Forgiveness has always had a place in spiritual teachings, but now there is scientific evidence that supports the claim that forgiveness can actually help increase mental and physical wellbeing.
Frederick Luskin, PhD and his colleagues conducted The Stanford Forgiveness Projects and found that using a randomized controlled procedure, they were able to teach participants a 9-step forgiveness process to help them lower stress, anger, and perceived hurt.
What’s more, all of these positive outcomes were stable at a four month follow-up.
Forgiveness can be a powerful resource for a client experiencing the pain and hurt of an unresolved conflict.
This video with Joan Borysenko, PhD, will show you how forgiveness can change your patient’s story of hurt into a story of heroism − it’s only 3 minutes long. Click the play button below.
Has forgiveness ever played a role in your approach to healing? Please leave a comment below.
Dear James,
I think your question is a great one. I thought about it as it applies to the clients I work with as a Behavioral Analyst and as an Intuitive.
I think and sense the “small” hurts add up. Like the concept of the Emotional Bank Account developed by Stephen Covey, each withdrawal from the well being of another counts and are cumulative. And my experience has been if a person is willing to inflict “small” hurts on others, they are willing to do “bigger” hurts as well. As you know, the abuse cycle includes “small” hurts as precursors to much larger violations.
I encourage my clients to notice all withdrawals from their well being and then weight them. In this way they become conscious of their occurrence and their effect. Then I ask them to tally the toll by way of assessing the overall damage. Then we can begin to work together to disengage from people and situations that damage our their being. This might look like leaving to learning to engaging in repudiative detachment.
I hope this is helpful and thank you for helping me learn more.
it’s obvious that to forgive and the process of forgiving is very rarely if only briefly realised to it’s favourable outcome.
this is without question an extremely sensitive topic.
While I was growing up, I lived in a very chaotic household. My dad is bipolar (along with ADHD and a narcissistic personality disorder) and mother was borderline personality disorder. There was a lot of physical abuse and even more emotional abuse to me and my two younger sisters. It was not until I was in my 30s when I realized those ‘hard lessons’ I learned during formative years had stood me in good stead in my adult life in many ways. Realizing that “something good came out of” such horror completely transformed the way I viewed my history and I stopped being a victim and became someone who had triumphed over that history. This changed perception completely changed my life. Since then I have been working with abused women, women caught up in codependency, and women who had been victimized at some time and have used cognitive restructuring as one of the tools in treatment. When I retired from the community mental health center and opened my own practice, I made my motto: “Without change, there would be no butterflies” and one of the quotes is: “Just when the caterpillar thought her world was over, she became a butterfly” as the trigger for the new concepts. Viewing our world differently, inner and outer, often sets us free from whatever is a barrier to our full experience of who we are in the here and now. I am very happy that NICABM is provding this series.
Many PTSD sufferers have an issue with forgiveness and acceptance. Some believe acceptance and forgiveness means agreeing or giving approval.
These are hard concepts for a trauma person to execute. Another way that I found that is easier for them and us to work is let others or the abuser answer for his life a d we need to answer for ours.
I refuse to judge my fathers abuse towards me amd therefore let him answer for his behavior and now it is my goal to live my life and answer for my behavior.
This is a space that without knowing what he faced, how can I judge him. You can let go easier from here or be able to do oil daily practice of healing without blame or concern for our abuser.
Stopping dissociation should be top priority because it is where PTSD fuels and grows in our mind engaged in thoughts of the past and worry about the future. The more time spent in this moment the more trauma loses its power.
Simple instructions and handouts to,work on thoughts between sessions is priority.
When your client moves with the smallest effort to heal, the vbrain chemistry changes. We are now not a victim but actively trying to change even if it is the smallest act. Get your clients to take mental action, use mindfulness every time a thought appears. Simple
If this little video gift is an ad for the coming series, I must say you almost talked me out of paying $150 for what sounds like a feminist seminar. This clip seemed to suggest that only women ruminate on experienced injustices. It was difficult for me as a man to “try on” Borysenko’s teachings in a clip where men were only mentioned as distressing reasons to practice forgiveness.
On the other hand, special attention to the well-being of women is an appropriate response to the rising wave of anti-feminism that accompanies the militarization of AmericaI. I hear echoes of the traditional Germanic slogan: “Kinder, Küche, Kirche” in the abortion/contraception debate and some of the recently adopted state laws.
Anyhow, I’ll be there for the next series. No matter how I feel about your promotional materials, your product is nonpareil: NICABM’s programs have regularly exceeded my fondest expectations.
Your series sounds wonderful. The free option is not at a day or time that I can be home to watch so I cannot take advantage of it.
I do wish you offered a see later option at a lower cost. There is a limit to my education budget which leaves me missing your Gold offers.
What do people do when they cannot forgive themselves? I believe in forgiveness & have been able to forgive many people for hurts caused in my life, but I have not been able to forgive myself for the hurt I cause myself. I have had bulimia for 11 years and it has taken over my life. It is all consuming & it is all I can think about day in day out. I have such deep self hate for myself & for being the way I am, I cannot seem to break free.
Can anyone suggest how to forgive youself?
Kelly, when I was young I struggled with bulimia and was filled with shame over it. I had a relationship with God, and I asked God to forgive me. I had a spiritual insight – the experience of hearing God speak to me from a place within myself but which was not in my own voice. I have heard many others describe hearing God speak to them this way, as well. I heard God say, about my bulimia, “I already forgave you. Just forgive yourself.” And in the experience of God’s presence I intuitively knew what this would look like. I learned to forgive myself for every bite of food that I ate. I learned to tolerate the anxiety, fear and shame that food created, and learned to center in the moment, allowing the food I ate to remain in my body, trusting my body to metabolize it, and realizing that I could make better/healthier choices next time, if I had eaten something I regretted and wanted to purge. If I did purge, I learned to forgive myself for that – moment by moment. Step by step, I walked away from bulimia, by forgiving myself with each event of eating. Now, as a therapist, I can see, that God taught me some genuine Dialectical Behavioral Therapy techniques. It was hearing that voice – and feeling the overwhelmingly loving presence that accompanied It, that began the transformation for me. My belief was that God did already forgive me. Who was I not to forgive myself? The experience of a Higher Power that knows us and loves us better than we love ourselves is transformational for many. I hope some of this is helpful for you, as you seek forgiveness and healing for yourself.
To me forgiveness is being able to let go of anger and attitude attached to particular persons or events. Letting go can be accomplished through development of meditation practice. Meditation must be practiced. Forgiveness can range from something small like having a person forget to phone you to having someone hurt your loved one.
I don’t claim to have reached “perfection” in this process but I feel that I am on the path. We need to practice being in the here and now. Forgiveness, as I see it is like other forms of stress, in extreme cases it can trigger heart attacks. I think we need to understand how fundamental religious beliefs like Christians, Jew’s, and Islamist can wind up killing each other. It reduces to “us versus them” and “they”
Are we struggling with a “human” characteristic or is it animalistic “Cats and Dogs” etc
This is where meditation can come in because as we meditate in the here and now things, ideas and feeling pop up.
When this happens to me I move to RAIN R= recognize A= accept I= investigae N= Not attach
Good luck to us all
While I think, if it does transpire, forgiveness can be a beautiful thing, healing most certainly does not depend on it. In fact, sometimes we are too quick to “forgive”, resisting and cutting ourselves off from our own pain and anger through an act of “forgiveness”. How can we, instead, help clients identify and tolerate the emotions that arise moment to moment?
There is nothing wrong with not wanting to forgive, and not ever actually
forgiving. I think we put too much pressure on people to do this. To paraphrase Judith Herman, real healing comes from the discovery of restorative love in our lives, not whether or not we forgive.
The setting yourself free by forgiving someone is so vital to freeing up a huge part of the heart and mind. But in my experience you can’t do it until you are ready and sometimes that can take looking at all the pluses and minuses of the story you tell yourself. Thank you Joanie for the reminder!
Forgiveness is not so much about what the other person did or did not do. It is about what you tell yourself about it. I recently had the experience of realizing that I still had an attachment to someone that was based more on my need to forgive him, than on anything he did or didn’t do. I was stuck on his perceived flaws and yet, so much of my own truth became apparent because of what he did.
Just incredible! and I am also reminded how easy it is to remember what someone else did that hurt but forget our own part in the story. Knowing that I simply wasn’t ready for the relationship sets me and the other free. I have been able to open my own heart to both self love and love of other once again.
daVinci was correct: You can neither love nor hate what you do not know.
Our country, with its penchant for fee-for-service for-profit healthcare business practices, has prevented inclusion of alternative medicine techniques into mainstream medicine and put barriers up regarding paying for wellness. Certainly, we’re even further from acknowledging and reimbursing for Spirituality in Medical Care, but it is clear this is the component we are sorely missing, especially when considering the pain of depression and the tragedy of suicide. Our clergy should be integrated into our primary care practices along with mental health providers who appreciate Spiritual Health and Fitness along with Physical and Mental Health. A survivor of three years (so far) after my son’s suicide to end his pain at 21 years old, I have a new ‘through the mirror’ look at 25 years of medical practice as a Pediatrician Family Advocate and Healthcare Administrator for the Army and DoD. My wife, Pam, and I, have struggled with forgiving the very healthcare system I championed and advocated for families in for ‘missing’ our son’s depth of depression and suicidal ideation, as the leaders can’t seem to acknowledge where we failed Andrew, and too many others along the way. The problem, it seems, is our healthcare system’s inability to get past litigation worries and make public our oversights and errors, despite best intentions. Surviving family members need to be heard, their grief and missed opportunities acknowledged, not dismissed, so we all can forgive and learn from them, to band together as an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) and Society to prevent further preventable tragedies and move on, together. If this series can address our society’s inability to talk about death, especially the questions surrounding wrongful death, integrity Spirituality into our medical processes so survivors can be heard and then let go of their anger to be part of the solution, forgiving all, we will have provided a great service to our Nation, bringing Spirituality into the medical mainstream as integrated primary care teams, a true wellness safety net surrounding our patients.
Dr. Patrin: I most sorry for your loss and want to commend you on your comments. I am an attempt survivor and live with ongoing suicidal ideation and struggles. Forgiveness for me is the ability to forgive myself, especially when I slip into more active suicidal thoughts and behaviours. Your comment: “Surviving family members need to be heard, their grief and missed opportunities acknowledged, not dismissed, so we all can forgive and learn from them, to band together as an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) and Society to prevent further preventable tragedies and move on, together” is the very type of comment that needs to be heard world-wide to help with suicide prevention. I would like to add to that the need for those such as myself to be heard alongside those bereaved by suicide so we can work “together” to forgive, understand, and find the strength to help future generations. A well-rounded therapeutic approach that includes spirituality seems to me (and many suicidal individuals that I have worked with) helps bring the forgiveness needed to move on and moving through such troublesome times.
We were never meant to live this life on our own. To those willing to answer God’s call to submit and obey we are given supernatural power to live and to forgive. Without the enabling help of the Holy Spirit it is unlikey we can forgive to the extent we can heal and be reconciled. Those that are forgiven are obliged to forgive.
Dorothy: A gold star for you, the only one to mention the Christian solution to all these problems. “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us’, according to Emmett Fox, is absolutely essential. It speaks to our inherent stain of Original Sin, and our desperate need for forgiveness, only available only from our Creator, which is iliicited by His entreaty to first forgive others. It is a huge point of healing for us all, and influences all areas of our lives, physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual. Blessings to all.
The “big” hurts in our lives are often quite easy to recognize–though certainly not “easy” to heal. I wonder about ourselves and our clients faced with the “little” hurts and resentments that build up over time. Those we “blow off,” and push down or set aside. Some help/ideas for how to get clients to increase their awareness of these and forgive or truly let go would be helpful.