The Blocks to True Forgiveness

The Blocks to True Forgiveness — True Forgiveness is a self-responsible action aimed at you, and you alone. You forgive to set yourself free.

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A friend of mine emailed me the other day, and among other things, asked this question:

Here’s a thought to write about on the blog — for­give­ness. I read that it’s all about the self i.e. let­ting go. Christ seems the most tan­gi­ble exam­ple in his­to­ry. But what are the blocks in true forgiveness?

I’ll address forgiveness, but briefly mention reconciliation, as they are different.

• The act of for­give­ness is one-sided — as my friend put it, it’s about the self — about let­ting go.
• Rec­on­cil­i­a­tion is actu­al­ly work­ing through the issue through with the oth­er person(s) — the offend­ed and offend­ing par­ty come to a res­o­lu­tion. In AA, steps 8–10 address rec­on­cil­i­a­tion in the oppo­site direc­tion, as the “offend­ing par­ty” first owns, then makes amends for their actions.

Looking at Forgiveness, Blame, and the Blocks to True Forgiveness

One theme present in my writ­ing is that
self-respon­si­bil­i­ty is the only way to get any­where with one’s life.

To toss out an alter­nate view, just look South of Canada’s bor­der, to the States. Trump is a blamer, as are his fol­low­ers. Every­one else is to blame — the Democ­rats, peo­ple who are dif­fer­ent from “WASPs,” etc. for every­thing Trump and his Trum­pettes don’t like. 

It just doesn’t go anywhere, because blame solves nothing. And what needs solving is the mess the Trumpites have made for themselves.

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Self-responsibility like going back to school and starting over.

All with­out scream­ing, “But, it’s not fair! Why should I have to behave dif­fer­ent­ly?” But I digress, just a bit.

True Forgiveness is letting go.

For­give­ness has absolute­ly noth­ing to do with the actions of the oth­er per­son.
It has noth­ing to do with what the oth­er per­son does when you for­give them. 

Back when I was coun­selling, peo­ple would go on and on about why for­give­ness was dif­fi­cult, or impos­si­ble: “My par­ents, my spouse, my kid… did this and this and this, and I can’t for­give them.” Or, “I. angry because I want my par­ents, or spouse, or kids to love me, and they don’t.”

The last one was fun, as quite a few then admit­ted that the oth­er per­son was dead. So what­ev­er they thought they want­ed wasn’t com­ing their way. I’d point out that the dis­tress they were feel­ing was inter­nal­ly gen­er­at­ed, and had noth­ing to do with the oth­er person.

This was a hard sell.

So, let me say it again. What you feel inside is yours: you’re mak­ing it up as you go. 

It’s your inter­nal theatre! 

If you hap­pen to have a sib­ling, do you have sto­ries from grow­ing up that you remem­ber dif­fer­ent­ly? Say, a sto­ry you con­tin­ue to hurt your­self over, and your sib doesn’t?

Well, what­ev­er hap­pened, hap­pened. How you and your sib­ling define what hap­pened is inter­nal — personal.

This is why forgiveness is internal.

I’m not going to get into a big dis­cus­sion over past events (or even ones that just hap­pened.) I’m not mak­ing light of death, war, star­va­tion, assault, abuse. I’m sim­ply acknowl­edg­ing that such stuff hap­pens, is dif­fi­cult, and needs to be let go of. 

By “let go,” I mean, put down… stop play­ing with. (I call play­ing with painful mem­o­ries men­tal mas­tur­ba­tion.)

Our minds are not our friend. Our minds love to tor­ture us. I’ve nev­er read a per­fect descrip­tion of why, but most of us are wired to make our­selves miserable.

Let me say it again. What we choose to make ourselves miserable over is internal and personal, and is never about another person.

Which is why when a friend com­plains to you about some imag­ined affront they imag­ine they’ve expe­ri­enced, you don’t react as they are react­ing. Or why, when some­thing trag­ic hap­pens, there are wide­ly dif­fer­ent reactions.

True Forgiveness is about choosing to let go.

I wish this was easy. For the major­i­ty of us who have not embraced our whole­ness, for­give­ness is a process.

Exam­ple: back in 1996 some rather dra­mat­ic stuff hap­pened in my life. I was mis­er­able with it for days, and it took months for me to work it through. 

For a year or 2 after it hap­pened, every morn­ing, dur­ing my show­er, I’d chew about a cou­ple of peo­ple, for­mer friends, who had been insti­ga­tors. I’d imag­ine all kinds of dire stuff, and then “wash it off along with the soap.” 

Prob­a­bly 6 months in, I began a process of actu­al­ly for­giv­ing them, by drop­ping the dire images as they arose. 

I sel­dom think of them any­more, and when I do, almost always, I feel “neu­tral.”

This reminds me that true forgiveness is a choice and process — you forgive again as you need to (each time you  bother yourself)

On rare occa­sions where I find myself “chew­ing on the past,” I give myself a few min­utes to chew, then have a breath and get going with my day. My mind lets go as soon as I decide I was (at this moment) done chewing.

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Some years ago, I wrote a book­let called The Watch­er… it’s about deal­ing with depres­sion and oth­er annoy­ing voic­es in our heads. 

You can use the same plan includ­ed in The Watch­er to work on for­give­ness. Just click here — you’ll end up on The Phoenix Cen­tre Press site.

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My friend wondered about the impediments to forgiveness.

Here’s the non-news: the imped­i­ments are self-cre­at­ed.

Please, repeat after me: no one is doing any­thing to you. The only per­son, inside of you, that mess­es with you, is YOU! 

Impediments to True Forgiveness

1) Lik­ing to feel bad: For­give­ness requires giv­ing up on feel­ing sor­ry for yourself. 

My mom was a mas­ter at mak­ing her­self into a poor vic­tim, hard done by. Her sighs were dra­mat­ic. Nev­er solved a thing, but being able to think, for exam­ple, that she was the sick­est per­son in the room rang her chimes. She nev­er could answer the ques­tion, “But why do you want to be the sick­est per­son in the room?’ 

Feel­ing bad, or stu­pid, or “to blame” is addic­tive, because when you do it ini­tial­ly, peo­ple rush in to care-take. 

But it gets old fast, and friends get tired of the “poor me” stuff, so peo­ple caught in “poor me” have to cre­ate ever-new sto­ries to defend their stance. 

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2) Mar­tyr-com­plex: Ah, mar­tyrs… poor things… every­one is out to get them. Oth­ers are blamed for every­thing, from mar­riages dis­solv­ing, to bad par­ent­ing, to a gener­ic ongo­ing misery. 

Mar­tyrs pre­dict dire out­comes, none of which ever hap­pen. But boy are they smug in their martyrdom. 

It’s hard to give mar­tyr­dom up, as self-respon­si­bil­i­ty (which includes accept­ing that my feel­ings are cre­at­ed sole­ly by me, not ever by oth­ers…) is hard and scary. Besides, mar­tyr­dom is respect­ed in some cir­cles, apparently. 

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3) “I’m not done yet”: I used to see clients who didn’t for­give because they hadn’t “extract­ed my pound of flesh yet.” 

Get­ting even, get­ting over on some­one, blame and pun­ish­ment — many are the folk caught in such dra­ma. Trump, anyone? 

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4) The Tor­tured, Wound­ed pup­py: This is #1, writ large. Peo­ple won’t let go because they aren’t done tor­tur­ing them­selves yet. They proud­ly take on the ban­ner of “bad per­son,” and cut pieces off of themselves. 

I can only imag­ine what les­son they are teach­ing their chil­dren, about them­selves, about deal­ing with fail­ure, about how one relates, etc.

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I could write a few more, but you get it.

True For­give­ness is not relat­ed to what you imag­ine hap­pened, it’s not about blame, is not about ret­ri­bu­tion. It’s about mov­ing on. Let­ting go. Get­ting a life. 

And it’s about self-respon­si­bil­i­ty. When I put my atten­tion out­ward, there is always going to be a boogey­man. I can always find some­thing or some­one to freak out over. 

Freak-outs are option­al. Self-fla­gel­la­tion is option­al. For­give­ness is optional.

But if you want your life to be use­ful, it’s time to let go of the games, get real, and move on.

For­give­ness is not some mys­ti­cal, mag­i­cal, reli­gious act. It’s basic self-preservation.

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