Forgiveness, challenging task, right? Especially if someone's not even sorry,
how are we going to do that? That's today at Live On Purpose TV.
As a psychologist,
I've learned so much from my clientele, in fact, I would venture to say that I've
learned more from my clients than I ever learned in graduate school and those of
you who have been in in my seat can probably understand what I'm talking
about from that. I had a client named Karen. Karen came to see me early on, I
think I had only been out of graduate school for maybe six months when she
came to see me. For some assistance, I was doing therapy at the time and she had a
story that was very compelling to me and disturbing in a lot of ways too because
sometimes, people abuse us or mistreat us. This had happened with Karen, as a young
girl, not to be too graphic about all of the details but she was severely abused
from about the age of 8 till she was about 16 by her stepfather. There's a lot
of things I hate about abuse and you could get me going on that but I just
wanted to setup the context for you. When Karen came to see me, she was in her mid
30's, she was about 150 pounds overweight, this is extra weight,
folks, okay. So she was very large, struggling with some health issues
because of her obesity, having all kinds of depression and anxiety and it just,
her life was just a mess, quite shortly and frankly. She had a daughter who was
about eight years old, was not married, so picture this, single mom who's dealing
with all of these heavy life issues and has come to me for some therapy. As we
were getting into the meat of the therapy with Karen, there came a time in
her therapy when I brought up a topic that I
commonly bring up, I didn't have as much experience then but I have learned that
this is a powerful concept that helps us to move past certain things that have
happened in our lives. Forgiveness.. when I brought this up
she came unglued, she almost came out of her chair as she said, "Forgiveness!? He
doesn't deserve forgiveness. He never even said that he was sorry, he never
admitted that it happened." Meaning her stepfather who had abused her for eight
years. How can I forgive him? That was her question. Okay so, let's take a look at
this for just a minute. To give you a little more context about her stepfather,
he had passed away 10 years ago when she was in her 20's, he was not even around
anymore and she's refusing to forgive him because he had never apologized,
he had never admitted that it was wrong, what had happened or even that it even
happened. Complete denial. See the problem? How long how long is Karen willing to
wait for him to be repentant before she forgives him? Do you see the problem?
I don't think it's going to happen and what happens to him when she forgives?
He's dead, okay. I don't know what you believe about the afterlife or whatever
it is but let's just assume that her forgiveness of him has very little
impact on him. Are you okay with that? So how do we forgive someone who's not
sorry, who hasn't apologized? That's a pretty
good question. What if we were to really understand what forgiveness is and what
it isn't? And maybe we'll start with what it isn't. We've actually jotted down a
few things here, myths of forgiveness, so track this for a minute. It is a myth that
forgiveness is the act of granting or bestowing some
thing upon someone. That's a myth. See, sometimes we think of forgiveness
that way. I'm giving them forgiveness, this is a gift that I'm giving to them.
No, that's a myth. You're not giving them to anyone. Go back to
Karen and her stepfather. What's she giving him? Nothing, he's dead.
So let's get that myth out of the way first. Here's another myth, forgiveness
requires that a person be sorry or penitent or apologetic. Myth!
Her step father's not going to be any of those things, is he? So we got to get rid of
that myth too, it's not about their level of penitence.
Here's another myth.. Forgiveness pardons or lets the person off for their
wrong doings, as if you have that kind of authority. That is a myth as well.
Forgiveness is not about pardoning someone or saying that what happened was
okay. In fact, that's the next one.. Forgiveness means that we agree that
what happened was okay. It's okay You know, we sometimes say that as an act
of forgiveness. That's a myth too. It doesn't mean that it's okay, there is
nothing that's okay about her stepfather abusing her for eight years. You cannot
sell that to me, it's not okay. So forgiveness is not saying that it was
okay. Now there's other myths but I wanted to start us out with those
because if we get clear about what forgiveness is not then maybe we can get
a little clearer on what it is. Now let's take a look at that for a minute. I've
written down a few of these as well. What if forgiveness is a healing gift
that we give to ourselves? Think about Karen for a minute, if she were to
forgive, probably wouldn't have any effect at all on her stepfather, probably
would have a huge effect on her and consider this for a minute, she's got a
daughter. How is that going to affect her sweet eight-year-old daughter? So let's
get clear about who the gift is for, whose life gets to change the most.
Now what if that person isn't dead? What if that person is still alive and
maybe even in your own home and life still?
Okay, you're forgiveness might might benefit them. Do it anyway. Alright, here's the
next one. Forgiveness is giving up a demand for a
better past. Oh wow, think about that for a minute, it's
giving up our demand for a better past that things will of or should ever might
ever could have been different. Getting the venom out of our own system.
This goes back to an analogy about a snake bite, when a venomous snake bites
you, what is the best course of action, I think you have at least two
possibilities, one possibility is to get a rock or a club and start looking
around for that snake and find it under whatever bush it's under, searching and
chasing that snake and then you beat it with this club or this rock. Okay, what's
happening to the venom as you are running around frantically trying to
destroy the snake? It's getting pumped into your system, it is going to every
cell in your body. what if the other alternative is to get the venom out?
Forget about the snake, get the venom out. That might be a better course of action.
That's what we're talking about with forgiveness. One other point that I
wanted to mention, I'm going to give you four steps, okay.
Releasing ourselves. Forgiveness is releasing ourselves from the judicial
role, it's releasing ourselves from the judicial role. You don't get to be the
judge, you don't have that authority anyway but what a relief it would be if
you didn't have to be the judge. What if you just let that go?
Nice, now I'm going to give you four steps, four steps that will allow you to
create a nasty grievance that will fester and boil inside
you forever, okay? Let's get clear about what those four steps are. Step one, get
hurt. Check, done. That's going to happen anytime
you interact with people. Get hurt. Step two, over personalized the offense,
make sure you take it personally. Every offense has a personal and an impersonal
component. Do you think Karen was abused by her stepfather because of who she was?
No, that happened because of who he was, that was his bad choice not hers. Are we
clear about that? But to form a grievance, you have to take it personally. Take it
as personally as you can. Step 3, blame someone or something else for how you
feel, it's not your fault, blame them. That nasty evil villain. And step 4, create and
retell a victims story. You know, the kind of story where you show up as a pitiful
victim of all of those terrible nasty horrible things that have happened to
you. How's that feel? That's kind of nasty, isn't it? I set that up purely as a
contrast so that we can take a look at, okay, what are the four steps that we
could follow that would bring forgiveness and I got these originally
from Dr. Fred Luskin who wrote a book called Forgive For Good, excellent book
with some great ideas. Four steps for forgiveness, here you go..
Step one, turn your brain on. Now, your brain is always on what we're
talking about is getting the blood flow redirected from the limbic system in
your brain back up to the prefrontal cortex which is in charge of logic and
problem solving and compassion and empathy and forgiveness, okay. You got to
use the right right part of your brain, as long as you're in a fight-or-flight
kind of a mode, you don't have the right kind of chemistry and blood flow
happening in your brain to actually support forgiveness. So you're going to
do something to calm yourself like breathing or yoga or meditation.
Let's get your brain turned back on because you need it for the next three
steps. Step number two, and you might need a coach to help you with this,
so be humble enough to hire somebody if you need to. Step number two is to
reframe the experience in a way that allows you to take it less personally. I
already did this for you with Karen, when I asked you is it about who she was,
there's about who he was. Do you see? The bad choices on that abusers side of the
table, not Karen's. So when you get clear about that,
notice that it didn't have to be Karen, it could have been anyone, whoever was
there. What kind of kids get abused, it's the kind were available to an abuser,
it's not about the kid. Could have been anybody. Now when Karen reframed it
inside as, "Oh well, it's not about me, it happened to me but it's not about me."
That allowed her to start to let go of that in a way that was so therapeutic
and helpful to her. So we've got step one is turn your brain
o,n step two is reframe. Step three, responsibility. Take full responsibility
for how you feel. You're never wrong about how you feel, if you'll go back to
one of the first videos we ever released on this channel about being positive no
matter, what you're going to see in that video you can click to it right up here.
You're going to see in that video that you're never wrong about how you feel,
how you feel is 100% consistent with the way your mind is processing your
experience. What I'm suggesting here is that you take responsibility for how you
feel without taking the blame for the abuse. Do you see that? So you realize I'm
never wrong about how I feel but how I feel is consistent with that process which we
described in the other video. Take full responsibility for how you feel and then
step 4, write a new story. Let's write and share and tell a hero's story. I look at
someone like Karen and I am so inspired by the resilience of the human spirit, by
their ability to deal with or handle even the most difficult painful
situations that could possibly come up in life. You're a hero and those evil
villains who have abused you are only in the story to illuminate
that you are in fact a hero. I love this quote from the movie my giant starring
Billy Crystal. Billy Crystal's character said at one point, "Without Goliath, David
is just some punk kid throwing rocks." Yeah, it's the villain or the giant that
illuminates the greatness of the hero. That's your hero story. Four simple steps.
Can you forgive someone if they haven't apologized? Absolutely. In fact, that's
probably one of the best times to do it. So you got the steps
Foreman grievance or forgiveness, which one's going work best for you?
Hopefully, this video is helpful. I'll see you tomorrow.