Forgiveness: Do it for Yourself

Jane P Jones, Ph.D
Licensed Psychologist
Family Counseling Clinic


"Holding a grudge or resentment is like taking poison every day and hoping someone else will die." - Unknown

Acknowledgements: This essay draws heavily on the work of Robin Casarjian, Fred Luskin, and William Ury. Their books on forgiveness are sited in the bibliography

You can learn the specific steps to use to get over "bad things" which have happened in your life. You can decide the role events play in the present and future, rather than giving power to unfair circumstances or people. While these steps are not easy, following them will give you a sense of getting over difficult experiences and creating a path to peace. You can learn that forgiveness is not about condoning others' actions nor is it necessarily about reconciliation; it is a way of living that creates power, control, and peace.

I hope that you will
1. See resentment, grudges, and bitterness as destructive choices.
2. Practice reframing self talk.
3. Move toward a position of positive utilization of a negative experience.
4. Practice techniques for letting go.

What Forgiveness Isn't
   A gift to the offender
   Forgetting what happened
   Condoning unkindness or unethical behaviors
   Being a doormat
   Lowering standards
   Pretending everything is fine when it isn't.
   Assuming an attitude of superiority or self righteousness.
   Reconciliation, which is a separate question

What Forgiveness Is
   A gift to yourself
   A way of going on
   A feeling of peace
   A way of saying that you will decide the role of events in your life
   A habit you create to intentionally manage small annoyances and large offenses
   A chosen, learned, and practiced skill; a process with clear steps

Forgiveness is also

   A decision to see beyond, to seek understanding, and to respect another's humanness.

   An attitude that implies that you are willing to accept responsibility for your perceptions, realizing that your perceptions are a choice and not an objective fact. A consequence of realizing that your perceptions are a choice is that as you change your perceptions, your emotional responses change as well.

   A way of life that transforms us from being helpless victims of our circumstances to being powerful and loving co-creators of our reality. It is a pervasive way of relating to life that is clear, compassionate, and understanding. We learn that we can disagree with someone without withdrawing our love.


Reasons for Forgiving
   Forgiving frees you to fully enjoy the present.
   Forgiving relieves us of the debilitating effects of chronic anger and resentment.
   Forgiveness allows us to let go of shame and guilt
   Unless we forgive more suffering comes from the injustice. The loss of joy, love, and intimacy mar the lives of those who don't forgive, and the lives of those around them.


Reasons for Not Forgiving
   You would rather stay stuck in the past
   You don't yet have the courage
   You don't know the steps
   You don't see the benefits
   You like the benefits of being a victim
   You can manipulate others by being a victim
   You don't realize that you choose the role events play in our lives
   A familiar mindset is so comfortable


Stages in the Forgiveness Process

1. Victim: The event has recently happened. You experience intense feelings of outrage, fear, sadness, dismay, and possibly confusion, shame, embarrassment. You may not be sure that you can go on. You may not know how to do so. The event takes up the central space in your consciousness.

2. Survivor: You are incorporating the event into your life and making sense of it. You realize that you are not the only person to experience this event. You begin to tell your story in different ways. You begin to decide about taking it personally, you analyze factors, you want to label the event as someone's fault, perhaps your own. (This is not a good idea.). You begin to identify your strengths. You begin to realize that there is more in your life than this event.

3. Thrivor: After some time and much work, you choose the role this event will play in the rest of your life. You recognize that others share similar experiences, and you can help future victims get through their loss. You adjust your perceptions and attitude. You use the experience to help you become the kind of person you want to be.


STEPS TO FORGIVENESS: FROM VICTIM TO SURVIVOR TO THRIVOR

Starting Point: When you forgive, you do not give up the right to be angry when you have been mistreated. Rather, you choose how long to continue being angry about being mistreated.

As long as you are angry about being mistreated, your decisions are about that more than they are about your own wellbeing. Your mistreatment occupies center stage in your mind, and becomes awfully important, and stays important as long as you make it important

How we create feelings of anger (Ellis)

A = activating event. Something happens which we did not expect and did not want, or something we expected and wanted did not happen.

B = Beliefs, expressed as self talk. We believe that we should get what we expect, want, or deserve.

C = Consequence. As a result of not getting what we expect, want or deserve, we create feelings of anger.

Feelings of anger are not bad or good. How we express them and how long we maintain them are choices which may have positive or negative consequences.

Self Talk: It is important to realize that you choose and control your self talk patterns, and that you can make changes in them if you have learned ineffective ones.

Self talk phrases that are useful in letting anger flow out of our lives

   I didn't want this to happen. I can figure out how to live with it.
   This challenge is a chance to show my fine character.
   This experience gives me an opportunity to learn patience.
   Someday I'll figure out how to use this experience.
   I didn't deserve this. But then, I don't always want what I deserve.
   Someday maybe I can feel compassion for this offender.
   Someday I may be able to look at this situation in different ways.

It is helpful to work through the seven steps by writing in your journal. Putting an experience and your feelings on paper brings both clarity and release.

1. Describe the event. Include the date it occurred.
For example, you might write On November 12, I was not chosen for promotion.

2. Describe the ethical offense. What specifically was wrong or unfair?
Continuing, My boss chose someone who had not contributed as much to the organization. I believe it is wrong to choose a person who has made fewer contributions over a person who has more contributions.

3. Describe your present feelings.
The task is to feel the pain, without minimizing it, denying it, or exaggerating it. Express the pain clearly, without blaming.

A prerequisite to forgiveness is the acknowledgement of the pain that you experienced. Recognize, acknowledge, and say what your feelings are. Pain needs a safe appropriate place to be expressed and allowed to be, without judgment. Watch for "a compulsion to be happy," which likely covers denied or minimized pain. We need to own the sadness, anger, rage, and fear before forgiveness can occur. Forgiveness can't be neatly placed on top of fear, sadness, and rage.

When you acknowledge and express a strong feeling, you find you can stand it, accept it, and even recognize that you created it appropriately, in order to let it pass. If the forgiveness process is getting stuck, or if months later you are still experiencing intense feelings of fear, anger, etc., then possibly this expression piece is incomplete. One way to express these feelings is to write your story several times a week, describing what happened and how you feel. As you do this repeatedly, you will find that the feelings begin to diminish in intensity and your perspective of the event will move from victim to survivor to thriver.

Acknowledging the entire truth of our experience takes courage. It is the courage to accept the fear, humiliation, shame, sadness, self-disdain, self-hatred, and the actions, inner thoughts, and feelings that a part of us would rather repress and avoid. It is the nonjudging acceptance of thoughts and feelings that will lead the way to acceptance and peace.

Use these sentence stems to begin expressing feelings.

In relation to this situation what I'm feeling is _______
What I'm really feeling is _____________
What I'm also feeling is __________
And under that the feeling is
And under that the feeling is
And under that the feeling is

What I'm afraid of is
What I fear is
What scares me is
What really scares me is
What I'm really afraid of is

What I'm angry about is

What I'm sad about is

4. Describe what you wanted to happen instead.
This was not the way you wanted things to work out. Write about what you had hoped would happen.

5. Put the experience in perspective

a. Was I an intentional or circumstantial victim?
You experienced a loss. Whether you were singled out by the offender who was out to do you harm, or were the victim of circumstances, does make some difference. While suffering occurs in both situations, when the intent was not directed at you personally, you may find that you can get some relief in talking to others who have experienced similar situations. When your experience is shared, you have survivor and thriver role models. Seek them out. Is this event something that happens to almost everyone? Who amongst the people you admire has survived a similar event?

If you recognize that you personally were an intentional victim of someone's ill will, you may find the experience more difficult to process. Clearly the offender expressed anger directly, and inappropriately. You may be tempted to continue the fight, to seek revenge, to force them to get consequences of their behavior. A disinterested third party, probably a counselor, can help you express feelings and explore possibilities and consequences of your options, as well as giving you guidance in choosing to disengage from this person.

b. How important is the event?
As one wise person put it, there may be a lump in my oatmeal and there may be a lump in my breast, and they are not the same at all. Realizing that you won't get your way all the time, is this one of those times you just accept? Does this fall into the category of "Life's not fair"? Sometimes we do need to let go and lighten up. On the other hand, the event may be very important to you, even if it isn't major in others' opinion.

6. The Offender's Perspective. Note known or imagined factors contributing to the event. What are circumstances in the offender's life? What thought patterns led to this event? Separate, if you can, an objective understanding of the offender's actions from your experience. Understanding does not mean that you judge the action appropriate; rather, that you can see how a person in this situation might act in this way. 7. The Thriver's Story. Give this event a role in your future. Write or talk about what you learned from this experience, what strengths you developed as a result of living through the experience. Note how you have been able to help others as a result of this experience. Note how you personally have benefited. Once you can tell your story from this viewpoint, with a feeling of peace, you know you have moved beyond being stuck, beyond just surviving, to a place of thriving.

Say to yourself: This is one event in my life. It seems very important now. It is on center stage of my consciousness. As time passes and as I think about this, other events will occur, and this one will decrease in relative importance. As I process this event I will think about it in different terms. I will evaluate my loss, change some of my perceptions, and learn from this experience.

Destructive Behaviors which indicate Not Yet Effectively Completed Forgiveness

1. Case making against the offender. This is not an effective way of expressing feelings or analyzing the event. It is a way of digging a deeper rut that will take more energy to get out of later.

2. Asking others to join you in making a case against the offender.

3. Criticizing, complaining and finding fault with the offender. This action is done under the mistaken belief that it decreases anger. It actually perpetuates and increases anger.

4. Plan revenge.

5. Plan punishment for the offender. Society will do that; you have better things to do with your life.

6. Creating and maintaining resentments, grudges, and bitterness

Signs of Successfully Completed Forgiveness
   Feelings of Peace
   Acceptance of Imperfections without Disturbance
   Quickly letting go of not getting what you wanted
   Quickly shifting focus from past disappointments to present possibilities

Final words
Movement through both the stages and the step of forgiveness takes place at your chosen pace. You can't rush forgiveness, and yet you can avoid being stuck. You can process an event so that it takes a useful place in your life.

Bibliography
Affinito, When to forgive. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications, 1999.
*Casarjian, Forgiveness: A Bold Choice for a Peaceful Heart. Bantam, 1992.
Crum, Tom. The Magic of Conflict. Simon & Schuster, 1987.
Fisher, Roger and Ury, William. Getting to Yes. Penguin, 1981.
Fisher, Roger and Brown, Scott. Getting Together. Building a Relationship that gets to Yes. Houghton Mifflin, 1988.
Gilligan, James. Violence: Reflections on a national epidemic. Vintage. 1997.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Being Peace. Parallax, 1988.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. Peace is Every Step. New York: Bantam, 1991.
Hanh, Thich Nhat. For a Future to be Possible. Parallax Press, 1993.
Johnson, David and Johnson, Roger. Teaching Children to be Peacemakers. Interaction Book Company, Edina MN, 1991.
Kolb, Judith, & Deborah Williams. Shadow of Negotiation. Simon & Schuster. 2000.
Kornfield, Jack. A Path with Heart. NY: Bantam, 1993.
Learner, The Dance of Connection. Harper Collins, 2001.
*Luskin, Fred. Forgive for Good, HarperCollins, 2002.
Rusk, Tom. Power of Ethical Persuasion. Penguin, 1994.
Ury, William. Getting to Peace. Viking. 1999.