse?
When you forgive, you do not have to stay in the situation and take continual abuse that is wearing you down. You may need to take some time out from the interaction. Please try to remember that to forgive is not the same as to reconcile. If the person continues the abuse, despite your best efforts to have it stopped, and if the abuse is wearing you down, then taking some time away from the interactions with the other is a good idea for self-care. When you forgive, you also should ask for fairness from those who are hurting you. Some will refuse, and this is why we need to distinguish forgiving and reconciling.
I was asked to forgive. I still was fuming with anger. I did say, “I forgive you,” but with the promise to myself that I would work on forgiving the person. Now I feel as if I am a hypocrite because I used the words of forgiveness with deep anger in my heart. So, am I a hypocrite for doing this?
When you used the words of forgiveness, you most certainly had the best of intentions because you made a promise to yourself to continue the forgiveness process within your own heart (and probably in how you interact with the person). To be a hypocrite is to act in contradiction to your own beliefs or even your own intentions. Your intentions have been honorable regarding forgiveness. While you were not feeling very forgiving yet, you were making a heroic commitment to it. This shows consistency between what you said and what you intend to do. Therefore, you were not acting in a hypocritical way.
You say that forgiveness is good, but how will it get my land back? It will not get my land back. Therefore, forgiveness is weak and ineffective. I will have nothing to do with it.
May I start with a multiple choice question? Which of these two would you rather have:
A) You live for the rest of your life without getting your land back and you also live with a deep anger that disrupts your inner life and the life of those around you, or
B) You live for the rest of your life without getting your land back and you are free of the deep anger that disrupts you, your loved ones, and your community?
Which do you choose? I think your error is occurring when you focus exclusively on the original problem (land dispute) without even realizing that a second, just as serious, problem has emerged because of the land dispute—resentment entrenched in the heart. Forgiveness can cure this second problem while not being able to solve the original problem. Without seeing this, you are rejecting forgiveness as weak.
[Note: This question comes from a world zone in which there has been a very long struggle between two groups, both of which claim a right to the land that is currently disputed. It is a very common question I receive.]
Lately, I have been having condemning thoughts toward the person who betrayed me. Much to my surprise, I am finding that I am drifting into another pattern, that of even condemning myself. Is this normal and maybe even truthful about who both of us are?
My answer comes from my book, The Forgiving Life (2012), chapter 1:
“As we continually live with love withdrawn from us and a resulting resentment (with the short-term consequences of thinking with a negative pattern, thinking specific condemning thoughts, and acting poorly), we can settle into a kind of long-term distortion of who the love-withdrawing person is, who we ourselves are, and who people are in general. The basic issue here is that once love is withdrawn from us, we can begin to withdraw a sense of worth toward the one who hurt us. The conclusion is that he or she is worth-less. Over time, we can drift into the dangerous conclusion, ‘I, too, am worthless.’ After all, others have withdrawn love from me and have concluded that I lack worth, therefore I do lack worth. Even later, we can drift into the unhealthy conclusion that there is no love in the world and so no one really has any worth, thus everyone is worth-less.” In other words, this thought pattern is something to recognize and then to resist by working on the thought that both of you have worth.
Research Study in Spain Endorses Dr. Enright’s Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program
A pioneering research study conducted with primary and secondary teachers and students in Spain has support for Dr. Robert Enright’s ideas on anti-bullying, which offers forgiveness education to those who do the bullying. His original Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program is available on our website.
Two recommendations in the study in Spain are these:
1) That school administrators “incorporate education in forgiveness into bullying prevention programs;” and,
2) That “forgiveness-based education, as an empirically supported approach to reducing anger, may be one of the answers to peace within conflict zones and societies.”
The study, Evaluation of the effectiveness and satisfaction of the “Learning to Forgive” program for the prevention of bullying, was published this month in the Electronic Journal of Research in Educational Psychology. It was conducted by psychologists at the University of Murcia—one of the largest and oldest universities in Spain (established in 1272)—with technical and procedural guidance from Dr. Enright himself.
The “Learning to Forgive” program that was the focal point of the new study, was inspired by The Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program developed by Dr. Enright in 2012 based on his now more than 35 years of research into forgiveness. Forgiveness education as a way of reducing excessive anger has been tested and used for more than 17 years in schools located in places such as Belfast, Northern Ireland, and more recently in Monrovia, Liberia (West Africa), Iran, and Pakistan.
The purpose of the antibullying forgiveness program is to help students, who bully others, to forgive those who have deeply hurt them. It is based on the understand that bullying behavior does not occur in a vacuum, but instead often results from a deep internal rage that is not originally targeted toward the victims of those who bully. In other words, those who bully oftentimes are displacing their built-up anger onto unsuspecting others.
To help those who bully to forgive is to reduce the excessive anger that can be a direct motivation for hurting others. In this way forgiveness can be a powerful approach to reducing repressed anger and eliminating bullying behavior.
“This program tries to change the typical understanding, often incomplete, that we usually have about forgiveness,” according to the study in Spain. “With a deeper understanding about what forgiveness is, then the students may show less resentment, fewer relationship breaks, and less unpleasant emotions over time. Teaching young people this more complete view of forgiveness might avoid, in the words of Enright himself, many sufferings in adulthood.”
Study participants consisted of 88 primary and secondary school teachers at 11 educational centers and 153 students at 4 educational centers. In Study 1 of the two-part research project, “statistically significant improvements were found in the forgiveness group regarding their knowledge of forgiveness and marginally significant in emotional forgiveness compared to the control group.”
In Study 2 participants noted “high satisfaction with the program and that it had helped them forgive in a remarkable way. In line with other studies, it is recommended to incorporate education in forgiveness into bullying prevention programs.”
According to the study authors, their research as well as other studies indicate that “forgiveness is a protective factor against emotional problems and prevents victims of harassment from now demonstrating bullying behavior toward others.” They also recommended adding in-depth modules for adults who could then provide in-home reinforcement in helping students achieve and maintain their forgiveness-related skills.
“The results of these two pioneering studies in Spain on the ‘Learning to Forgive’ Program inspired by the research of Robert Enright and his team show positive results, both in teachers and students,” the report concludes. “The promotion of interventions based on empathy, compassion, and forgiveness contribute to sowing the path of peaceful coexistence.”
Read the complete English translation of the Spanish bullying-prevention study.
Read the complete Spanish version of the study.
Learn more about The Enright Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program:
- A School Anti-Bullying Program That Works
- The Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program – FREE for a Limited Time
- Can We Get Anti-Bullying Programs to Work?
- Obtain the Anti-Bullying Forgiveness Program
