Her eyes were red and puffy, and her face was blotchy from crying. She sat hunched over on the garden bench as if trying to protect her heart. The soft breeze rustled the leaves above her head, and the smell of jasmine wafted up from the bottom of the garden. Nature was doing its very best to soothe and heal this broken soul, but moving on had become moving…nowhere.
“I’m struggling to get past this,” she said, at last, her voice quietly hoarse. “For the first time in my life, I believed I was genuinely loved for who I am.” She twisted a crumpled tissue in her hands. “How long has it been now?” She offered up a wry smile.
“I can tell you the years and even the days and the hours. But I can’t tell you why. Not really. That’s the hard part – not knowing, not being given a reason why I wasn’t good enough.” Silence fell for a moment. “In the end, someone else was better. I never got any warning, no explanations, no way of changing anything or preparing.” Then her eyes became hard. “And I’m ANGRY about that. He hurt me horribly, and he’s the one who gets off free, to go off and enjoy his new life. I’m the one stuck with the baggage. I’m the one paying for his wrongs against me.”
And indeed she was. Unable to get on with her life, moving on was proving to be impossible. Sometimes she thought she was making progress, only to have a setback that sent her right back to where she’d started. Her betrayer, though long gone from her physical world, was stuck in her head, controlling her emotions and making her future miserable. She was desperate to be free but didn’t know how to escape the vortex of pain and anger that kept sucking her in. Forgiveness was a concept she didn’t truly understand, and although she had tried to forgive and let go, somehow the pain and anger would sneak up on her again.
Forgiveness is a concept many of us don’t truly grasp. We think that it means letting the offender go free, denying that his/her actions hurt us, or worse, pretending the offence wasn’t really a wrong against us, or that somehow we deserved it or that our reaction of being hurt is our fault. There are many ways of seeing forgiveness, most of them incorrect – and sometimes perpetuated by offenders trying to minimize their guilt when confronted by the harm they have caused.
When you forgive someone, you let go of your desire for the ideal scenario to have played out. Instead of reality, what you are wishing for is what SHOULD have been – your desire to be treated the right way by the other person. It didn’t happen, and now you are stuck with a choice: to let go of what should have been or to hold on to the pain and anger that are controlling your emotions and directing your future towards more of the same. Moving on becomes impossible when you choose the latter option.
Forgiveness actually has very little to do with the other person, and everything to do with you giving yourself the gift of freedom to pursue a happy and fulfilling future. In a lot of cases, the offender is long gone from the scene of the crime, and may never have any idea whether or not you have forgiven him/her – so why should you allow that person to have the best of you in the future? Why should he/she control your emotions, drain your energy, negatively impact your ability to make good decisions etc? Unforgiveness affects every area of your life – your physical health, your relationships with others, the choices you make, the things you tell yourself, your emotional life, and your future. All of it controlled by someone who doesn’t deserve the space in your head, and may no longer even be a part of your life.
Forgiveness is giving up the wish that things could be different.
—Valarie Harper
The good news is, YOU are in charge of who gets to live in your head. And with some time, patience, and maybe some help, you can evict that wrongdoer from your head and from your life. Completely and forever.
Seven Steps To Complete Forgiveness
1. Acknowledge the wrong done to you.
Too often we try to sweep it under the carpet, but sooner or later it will reappear. Be honest with yourself – some people find it helps to talk about it to a trusted friend. Others opt for counselling. Writing it down could also help.
Whatever method you choose, get it out there. Don’t keep it bottled up, and don’t try to minimize the harm that it did to you. Be completely honest about every detail of the wrong that hurt you. At the same time, be aware of overplaying it. Try to keep it realistic. Take responsibility for any part you played in the wrong against you, and avoid taking responsibility for things you had nothing to do with. Avoid blaming other people – just state the facts. Identify exactly what the wrong was – give it a name. Keep in mind your goal – moving on to a future that is better than your past, and moving on from victim to survivor.
2. Acknowledge the emotional harm and consequences
This is another important step – acknowledging the consequences of wrongs against you. This might be the emotional harm caused by the wrong, in which case you need to identify the emotions you are struggling with. It could also include other consequences – financial, physical, or health related. As odd as it might sound, sometimes positive outcomes can arise from situations that have hurt us, so try to step back and identify anything positive that has come out of your situation. Ask others if they can see something you have missed, and try to look at it from an outsider’s point of view. Remember, your goal is to be free of the pain and anger, and this is only possible through genuine forgiveness, which can only be achieved by working through the process layer by layer.
3. Decide To Forgive
Forgiveness begins with the decision to forgive – a conscious, intentional choice to wake up each day and practice the behaviour of forgiveness. Decisional forgiveness rejects the option to give in to unforgiving behaviours, because a decision to forgive keeps the end goal in sight: moving on with life. State your intention to evict the enemy – the person who hurt you – from occupying valuable real estate in your mind. The process of eviction begins with an intentional choice not to take up a stance of unforgiveness, which perpetuates the cycle of pain and anger that has been keeping you trapped. Forgiveness neutralizes the paralyzing poison of pain and anger and allows you to begin moving on.
4. Emotional Forgiveness
Emotional forgiveness begins when you choose to replace powerful negative emotions such as pain, resentment and anger with positive emotions that are outwardly focused towards others. These negative emotions always have a negative effect on the body if left alone long enough, and you will be doing your body a favour when you choose positive emotions over negative ones.
Emotional forgiveness involves a shift from a narrow focus on the thing that hurt you to a focus on the bigger picture. It’s like examining something under a microscope – what looks huge and even frightening under the microscope might be nothing bigger than a speck to the naked eye when we stand back and view the whole object. And again, remember your end goal – if you fail to forgive, you will spend the rest of your life being held hostage to the wrong inflicted upon you, living with the offender in your head day after day. Forgiveness doesn’t minimize what happened or allow the offender to go free: it allows you to go free.
5. Reframe Your Perspective
It can take time, but you can reframe your perspective of the thing that hurt you. The 20:80 rule suggests that 20 % of the reaction you experience is due to the thing that hurt you, and 80% of your reaction is due to the way you perceive the thing that hurt you. While this is not an exact science, it does suggest that you can reframe your perception of the thing that hurt you in order to avoid a cycle of further pain in the future.
Step away from the source of your pain and try to examine it objectively. Ask yourself how others would respond to the same situation, and how you could start to see it differently – or at more of a distance – in order to begin moving on. You can’t do anything about what happened, but you most certainly can do something about how you see it. You can work on changing your opinion and perspective because you are in charge of what you think.
6. Get Off The Merry Go Round
Every time you relive what happened, it reinforces in your mind the validity of your reactions to it now, especially if you are only remembering the negative aspects. It tells your brain that pain and anger are justified because of the wrong that was done to you. Along the way, your brain will collect and offer up memories of other times that you felt the same way until you are caught in a whirlpool of negative emotions, and you will end up feeling miserable.
Get off the merry go round. Remind yourself that you have chosen to forgive, and refuse to indulge the temptation to relive the wrong done to you. Keep the end goal in sight – freedom from negative emotions. Don’t feed them by reliving past wrongs.
7. Be Thankful
When the memories come knocking, as they undoubtedly will, identify something to be thankful for. It’s an old cliche, but true in this case: clouds do have silver linings. And if you look, you can probably find something to be thankful for in the midst of what has happened to you. It might be a renewed sense of life and hope. Perhaps your experience has unexpectedly opened the door to something new and better in your life. Either way, deflect the negative feelings associated with the memories by being thankful. Focus on the positive, and remind yourself that you are moving on. You are a survivor, and survivors refuse to be victims.
Avoid False Forgiveness
False forgiveness can be identified if we find ourselves trying to forgive, but not moving on. We tell ourselves that we have forgiven the offender, but still feel all the same old negative emotions. So what is false forgiveness?
False forgiveness is essentially a wrong view or practice of what forgiveness really is. It might come about when we tell ourselves that we have forgiven the offender, but we blame ourselves. All the anger that should rightfully be directed at the offence or offender is targeted at ourselves. We haven’t let go at all. We have simply redirected our negative emotions to the most vulnerable place possible: our already wounded selves.
Needless to say, false forgiveness is very damaging. It involves denying, repressing, minimizing, and avoiding. In some cases, it enables the offender to go on offending, under the guise of being “forgiven.” It doesn’t follow the careful process of recovery that genuine forgiveness undertakes, instead often being offered up quickly to avoid further pain. It’s a cheap fake that fools the unwary into thinking they are doing the right thing when in reality it’s just adding to the harm they have already suffered. Genuine forgiveness always undergoes a process. It is rarely quick, and never cheap.
Trust Is No Cheap Commodity
Just because you have forgiven someone, doesn’t mean that the relationship will ever be what you want. Nor does it mean that that person should be allowed back into your life. Trust has to be earned, and it doesn’t come cheap. If someone is likely to disregard your boundaries again, do you want to go through the same level of pain that you have already experienced at their hands?
If you aren’t yet strong enough to defend your boundaries, it’s a far safer option to keep people who won’t respect them out of your life. It might be hard to say no sometimes, but keep your end goal in mind: a stronger, healthier you. Surround yourself with people who support your aims, and keep offenders at a distance. In time, perhaps they will prove to you that they have changed, and it might be safe to trust them, but trust has to be earned, usually over a long time. Forgiveness does not mean trusting indiscriminately.
Moving On
- Allow yourself time. It will take time to heal – be patient with the process.
- Remind your brain of what you want to achieve. State out loud “I am moving on”, or “I have moved on,” as opposed to “I am trying to move on.” Your brain will accept the direct, present tense command and will begin to bring about your instructions. This is a well-known technique used by athletes and other high achievers to reach their goals.
- When an old memory surfaces and threatens to derail you, take a moment to move through the decisional and emotional forgiveness phases again. Then choose something to be thankful for, and focus on that.
- Remember that forgiveness is not a single event, but a daily choice to move in the direction of freedom and healing. You might have to remind yourself frequently throughout the day that you are choosing to forgive, especially in the early phases.
- Look for ways to encourage yourself to continue the journey, and celebrate the little milestones that mark progress. (For example, passing a particular place that triggers memories and being free of negative emotions). Be your own cheer squad.
Free At Last
When you are finally free, when genuine forgiveness has done its job – enjoy it! And if you are able, share your story of your journey from wounded to free. There are many people who are suffering the way you have, and no pain is without purpose. Use yours to help someone else on their journey.
References:
http://lifehacker.com/how-to-forgive-someone-who-has-wronged-you-1671192403