“In fact, mental health experts recommend forgiving those who have hurt you to improve your mental health and well-being.” Remember that when healing a friendship, you also need to heal yourself. Beauchamp suggests turning to tools such as meditation, breathwork, and journaling to help you process any complex emotions.
If forgiving someone guarantees that they're back in your life, and if that puts those around you (like your children or family) at risk. If that person pressures you to partake in negative behaviors, for example, drinking if you're sober. If that person doesn't respect your boundaries.
Forgiveness actually embodies three different things, each of which applies to different situations and provides different results. The three types of forgiveness are: exoneration, forbearance and release.
Acknowledge your emotions about the harm done to you, recognize how those emotions affect your behavior, and work to release them. Choose to forgive the person who's offended you. Release the control and power that the offending person and situation have had in your life.
Responsibility: Accept what has happened and show yourself compassion. Remorse: Use guilt and remorse as a gateway to positive behaviour change. Restoration: Make amends with whomever you're forgiving, even if it's yourself. Renewal: Learn from the experience and grow as a person.
So, Responsibility, Regret, Repentance, Reconcile, Restitution. These are the 5 R's that are a path to asking for forgiveness.
Four simple phrases: “Please forgive me,” “I forgive you,” “Thank you,” and “I love you” — carry enormous power to mend and nurture our relationships and inner lives. These four phrases and the sentiments they convey can help us resolve interpersonal difficulties with integrity and grace.
Briefly describe what happened that felt hurtful or disrespectful. Say, “When I was talking, you (said or did this).” Don't go into a long story about what occurred or try to soften the blow by saying you know they didn't mean to be offensive. One sentence that describes your experience of their behavior is enough.
Anger is usually the reason why people say hurtful things. Before you dissect those verbal attacks, or analyze the 'whys' and 'wherefores' of the negative behavior, it is best to understand where those words are coming from. Ninety-nine percent of the time, they are the manifestations of an intense emotion – anger.
Move On in the Way That's Right for You
According to Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, it is completely possible to move on and heal from trauma without forgiving the perpetrator. In fact, forcing yourself to forgive, or pretending to forgive when you really haven't, can actually be counterproductive to healing.
In a word – absolutely! Forgiveness is the foundation that must be laid in order to journey toward healing. When we forgive someone, instant healing doesn't come (especially when the hurt causes deep emotional wounds). Once forgiveness takes place, we can choose to be intentional in the healing process.
Too many people withhold forgiveness because they don't believe the person who hurt them has changed or will change. This is a trust issue not a forgiveness issue. Forgiveness allows us to move forward after being hurt instead of staying stuck in the past because of unreleased resentment.
Often the hardest person to forgive is yourself. You are so hurt, yet you realize that you are the one to blame. You are the one who did it to yourself. And so you want to make yourself hurt.
Constant Lying
This can tie into cheating, but also just lying in general. If your partner keeps lying to you, he or she can't be trusted, and it's a level of disrespect and shadiness that might not be forgiven in a relationship, says Ziegler.
The final step to true forgiveness is to become a forgiving person. Take these steps into your everyday life, and you won't have to struggle with the burden of anger or feelings of resentment ever again.