Do you have any advice on forgiveness?

[Daisies975]

If anyone could recommend a good book on forgiveness, or has any other advice on how to forgive something very difficult, I would be really grateful.

Depends on the situation. Can you give any more info?

There are some things which are unforgivable. Nobody here will advise you to work on forgiveness without knowing what it is you feel you should forgive.

I prefer not to go into the details of what happened. I'm not looking for advice on how to deal with the specifics of the situation. I'm looking for advice on how to let go of anger and hurt. I am already doing the following:

• therapy
• meditation and prayer
• trying to focus on the good things in my life rather than dwelling on what happened

The anger and hurt are still there, so if anyone has experienced deep anger and hurt after being wronged, and managed to let go of them, I would be grateful to know how they did that.

It takes time, I don't think forgiveness is easy however it does allow you to move on with life. Holding on to anger is like taking poison and expecting the other person to suffer. You have to decide when you're ready that what that person did is not your problem and that anger is taking up far to much space in your life. You can forgive the person but you don't have to forgive the deed.

You don't have to tell them you forgive them, you don't have to ever speak to them again you can decide to forgive for your own peace of mind. Acknowledge how you feel, write down how much you dislike what they did and burn it. Imagine that person in front of you and say everything you want to.

Find any way you can to be happy in each day. Make it a priority to do something every day that brings you some sense of peace.

Check out The Forgiveness Project.

Maybe you aren't ready. I don't think forgiveness is something that can be forced. You're already doing all the right things to improve your life and that is great, but I would say one thing: don't put pressure on yourself to forgive. Ultimately forgiveness is for you, not for the other person. It's for you, to finally free yourself of the past. And that needs time.

Do not seek to forgive. If you do that then you'll find yourself focusing on the other person way too much. Forgiveness is really much more related to the other person than it is to you. There's a whole load of nonsense written about forgiveness as if it benefits the person doing the forgiving. It doesn't. What does benefit is the forgetting, or at least not thinking about it so much.
Do not believe the crap about you need to forgive to move on. You do not need to forgive to move on. What you need to do is focus on yourself. Do what makes you happy. Keeping yourself busy will help in the early days. It takes time for the anger and upset to reduce but it will reduce with time.

I think you should acknowledge your right to feel angry if you have been wronged. But you need to move on from this and stop dwelling on it. It is what it is. I agree you don't need to forgive to move on. Say to yourself x happened I can't change that.

I think "forgiveness" is a very loaded word and the concept seems to mean different things to different people.

Would a better term be "acceptance"? As in, you can reach a level of acceptance that This Thing happened, it was not your fault, it was not some sort of divine karma or retribution for your behaviour or character.

Writing a letter to the perpetrator (assuming there is one) can be powerful in validating your own emotions. It can be good to share this with a therapist. Some people like to burn these letters afterwards. Mine started "I am no longer afraid of you and you no longer have any power over me."

My forgiveness was reserved for myself. I forgave myself for having fears and grief over what I had endured. I forgave myself for having PTSD. I honoured my own courage and strength by being kind to myself and paying it forward by helping others in similar situations to me.

I was able to let go of the anger, which was only poisoning me and doing nothing to my abuser, or to the people and the systems which had let me down.

I hope you are able to find peace OP

For what it's worth, when I had some of the toughest times of my life, and I needed to grow and get ready for the next chapter it was the likes of this that really helped me to achieve it.

Best wishes.

I agree I don't think it's forgiveness that you are looking for, it's more acceptance.

I know for me allowing myself time to grieve for the loss of what life should have been, was key. Anger and crying and most importantly being OK with some self pity(that was a huge one! as we are always taught not to be so self endulgence)

it takes time, and eventually you accept it has happened and sort of move on.

Last year I wrote a long essay, an order of events, about what lead up to and during a challenging episode and how it made me feel.

I had been distraught and suffering for quite a long period so writing it all down was calming and cathartic. I drafted several copies before I was satisfied.

From time to time I have felt compelled to read my journal but these days I just leave it tucked away in my private files. If the nonsense rears its ugly head again I might find it useful to read it because for sure there’s gonna be no repeats of the behaviour without consequences and certainly NO further forgiveness.

Life goes on and these days I feel able to forgive the sinner but not the sin. Writing it out made me feel empowered and more confident instead of feeling like a victim of someone else’s bad behaviour.

That's how I dealt with the hurt and betrayal foisted on me. Others may be inclined to try journaling too?

Also depends what has instigated the desire to forgive. If it is because of financial gain like an inheritance then it will be more difficult to do.

Thank you so much for the thoughtful replies. Some very wise words here and things to reflect on. Writing down what happened, and maybe writing a letter to the person, without sending it, are good ideas, and I will watch that video.

It's an interesting question about how forgiveness and acceptance interrelate - I will give it some thought. Definitely for me acceptance is part of what I need to work on. My life is so different, now and in the future, from what it would have been. I'm finding that really, really hard to accept.

I'm wanting to get rid of the anger and hurt that are in me. I don't want them making me bitter, and I don't want them affecting me.

For example: the other day I was on the phone with a technical support person for my TV, which is not working. The call was becoming quite frustrating. I was having to really struggle to keep myself calm and not take out my frustration on the technical support person. I really feel that if I didn't have so much anger inside me over what has happened, things like that would not get to me so much; it would be much easier to be patient and calm. As it is, I feel I have lots of anger simmering beneath the surface, and a relatively insignificant thing can bring it up. This is not the kind of person I want to be.

It's a really good point about having forgiveness for myself - for the grief, and to some extent the shutting down emotionally, that were consequences of what happened.

@Nonentity4 I have nothing to gain from the forgiveness other than inner peace and hopefully being a better person - not someone who's struggling not to snap at a technical support guy on the phone!

Oh OP, I was in your place 2 years ago. It gets better. It just takes time, more time than you would want it to take, and the willingness to sit with your emotions, as hard and uncomfortable as that can be. It is not an easy thing.

My anger was so strong in the beginning, I couldn't sleep and I would just ruminate endlessly. So I ran, regularly, practiced self-care, allowed myself a period of time each day to be angry and ruminate, and then I would distract myself for the rest of the day. Therapy helped a little. I also got anti-depressants that helped my anxiety (I started having panic attacks, and was not an anxious person). And then over time, I noticed my anger lesson and I stopped ruminating. It just slowly went away.

I am at the forgiveness stage now. I don't know if I can completely forgive, but I hope I can. I certainly do not have such strong feelings when I think of the people who hurt my family and I so badly. I can get angry when I think of the damage they caused, but I get over it quickly and I don't dwell. The experience stays like a scar, though, so you may never be the same as you were before.

All the very best, OP, and be kind and patient with yourself.

Also, I explained to those around me if I was having a bad day (ie- really cranky and snappy), and I would take myself away to calm down/feel better. And I would apologise to anyone I was unnecessarily short with.

I remember wrestling with the concept of forgiveness after being badly wronged, and I think for similar reasons. What was interesting to explore was anger. I find being angry very hard. Counselling taught me that anger can be a useful energy. Righteous anger is ok and can be productive.

I think I was trying forgive so I wasn't angry because I found being angry so difficult. Women are not socialised to be angry. But I think like others have said, acceptance is probably better.

@Spanisheomellletttes That's so encouraging to read - thank you.

@ConfusedNoMore That's a really interesting thought. How did you deal with the anger?

Reading the different comments, I guess allowing myself some regular time to just sit with the anger, allowing it to come up, could be helpful.

I found it best to frame any hurtful behaviour as being the problem of the perpetrator. I do not have to be a victim of someone else's shitty choices. It nothing to do with me.

I have had a lot of counselling which has helped me be less of a people pleaser and stand up for myself. Nobody would have said I was a push over before but I recognised a lot of people pleasing behaviour. I have not had my needs met growing up. I was taught that I was bottom of the pile and my job was to look after others. That's how I would be accepted.

I have learned to not look for external validation so much. To do things for myself. To say NO and feel no guilt. To 'speak my truth' as they say.

It is always a work in progress though. I would recommend writing to the person who upsets you but not sending the letter. I do this quite often. You do it to let go and release the anger.

I may have to do it myself again as I am dealing with some stuff. I would recommend it.

@Nowthatlovehasperished great advice. I found this in the excellent book the Courage to be Disliked (separation of tasks). It's also part of Transactional Analysis, looking at it slightly differently.

It's possible to not forgive but to find acceptance - and for me that came from focusing on my choices, my actions, not what had been done to me.
And it took time too - it took years to reach this point.

@Daisies975 total coincidence I am reading Fred Larkin’s “Forgive for Good”. Forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves, to help release the anger and resentment. He talks about allowing people who wronged us and unjust events to live in our heads ‘rent free’ and continue to cause us pain, even if it happened years ago. Forgiveness does not mean excusing what someone did, it doesn’t mean that we have to still have contact with them if we don’t want to, it means accepting that it happened and releasing the anger inside us, helping us to find peace with the situation and not allow what happened to cause us pain going into the future. I’m still in the middle of it but I kind of get the concept of his definition of it and so far it is helpful. I find it very hard, personally.