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.
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.
The author suggests a gentle but realistic plan for achieving forgiveness, which he calls the REACH program: Recall the hurt, Empathize with the one who hurt you, Altruistically decide to forgive, Commit publicly to forgiveness and Hold on to the forgiveness.
In my book, The Language of Love and Respect, I address these issues specifically in the Appendix entitled "Forgiving - but also Confronting - the Three A's: Adultery, Abuse, and Addiction." Also in this book, I include a chapter on Good Will vs Evil Will, and Forgiveness.
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.
Reasons Why It's OK Not to Forgive Someone
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 you cannot forgive, you cannot sustain love. Sooner or later a loved one will say or do something hurtful. Then a test of love will ensue. Without the aid of forgiveness, you will not be able to right and restore the relationship.
If someone asks for forgiveness over and over, then it is the duty of an individual to forgive them. In Matthew's Gospel, the teaching on forgiveness is continued, with Christ making it clear that in order to be forgiven, humans must forgive others.
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.
There are many valid reasons you may struggle to practice forgiveness, including deep hurt, lack of remorse from the person who hurt us, and fear that an injury may recur.
The Secrets of Forgiveness is a book for people that want toforgive the people they hate without talking to the ones they hate. In a refreshingly entertaining how-to guide CharanjitMannu serves up 15 refreshing chapters on the chooses we have and the ones wemake.
There is no forgiveness without repentance. God does not forgive unrepentant sinners. He loves them, and that is what He calls us to do, “Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you.”
Therefore, we ought to forgive others. Matthew 6:15 says, “But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” In addition, when we place our value in how God sees us rather than in how others see us, we are less likely to want revenge when someone else criticizes us.
Feeling angry can make us feel 'tough', and can be like an armour keeping away more hurt. But not forgiving someone leaves us replaying a painful situation in our mind until it erodes our sense of worth. This actually leave us more vulnerable in the long run. Think of the last time you were furious with someone.
In simple terms, the difference between acceptance and forgiveness is that forgiveness means letting go of the past. It allows you to move forward. Acceptance means you're not going to let the past define who you are now.
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.
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.
When someone does something wrong to you, it often takes time and effort to get beyond what they did and to forgive. A common observation, though, is that older people (in their 70s and 80s) are much more forgiving than young and middle-aged adults.
The first to forgive is the strongest. The first to forget is the happiest.” : The first to apologise is the bravest.
There are two sides to forgiveness: decisional and emotional. Decisional forgiveness involves a conscious choice to replace ill will with good will. "You no longer wish bad things to happen to that individual," says Dr. VanderWeele.