Forgiveness

Over the years of doing psychotherapy with individuals and couples I have often observed a thematic trend from patient to patient. Sometimes I get a bunch of calls about relationship problems or several existing patients will bring up similar issues in the same week or even the same day. Lately I have noticed that I am talking with a bunch of folks about forgiveness. Often the historical issue that my patient is struggling with is an “unforgivable” event but we still find ourselves discussing what forgiveness means or what it looks like. I like to think about forgiveness as being a selfish – rather than a selfless – process. Sometimes we forgive people, not for them but, for ourselves.

Think about the amount of time, energy and emotion you devote (and continue to allocate) toward maintaining resentments, being angry and keeping hatred alive. Now imagine how liberating it would be to be able to let go of that and how you might reallocate that time, energy and emotion. I’m sorry, but I don’t have any magical answers about how this process unfolds other than to say that it is just that: a process, and it begins by talking about the transgression against you. Eventually you may or may not opt to have a conversation, write a letter or engage in some sort of symbolic gesture to “interpersonally” forgive your transgressor. I recently read an interesting article in the Huffington Post about forgiveness but the most inspiring thing I’ve come across regarding the concept of forgiveness was a great story on NPR’s The Story (scroll down to the second story and if you want to listen to the show, you can skip the first third of the mp3 file).

 


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