Forgiveness

14/8/2024

Forgiveness is a very loaded concept and is used quite widely and,I suspect,  often inappropriately.

Forgiveness does not mean you condone what someone has done, or that you have to make up with the person who has hurt you.. It does not mean excusing bad behaviour, rather acknowledging that it happens and that people and the world are not perfect.  It means you are willing to accept that something bad has happened to you and you want to get on with your own life, and not remember the person who hurt you forever. It is not about forgetting, but it is about not letting that event or action impact your life for ever and a day. In essence it is about taking care of yourself. Also that people are not perfect, they mess up in relationships. I frequently reassure myself , and others, that people are, by their very nature, messy. We do things that are hurtful to others for all sorts of reasons. This is not to say that that is OK but  that as individuals we must take care of ourselves and live as good as life as we can, recognising that we are all messy. Relationship are integral to human life and sadly sometimes bad stuff will happen within them. That doesn’t mean that all our relationships should be poisoned by one person’s horrible messiness. We need all those other people in our lives as well.

It is deciding that we deserve to be happy, whatever other people might have done. And that is about us as individuals, not accepting other people’s version of us as stupid or undeserving.

I have been thinking about forgiveness in a number of contexts and was pointed to a podcast with Dr Rangan Chatterjee talking to Dr Fred Luskin. It is a really interesting discussion. Dr Luskin suggests that forgiveness involves ;

Making peace with the word No.

and

Giving up all hope of a better past.

Giving up on hoping for a better past can be a really tough one. If we didn’t get we wanted from our parents and family or school or whatever that realisation can be very painful.  And we can hold on to the sense of ‘I wanted and should have got that affection attention ,love.’ Or we can accept that it wasn’t right or fair, but is what happened and maybe we can find love and acceptance as an adult instead.  While that won’t change what happened it can allow the hurt to heal.  Not letting go, Dr Luskin and others suggest is a way of trying to control the future, as if somehow we can stop it happening again.  That is the one thing we cant do as controlling others is not in our gift.   

There is also something about the lure of the familiar.  One of the surprising things I have learnt as a therapist I how devoted we human beings are to the familiar.   Even when that familiar place hurts, somehow it feels safe because we know it.  I often describe it is a ‘fur lined rut’. It is safer to stay in the rut that we know, even though it hurts, or is dangerous than to risk the unknown outside.  The familiarity of feeling hurt and vulnerable can feel more familiar, and therefore safer,  than a different, new, feeling of being OK and getting one with new relationships. This also means recognising that there are some things that cannot change.  The behaviour of people in the past being one of them.

Above all he suggests that it is taking back your own power and deciding for yourself how you want to be.  It is not about the offender.  The offence happened and was hurtful, devastating, had an impact on you. But what is under your control is how you respond to that. We can’t change what happened to us but we can can think about how to protect ourselves from the impact of it.

A first step in this can be in thinking about how you handled it Ok, the courage out takes to face the hurt and not let it hamper you. To start feeling yourself a story about how you handled it fellas. Dr Luskin suggests. This can be a very powerful step forwards into a different future that hasn’t forgotten the hurt but is not still suffering from it.

Podcast and book

The Power of Forgiveness by Dr F Luskin