| Today I’m going to talk about the ‘F’ word. No, not that ‘F’ word! The word I’m talking about is forgiveness. Forgiveness gets a bad rap because people tend to confuse it with absolving another of their transgression against you. Forgiveness is not about giving someone a free pass to hurt you. It’s more for you than it is for them. Forgiving someone does not mean you have to associate with them. It does not mean you turn the other cheek or a blind eye. It really is all about you removing the emotional charge from the situation as much as possible so you aren’t carrying those low vibrational feelings all the time. There is a Buddhist saying that holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal that you intend to throw at someone else. The other person isn’t the one to get burnt. You are. In other words, it’s only painful for you. If you are still carrying around the pain then that initial transgression has lasted far beyond the incident. You’re being hurt every time you think about it. All of those same emotions come up just as if it was happening in the present. How then, can you remove the sting, especially when you’ll never get a true apology from the person who hurt you? First let’s outline a forgiveness cycle: |
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| 1. The transgression happens 2. You notice you are holding a grudge 3. You pause to consider the root of the grudge 4. You may have to overcome some emotions and abandon resentment (requires conscious action on your part) 5. You have a revelation, some insight, a change of heart 6. You get the benefit of feedback through talking it out 7. You achieve rapprochement 8. You feel the magic of forgiveness 9. The feedback upcycles as a lesson learned, rewiring the entire experience as a positive stressor The part you will be missing if the transgressor cannot or will not apologize or talk to you is the talking it out and rapprochement piece. You’ll never get their insight. More than likely, because that person lacks any kind of internal insight and awareness in the first place. So is forgiveness still possible in that case? Yes. But you’ll have to stop taking the other person’s actions personally. You’ll have to find a healthier belief about the situation. In 99.9% of cases, when someone’s actions harm you, it’s because that person is acting from their own trauma and those actions really had nothing to do with you personally. Even if the transgression came from a parent. When you can gain a higher perspective on the situation and think about what may have happened to that person in order for them to act that way, it can give you some peace with the situation. It’s always each individual’s responsibility to gain awareness of their patterns and heal, and you forgiving them doesn’t give that person a free pass to continue to turn a blind eye. Some people are just not to that space yet and some will never get there. There isn’t a single thing you can do about that. (Believe me, I’ve tried! It didn’t go so well) But you bringing compassion to the situation and letting go of the emotional charge facilitates your own healing. It helps you to let go of the negative emotions that are disrupting your peace. Negative emotions contribute to emotional inflammation which can have just as much detrimental effect on the body as physical inflammation. It’s better to be at peace than to hold onto a pattern. Forgiveness is for you, not them. And forgiveness doesn’t mean the relationship will be repaired. |
| Take It Deeper Here are some things you can do to take your forgiveness work deeper: 1. Anger release: if you are still harboring a lot of anger toward this person, I would suggest doing some release writing. Here’s a free resource that can help you do that: RELEASE WRITING INSTRUCTIONS 2. Journaling questions: a. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes for a moment. What would you have done differently? b. Why do you think this person acted the way they did? How do you think they were feeling? What were they thinking? c. Knowing what you know about this person, what might have happened to them to make them respond that way? |
Do you feel like it’s taking WAY too long to find your soulmate partner?
My Mother used to use the old adage ‘you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince’ whenever I was down
