How to Forgive Even When You Can't Forget (4 page)

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 request 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.