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.
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.
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.
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 negative consequences of not forgiving has been documented in studies that show that it can lead to emotional pain of anger, hate, hurt, resentment, bitterness and so on and as a consequence can create health issues, affect relationships and stop us from experiencing the freedom that forgiveness enables.
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.
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.
The final stage of forgiveness is Acceptance.
You feel at peace. You no longer need to keep your anger close to your heart. You are ready to release yourself from the bondage of bitterness or resentment. You find you no longer need to harbor the pain as a way of protecting yourself.
Forgiveness is an essential component of being able to attain mental, relational, physical and spiritual well-being. It means forgiving yourself and forgiving those who have caused your trauma, thereby creating space for more positive thoughts. Forgiveness can be both a psychological and a spiritual journey.
Forgiveness means acknowledging what has happened but not allowing yourself to hold onto a grudge, which may cause you immeasurable physical and emotional pain. Holding onto someone else's wrongdoing eats away at our heart, even though they rarely have an idea what turmoil it is causing us.
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.
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.
And there's no set time for how long it takes to work through and process the hurt. “Forgiveness is allowing negative feelings of outrage and grief to come in, and then letting them go because you're now at peace with your life.”
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.
Later, Matthew 18:21-22 says that we are to forgive someone “seventy-seven times” (or, in many translations, “seventy times seven,” which is 490 times). In Luke 17:4, Jesus says that you should forgive someone seven times in one day; that would work out to more than 2,500 acts of forgiveness each year, every year.
Matthew 18: 21-22 21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, “Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?” 22 Jesus answered, “I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
Definitions of unforgiving. adjective. unwilling or unable to forgive or show mercy. “a surly unforgiving old woman” Synonyms: revengeful, vengeful, vindictive.
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.
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.
Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.
Forgiveness is often defined as an individual, voluntary internal process of letting go of feelings and thoughts of resentment, bitterness, anger, and the need for vengeance and retribution toward someone who we believe has wronged us, including ourselves.