HOW TO FORGIVE AN OFFENSE IN 4 STEPS

2024 Author: Harry Day | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 15:43

Each of us sometimes experiences feelings of resentment towards the other. And along with it feelings of injustice, anger, pain, anger, irritation, annoyance, despair and desire for revenge. With anger, we often close ourselves off from our own fears and guilt, powerlessness to change something, to return it as it was.

• Until we forgive, there is hope in our hatred of the abuser. The hope that the other will change his mind and change himself, understand what treasure he has lost, admit his guilt, crawl on his knees or on a white horse and beg for mercy and pardon. As long as we do not forgive the exes, we hope that everything will change and even start over.
• Until we forgive, we are protected from disappointment. In itself. In a different. In relationship. In life. We are scared to come into contact with reality and the imperfect world. We prefer to remain illusioned.
• Until we have forgiven - we, on the one hand, are the victim, whom it is customary to feel sorry for, and on the other hand, we retain "power" over the offender, pull up the defeated dignity and wounded pride by the ears. There is nothing more useful in the household than a “guilty husband”.
• Until we forgive, we hope to receive acceptance, unconditional love, such necessary care and attention in childhood from parents who could not give all this due to their own inferiority. Sometimes we hope so strongly that we transfer our feelings of resentment and anger to men and women, broadcasting “all men are goats” or “all women are bitches” from generation to generation.
• Until we forgive, we envy those with whom such grief has not happened, as we had to go through. We try to protect our children and give them everything that we ourselves did not have in childhood, and then we envy them and cannot let go.
• Until we forgive, we allow others to treat us cruelly and unfairly, humiliate us, use them, and remain in destructive or addictive relationships.
• Until we forgive, we find ourselves in the same situations, we choose the same people in the hope of correcting our own past. But in fact we live the same trauma over and over again.
• Until we forgive, we try to be “obedient,” “good,” to please, beg, and deserve love.
• Until we forgive, we want revenge - to make him suffer, compensate, punish, humiliate and elevate his own ego. In other words, to return his own pain to him, because sometimes it hurts so much that it is simply impossible either physically or spiritually to withstand it, let it pass through oneself and not die.
• Forgiving doesn't mean pretending that nothing happened.

Sometimes forgiveness means “I don’t know if I’m ready to forgive more, and if I want to”. Sometimes not forgiving is also an understandable decision.

It's not easy to forgive. Forgiveness doesn't happen overnight. This is a complex and sometimes lengthy process. To truly forgive, you need to acknowledge the truth - the pain and sadness, the damage done to us, the anger that we felt in response, disgust, the desire to punish and take revenge that originated in us.

To forgive is to agree with the past and not demand compensation for the damage. Forgive not only the other, but also yourself. Stop blaming yourself for not being able to protect yourself from what happened. Accept your powerlessness. And my grief is like an experience that happened.

And yet, forgiveness happens when nothing else is needed. Such forgiveness frees one from connection. Forgiving doesn't always mean keeping in touch. This is a personal choice. Forgiveness simply completes the action.

When we forgive, we cross the person off the list of debtors.

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It is also important to forgive as equals. You cannot ask for forgiveness humiliatingly. You cannot forgive from above. After all, you never know exactly what you yourself are capable of doing in life. We are all unholy.

The meaning of forgiveness is not to get bogged down in your grievances for the rest of your life, burying pain and anger even deeper, but to live your feelings, neutralize them and disconnect the source of pain. This can be helped by contacting a psychoanalyst. Dealing with grudges against parents or loved ones is one of the most common requests for forgiveness.

Forgiveness does not change the past. It illuminates the future.

And today you can try to do the 4-step writing exercise for forgiveness.

Left alone and armed with a notebook and pen, remember a situation or a person whom you find it difficult to forgive.

• Step 1: Indicate whom you want to forgive, and describe why.
• Step 2: Confirm your feelings about this situation at the present time. It is best if these are your sincere, even the most unpleasant feelings, and not the kind, polite things that you think you should feel. You must start with what you really feel. Then you express your desire to be open at least to the possibility of getting rid of these feelings.
• Step 3: List the benefits you will receive from forgiveness. Basically, it will be the opposite of what you are currently feeling. Sadness will become happiness, anger will become reconciliation, heaviness will become a feeling of lightness, and so on. If you are unsure of the benefits, just pick a few general good feelings that you would like to experience at the moment (be happier, freer, more confident, etc.). It will help if you can imagine how much better you will feel when you forgive.
• Step 4: Set a goal for forgiveness. It simply involves deciding who you intend to forgive and asserting the benefits you will receive from forgiveness.

There are several other important points about forgiveness. This is the ability to forgive not only others, but also oneself. And the fact that you have forgiven a person does not mean that he was right. In forgiveness, the important thing is that you express your feelings, your attitude, and realize how much pain or damage the other person has caused you. Along with this realization, you received life experience and have every right to prevent such treatment and attitude. You do not have to maintain a relationship with someone who has trampled on your dignity by their actions. If the relationship hurts, then it means that the time has come for you to realize your own worth. Forgiving a person does not mean that he should remain in your life. The decision is yours. Forgiveness gives you the power to let go of the person and leave them behind, cleanse your environment, let go of painful relationships, and move on.

It may happen that a person is too overwhelmed with feelings of resentment, pain and injustice, when too many grievances have accumulated throughout his life or even from childhood, that he does not have enough resources and the help of a psychologist is needed to get rid of the heavy burden of the past. Realizing this fact can also be the first step towards forgiveness.