Can’t vs. Won’t
It is important to recognize the difference between being unable to forgive and being unwilling to forgive. It is all too tempting to cast the other person as a remorseless jerk who doesn’t deserve forgiveness. In reality, it may be your own stubbornness or ego that is keeping you from opening your heart to forgiveness. Always remember that if you think you can’t forgive someone, you will convince yourself that it’s true. Your mind will easily find ways to justify what you’ve already decided.
Open yourself to the idea of forgiving that difficult person. Visualize a life without the bitterness and anger that clouds your current perspective. You’ll be amazed to find that your capacity for forgiveness is far greater than you may have realized.
[I recommend Chapter 8 be deleted. - TT]
Chapter 9:
How Do You Know When you’ve Truly Forgiven Someone?
“Sincere forgiveness isn't colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change.
Don't worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them.
Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time.”
- Sara Paddison
Forgiveness is not a magic cure-all. There is a discipline and a process to forgiving. As with most learned disciplines, people often ask, “Am I doing it right?”
There is no obvious physical manifestation of forgiveness, at least not immediately. There are, however, certain key elements that indicate you have earnestly forgiven.
Restored Relationships
Ideally, forgiveness is met with repentance and any damage to the relationship thereby is restored. If you can honestly look at the relationship that had once been broken and now say that the damage has been completely repaired and the relationship is now back in harmony, you can easily see that you have legitimately forgiven the other person.
But a lack of restoration does not necessarily mean that you have not forgiven the person. Recall that sometimes the offender may be unrepentant or unavailable. It takes two people to restore a fractured relationship, but only one to forgive. Your attitude is not bound by the attitude or actions of the other person. It is quite possible that, while you have forgiven and now seek restoration of the relationship, the other person is unwilling to restore things on his end.
The Test of Forgiveness
There is a more encompassing way to evaluate whether or not you have truly forgiven someone for an offense. Forgiveness means acting and feeling as if the affront had never even occurred. If you find yourself continuing to dwell on the incident, or you are resentful or bitter toward the person, then the process of forgiveness is not complete.
If you find yourself in this position, it does not invalidate the steps that you have taken, it simply means that you have not yet arrived at your destination. If you have dealt with the individual and offered your forgiveness, but still feel the pinch of resentment and bitterness, you may just need a little time to properly file away the negative emotions that you had been harboring.
But do not make the mistake of thinking that they will fade away on their own if you do nothing. You must actively pursue forgiveness until you can honestly look upon the person as if the offense had never occurred. Until it is fully integrated, forgiveness is an internally active process, not a passive one.
Ultimately, this is how you can feel assured that you have forgiven someone. Furthermore, you will find that you have free attention to devote elsewhere now that you are free from fixating on your emotional wounds. Lingering bitterness and anger will dissipate, improving your relationships with those around you.
If you were holding on to resentment toward the person, that too should fade quickly away; allowing you to think of her with fondness, and interact harmoniously with her in as much as she will permit.
Regardless of external factors that can influence whether or not the relationship can be fully restored, your attitude toward the other person should reflect that you have honestly and completely forgiven.
Chapter 10:
What If the Person You're Forgiving Doesn't Change?
“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself.”
- Hermann Hesse
When it comes to forgiveness, you need to focus on what you can control and let go of the things you cannot. An important facet of forgiveness is recognizing that you are not responsible for the other person. You cannot make someone accept your forgiveness. You cannot make him worthy of your forgiveness. You cannot expect to change someone else’s behavior by forgiving him.
Many times, forgiving someone will have a profound effect on his behavior. Often, a repentant individual will gratefully accept your forgiveness and earnestly seek to avoid the offending behavior in the future. This is the optimal result, but it is not guaranteed and it is not necessary to your act of forgiveness.
Toxic Relationships
When the individual in need of your forgiveness is either apathetic or antagonistic toward you after you have forgiven him, it should not in any way negate the fact that you have forgiven the offense. Don’t let his attitude alter the choice that you have already made. Remember that when you have truly forgiven, it is as if the offense had never occurred. Allowing the offender’s subsequent actions to pull you back into your state of bitterness means that you have not completely forgiven him.
If a person displays a pattern of continued behavior that is toxic to your happiness, you need to consider your relationship with that individual. There comes a point at which it is better to withdraw from an unhealthy relationship. But even when a relationship becomes so toxic that it must be severed you still need to forgive the offender, or else bitterness will follow you long after your interactions with the person have ceased.
Forgiveness is an Attitude
Ultimately, the other person’s behavior after you have forgiven should not be a factor in your attitude toward forgiveness. The Christian Bible tells of a disciple who asked Jesus how many times he should forgive someone. “Up to seven times?” he added, hoping to impress his teacher with his willingness to forgive.
“No, up to seventy times seven times” was the teacher’s response. The point was not to force the poor, uneducated fisherman to do the mental math. The point was, and remains, that forgiveness needs to be an attitude ingrained within us, an attitude that is not limited by rules or doctrines.
Forgive easily and move on. Let the offender worry about his actions. You focus on what you can control.
Chapter 11:
What If You're the One Who Needs Forgiveness?
“Much unhappiness results from our inability to remember the nice things that happen to us.”
- W. N. Rieger
What if you are on the other side of the equation? No matter how you try, you will play the role of the offender at some point. What can you do when you are the one who needs to be forgiven?
The answer is staggeringly simple. Yet it has somehow become a lost art in contemporary culture. If you need forgiveness, you should ask for it.
Asking for forgiveness is not the same as saying, “I’m sorry.” Asking for forgiveness should incorporate the term directly, as in, “I know that I hurt you. Will you please forgive me?” Or the even more powerful, “I was wrong. Will you please forgive me?”
This simple phrase is amazingly effective at cutting through layers of bitterness and resentment. It is difficult for a reasonable person to reject such an overture, considering how infrequently forgiveness is actually requested.
The person may very well be left slightly shocked at the request. But the shock almost invariably turns to a genuine and heartfelt forgiveness. If you put this into practice, you will find that merely asking for it is a practical shortcut to receiving true forgiveness.
If you are the one who needs to be forgiven, you cannot demand forgiveness, nor can you ask with the expectation that you are going through a formality.
The sincerity of your r
equest is what will move the other person to the point of forgiveness. A wounded person can see through insincerity quite efficiently. An insincere request will be more likely to cause further resentment and distrust.
If you make a practice of asking for forgiveness when you need it, others will notice and appreciate your attitude. Your relationships will improve. You may even lay the groundwork to make it easier for you to forgive a person at a later date, if he learns from your example the power of asking for forgiveness.
If you really ingrain this trait as a part of your personal make-up, it will be that much easier for you to achieve a more encompassing attitude of forgiveness in general.
Chapter 12:
Breaking Free of the Chains of the Past
“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”
- Paul Boese
The hurtful things in our past can follow us around for years, even decades, haunting us like a ghost of pain past. It is extremely important to our overall state of happiness that we break free of the chains that bind us to past mistakes, failures, and injuries.
If we dwell on the past, we do not have the free attention that we need to manifest our dreams for the future. There are three main types of hurt in our past: self-inflicted, conscious, and forgotten.
Self-inflicted Hurt
Self-inflicted hurt is pain stemming from our own mistakes and failures in the past. It is not the mistakes or failures themselves that actually cause the pain, it is our inability to forgive ourselves for those mistakes and failures. If you are haunted by something that you did wrong in the past, whether intentionally or unintentionally, you need to forgive yourself.
You cannot change the past. What you did or did not do last year, last month, last week — it does not determine who you are now or what you can achieve in the future. Recognize that the past is beyond your control and let go of your self-loathing and anger.
Conscious Hurt
Conscious hurt refers to the pain that we carry around knowingly. A conscious hurt is right out on the surface, either due to its recentness or severity. Someone hurt you in the past and you are angry. It may be a decades-old grudge or a recent slight, but it is a consuming flame of bitterness.
These conscious hurts are the easiest to identify. In fact, they take up so much of your free attention that they often border on obsession. The solution, of course, is forgiveness. A single injury is multiplied a thousand times over if we dwell on it for years.
Forgotten Hurts
Forgotten hurts are difficult to diagnose and remedy. Sometimes, an incident will profoundly impact you more than you consciously recognize. The incident itself may become lost in time, but the negative impact persists. This is particularly prevalent in emotional injuries stemming from childhood trauma.
An unfocused resentment or an undirected anger may be signs of a forgotten hurt. In these cases, it is more difficult to forgive because we don’t really understand what we are forgiving. We may not even entirely grasp who we are forgiving. When the hurt is forgotten, forgiveness can take the form of a more general release, letting go of the bitterness and embracing happiness.
Chapter 13:
Breaking Free from Resentment with Forgiveness
"Anger makes you smaller, while forgiveness forces you to grow beyond what you were."
- Cherie Carter-Scott
Resentment is a common emotion, though commonly misunderstood. We may not always be able to control our other emotions, but we at least understand anger, love, despair and the rest. Resentment is an emotion that we often feel without fully recognizing it for what it is, or even being able to properly put a name to it.
What is Resentment?
Before we can deal with resentment, we need to understand what it is and how it affects us. Resentment is a feeling of displeasure or indignation that stems from an incident, real or perceived, that is hurtful. When you resent someone it will color all your future interactions, no matter how trivial, with that person.
Resentment can be open or concealed, immediate or delayed.
Sometimes resentment sits right on the surface. You may resent a coworker who gets ahead by taking undo credit for your work. You may resent a friend’s patronizing attitude toward your hobby or maybe your ex’s new beau. There is no end to the number of issues, large and small, that have fired a sense of resentment in people.
Resentment can sneak up on even the best of us. It is how we handle it that matters — how and how soon. The longer we let resentment linger, the more powerful it becomes. The key to handling resentment is to deal with it thoroughly and quickly. This allows you to forgive more easily.
The Cure for Resentment
The cure for resentment, as with many other negative emotions, is forgiveness. The only way to get past resenting someone for something is to forgive that person for that very thing. As devastating as resentment is, if it is open and on the surface, it is usually relatively easy to correct once the resent-er acknowledges his need to forgive and deal honestly with the resent-ee.
Hidden or unrecognized resentment is a thornier issue. Resentment can be a subtle but devastating obstacle on the road to happiness and self-fulfillment. Unlike outright anger or contempt, resentment can linger in our thoughts and on our hearts without us realizing that it is there.
Because it is harder to spot, some people will harbor deep resentment toward others without any conscious knowledge that there is a problem. But when a situation becomes tense, those old resentments find their way to the surface, impeding resolution and fueling the fires of conflict.
If left unchecked, resentment can linger after the situation is seemingly resolved. Often resentment will still fester long after apologies are exchanged and all is superficially forgiven. This concealed resentment poses a real danger to our happiness.
The first step to releasing the negative emotion and moving toward happiness is recognizing that there is a problem. There are three common signs of concealed resentment: distrust, questioning motives, and bitterness.
Someone holding on to resentment will often demonstrate an unfounded distrust and suspicion of the other person, sometimes without consciously realizing it. It may be in matters completely unrelated to the initial incident.
A Real World Example
Say two teenagers, Janie and Susie, have a conflict over who misplaced Susie’s favorite hairbrush. They may make up. They may apologize. They may appear to move on completely.
But if Susie holds on to her resentment, believing deep down that Janie really did take her hairbrush, that resentment may boil over into other matters altogether. She may hold Janie accountable for more than her fair share of their homework project; she may think Janie is making advances on Susie’s boyfriend. Resentment often spills over into completely unrelated things in just this fashion.
If there is a lingering resentment, it could show up in any interaction between the two, even if it is completely unrelated to the original issue. In fact, many times it is more likely to come up elsewhere because Susie feels secretly ashamed for still resenting Janie after they made up.
Fixed Attention
Another common sign of unsettled resentment is an unusual level of attention to the other person’s motives in mundane actions. This is really a manifestation of projecting one’s own feelings of displeasure onto the other person. Going back to the previous example of Susie and Janie, Susie may think that Janie is suddenly acting “fake”. Susie finds herself questioning if Janie really meant it when she said she liked her earrings, or the real reason that Janie offered to drive them to the mall.
The motive behind the other person’s actions becomes more and more suspect as time goes on. Soon, the offender is simply assumed to be duplicitous in everything. Resentment like this can ruin a relationship quickly if it is not dealt with properly.
Signs of Bitterness
The third sign is simply a certain sourness or bitterness that shows itself whenever the other p
erson is around, though it may not necessarily be overtly directed at that person. Many times resentment couples with the previously mentioned sense of shame when a person knows that they should not feel that way.
The result can be an unfocused, unproductive sense of bitterness every time the other person is around. Because the bitterness has become detached from the real issue that sparked the resentment, it has no real focus and we tend to lash out at anyone in the vicinity.
This presents a great danger to our happiness because it affects not only our already troubled relationship, but our other relationships as well. This can begin a downward spiral, or domino effect, that works its way through the resentful person’s entire life.
Resentment does not always focus on a person. We can resent a pet, a company, a religion, even our own bodies. In order to get past the feeling of resentment we need to look at the root cause of our resentment.
Do I really resent the dog, or do I resent my wife for buying the dog without consulting me? Is it the church, or the gossipy neighbor who goes attends services there? Not always, but usually, there is a person on the other end of our resentment, a person who needs our forgiveness just as much as we need to forgive them.
Afterword
True Forgiveness Is Your Choice
Forgiveness is the cure for anger, bitterness, resentment, and depression. The key is that in order for the healing catharsis to take effect, you must truly and sincerely forgive your offender. Mere lip service, repeating the words of forgiveness like some sort of mantra will do nothing but add an additional layer of guilt and disappointment on top of your anger and bitterness.
How to Forgive Even When You Can't Forget Page 3
