Forgiveness #2 1/25/07 RENO, NV (KUNR) - Dr. Frederic Luskin at Stanford, studies forgiveness, a subject that touches all of us eventually. None of us escape having something bad happen be it growing up with an abusive or absent parent, loving someone who leaves us, the loss of someone dear, facing a difficult illness or disability. Forgiveness is making peace with not getting what we wanted, be it something small or something more deeply shattering.

We hold myths about forgiveness that get in the way of letting go of our grudges. One myth is that if you forgive, then you're really forgetting. If you forgive the spouse who cheated and left you, you're not forgetting the wrongs they committed; rather, you're letting go of the grudge, the anger, you hold in your heart. Keep in mind the anger you carry with the grudge only hurts you; it doesn't hurt the offender. When you carry anger, you harm yourself; because of the connection between the mind and body, the anger impacts your health. It diminishes your immune system; it increases your physiological response to stress, specifically hurting your cardiovascular system. Forgiving isn't for the other, for the offender it's for you. You can forgive and still carry the memory of what went wrong; it's just that you hold the memory with less anger and with more compassion. Compassion towards yourself and towards the offender.

Another myth is that forgiving is condoning, that it's like saying what they did was OK. Forgiving is NOT condoning. You can forgive, stop suffering the resentment you hold, and still know that what they did was wrong. You can forgive and continue to hold your opinions about the offense and the offender. You can forgive and still know your spouse was wrong to have cheated, and wrong to have left you without even trying to repair the relationship but in forgiveness you don't have to have a huge emotional jolt of negative feelings every time you remember the offense.

You can forgive without having to reconcile. Forgiveness doesn't mean you have to stay in relationship with someone who has harmed you. You can forgive a parent who sexually abused you and still decide not to sit together at the dinner table for a holiday. Some people confuse reconciliation and forgiveness; they believe you've only forgiven, if you continue in the relationship with the person who's harmed you. This simply isn't true. You can forgive someone and still be done with the relationship. If you're in a difficult marriage, you can forgive your mate their emotional or verbal abuse and still decide you're done with the marriage. You have the right not to continue being in their presence, and you can still let go of being hurt or angry every time you think about them. Forgiving does not mean you have to reconcile or repair the relationship.

It's a myth to think forgiving is not a choice. Many of us think the ability to forgive an offense lies in how horrible the offense was; the more horrific the offense, the less able we are to forgive it; the less horrific the offense, the more able we are to forgive it. Using this logic, we could more easily forgive someone who cuts in front of us in line, than we could forgive a cheating spouse. Clearly, the more horrific the loss, the more we have to grieve the loss and that takes time. But once the grief work has passed, whether or not one forgives is a choice; it's not a process that lies outside our conscious will, harboring in the nature of the offense. People are capable of forgiving any offense, if they decide to let go of the grudge, the anger, the resentment. Forgiveness is a choice.

It's a myth to think you can't seek justice if you've really forgiven. Not true. You can let go of the emotional harm from the offense and still seek justice. You can still press a criminal suit and have forgiven the offender. You can still seek a divorce and have forgiven your cheating spouse. Seeking justice is not necessarily seeking revenge; it can be, but it can also be trying to impose consequences for bad actions and keeping the offender from hurting another.

People drive themselves nuts with the notion that you can't forgive unless the offender admits they've done wrong and make an apology. This is a recipe for powerlessness because you can't make someone do anything they don't want to do. If you decide you can't have peace unless the offender changes to admit their wrongdoing, then you're still giving the offender the power to decide when you get over their offense. It's even more senseless when the offender is dead and you'll never, in this lifetime, get what you want from them. Perhaps we hold onto the belief the offender has to apologize as leverage to make them acknowledge they were wrong and apologize; as if our continuing to suffer the resentment of the grudge is going to force the offender into giving us relief. You can see how crazy this sounds: if they cared about our feelings in the first place, they may not have committed the offense; if they didn't care about our feelings then, why should they care now? There are those who think they can't forgive until they've made sure the offender knows how deeply what they did hurt them. Again, a recipe for powerlessness because there isn't a path to make sure the offender gets it. You can forgive and it may have nothing to do with whether the offender acknowledges they were wrong, knows how much they hurt us, or says they're sorry.

Forgiveness is about getting peace again, being able to move on with your life and have it stop being organized around the harm you suffered because of the offense. Forgiving doesn't mean you have to condone the wrongdoing, or you can't seek justice. Forgiving doesn't mean you have to forget what happened. Forgiving doesn't mean you have to reconcile and continue in relationship with the offender. Forgiving doesn't hinge on the offender knowing how badly they hurt you or making an apology. Forgiving is a choice. After you've passed through the grief process and acknowledged how much you've lost, how sad you are over the harm, and you've begun to accept the loss, at that point, forgiving becomes a choice. A choice that allows you to live again in peace, to no longer have the harm chart your path. © Copyright 2012, KUNR