- How can you forgive someone you loathe?
- How do you forgive someone who has badly wounded you?
- What if you can’t forgive because the pain is severe and the wound is deep?
You’re not stupid, and you know that bitterness is like swallowing poison and hoping the other person dies: and of course, you know that forgiveness sets you free … EVERYONE KNOWS THAT! But when you’re hurting and mourning your losses, the last thing you want to do is forgive: it just feels fluffy, unrealistic and patronising.
Just give me the knife and I’d gladly wield it: an eye for an eye … revenge is under-rated!
When we’re in pain and feeling aggrieved, it’s hard to see beyond revenge and being that bigger person we know we should be is the last thing on our minds.
I struggled to forgive my ex-wife for years of domestic abuse and unfortunately, because I had children with her, I didn’t get to walk away into the sunset so the healing process could begin. Like so many people in my position, I had to retain contact and play the game with dignity if I wanted to see my children. This meant more hurt with old wounds being kicked again and again so they couldn’t heal.
But over time, I have learned to forgive and forgiveness has helped me hugely. I’m blissfully remarried, I’m enjoying life and I’m thankful that I’ve found the headspace to be able to forgive. The following 6 points are what I’ve learned about forgiveness.
- When the pain is too raw, kickstarting the complicated process of forgiveness can be too much, even if deep down, you know its for your own good. Your brain’s resources are fully consumed by dealing with your emotions, so there is simply no capacity left for the challenging brain work which is tied up with forgiveness. So, early on, when the wound is fresh, don’t bother trying to forgive, just focus on; mourning, leaning on those around you for support and allowing yourself to feel and express the pain.
- Bitter people make dumb decisions because bitterness is an all-consuming black hole and when you’re spinning around in the darkness, you won’t make rational decisions. If you continue to make dumb decisions though, it will be tougher for you to fully bounce back from the hurt. Some people say that forgiveness sets you free: they’re right … AND … forgiveness also empowers you to make better decisions. Those better decisions will steer you into creating a happier and more fulfilling life for yourself.
- There comes a time (there are no rules and only you know when it is) when the wound is still sore, but you know in your gut that it’s time to re-balance yourself, to re-group so you can move forward in spite of the pain. It may be too early to forgive yet, but you could start by focusing on being philosophical about what happened. A philosophical approach is about looking at what happened from the view of a wise and external observer, detached from the raw emotion. Do you notice anything different?
- Take time to develop a consistently philosophical approach: it won’t happen immediately, but every time you feel hate/bitterness within you, jump to the perspective of that wise and external observer.
- When you’ve become philosophical about what happened, forgiveness becomes possible. Forgiveness does not mean that what happened is OK, it just means that you choose to move forward without harboring bitterness: you choose to focus on rebuilding your own life and living joyfully in your own skin, rather than hoping that the perpetrator’s skin is burnt to charcoal as a result of the bad karma he/she is owed.
- After forgiveness, you move forward, you’ve learned some tough but valuable lessons about life, and you realize that if you chose to pick at the wound, it would quickly get sore again, but that wound no longer defines you and, so long as you leave it alone and don’t pick at it, it’s a healed wound with a scar which gets fainter over time.
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This post was previously published on Medium and is republished here with permission from the author.
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