It's hard enough to forgive someone in the first place. How do you forgive
someone who keeps hurting you? I've got 5 specific tips for you on how to
forgive someone who keeps hurting you. Before we get to that, let's talk about
what forgiveness isn't. Forgiveness is not saying that it's okay. We were taught
this maybe as children that when someone apologizes then we say, "It's okay." Right?
It's just something that we naturally might respond to. That's not what
forgiveness is. It's not saying it was okay.
What if somebody hurts you, is that okay? No, it's not okay for someone to hurt you.
It's going to happen. It's part of our earthly experience. We're going to have it.
But it's not okay for someone to hurt you. It's not okay that someone abused
you, extorted you, took advantage of you, robbed you, beat you up. That's not okay.
So, don't say that it is. That's not what forgiveness is all about. Forgiveness is
not pardoning someone for their wrongdoing. Honestly, you don't have that
kind of authority anyway. Are you the highest judge in all of the land? No! The
courts may have the authority to pardon someone, the governor, the president may
have the authority to pardon someone. God may have the authority to pardon someone
but you don't. So, that's not what forgiveness means. You're not pardoning
them for their wrongdoing their crime, their sin. Forgiveness is also not
allowing someone to continue to hurt you. Notice all of these things stop us from
offering forgiveness. If we think that it means I have to keep being hurt then why
would I want to sign up for that? I wouldn't. Don't count me in on
party. It's not allowing yourself to continue to be hurt. In fact, I think
proper forgiveness implies that we'll put in some appropriate boundaries. I'll
hit that one of the steps. So let's go there next. 5 steps to help you with
forgiving someone who keeps hurting you. Step number 1, turn on the thinking
part of your brain. There's different parts of your brain different. Parts of
your brain do different things. And one part of your brain is completely
dedicated to protecting you and ensuring your survival. This part of your brain is
on the constant lookout for threat. Threat is anything that represents a
danger to you. When someone hurts you, that part of your brain kicks in and
tells you to do one of 2 things. Fight or flight? There's different
versions too like freeze. Fight or flight is your brains natural response to the
threat. It's in order to keep you safe. That part of your brain actually shuts
down the thinking part of your brain. This makes sense if you're in total
danger because there's a bear coming in to eat you for lunch, what should you do?
Sit down on a stump, think it through... No, you'll be Bear chow. So the
fight-or-flight part of your brain actually shuts down some of the blood
flow to the prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of your brain. See, it's
this front part that does logic and reason and problem-solving. And that part
gets shut down when the fight-or-flight brain is engaged. To keep you safe from
the oncoming attack. Most of the threats that we face are more psychological
threats than they are actual physical threats like being eaten by a bear. But
our brain handles them exactly the same way. Problem is you're going to need the
thinking part of your brain to solve whatever it
that's causing the problem in the first place. So, that's why we put it in step
1. We want to turn on the thinking part of our brain. Quickest way that I know
how to do this is breathing. Just breathe. Focus on your breathing for a few
minutes and I like a practice that takes it in through the nose, hold briefly, out
through the mouth. Nice and slow. And even just doing that right now, I'm feeling it.
Okay, because I've practiced it. This helps to calm down the fight-or-flight
part of your brain. Get the thinker engaged because we're going to need that
for the other steps. Let's go to step number 2. Reframe this experience. You
know, the being hurt experience. Reframe this experience in a way that allows you
to take it less personally. Everything has a personal and an impersonal
component. The personal side of getting hurt is that it's you, you got hurt.
That's personal. Beyond that, it's not about you. It's usually about the person
who hurts you and they're poor choice. Yeah, it feels personal because it is you.
As we reframe this experience in a way that allows us to step back a little bit,
take it less personally, even though it is me? Yeah, it doesn't matter that it was
me. It could happen to anyone who is in my circumstances. That's how we reframe
it to take it less personally. Now, let's take that too step number 3. Do you
remember when I said earlier that forgiveness is not allowing yourself to
continue to be hurt? So step 3 is to set appropriate limits that allow you to
maintain some safety and some boundaries and to make sure that you don't get hurt
again unnecessarily. A little disclaimer here. If you're going to be involved in a
relationship, you will feel hurt. I know. It's guaranteed, okay? And it's not
a bad thing. It's not a bad thing. Close relationships imply pain. And there's a
lot of reasons for that that we won't get into on this video. It's okay however
for you to structure things in such a way as to minimize the risk that you
will get hurt. Safety. Paying attention to safety for
example. One of my clients was struggling with being hurt by her husband.
Physically abused by her husband. Which is wrong. It's just not okay for someone
to be abused in a relationship. Now, it happens occasionally. Her setting
appropriate limits included moving her body to a different place for several
days while he resolved some issues. She physically removed herself from the home.
This was not saying that his abuse was okay. And it was important for her to
maintain that relationship because they had a lot of good things going on. It was
also important for her to set appropriate limits to send that message
it's not okay for you to hurt me. Part of forgiveness is setting
appropriate limits and boundaries. Now, let's go to step number 4. Take full
responsibility for how you feel. Not for the being hurt part, okay? If someone is
has hurt you then probably it's a bad choice on their part that causes the
hurt. How you feel now is dependent on your own thinking. And I'm not saying
you're wrong about how you feel. I'm saying take responsibility for how you
feel. Acknowledge that is your thoughts and
your beliefs that caused your feelings. We have other videos here on
about that. This is an important step because as long as you're blaming
someone else for how you feel, you are giving them far too much power in your
life. They're going to do whatever they're going to do. You get to control
this. The real estate that's inside of your own skin is for you to control.
Nobody else. That's why I said take full responsibility for how you feel, own it.
If you want to feel differently, there's things that you can do. You're never
wrong about how you feel. Take responsibility for it. Just a quick
word about responsibility. In my book, I divided into 2 words. Response, ability.
I like that because it's the ability to respond to something. It has nothing to
do with fault or blame. That's a victim concept. But the ability to respond,
that's going to empower you to do some pretty cool things. Now, let's go back to
the relationship with number 5, work on renewing or releasing the
relationship. I like this word renewal because it means that we take something
and we transform it into something that is completely new that wasn't there
before. I've heard it so many times. "I just don't
want things to go back to the way that they were." Yeah, that implies that we're
going to create something new, right? A new relationship that looks different
from the one that we had before. It might be that you work together with that
person to create a new relationship. That's better than the one you had
before. It might be that they're not really
engaged in the process and it's up to you to create a new relationship that's
better than the one before. That include the appropriate boundaries that
we talked about in step 3. This has to look different so that you don't
continue to be hurt. How that looks different is up to your creative power
now. Renew the relationship. The other option is to release the relationship.
Sometimes this is pretty easily done. If it's someone who hurts you for example.
Who is a stranger to you. We get this if people are a victim of a crime for
example. Do they have a need for an ongoing relationship with that person? No.
Probably not. It might not even be someone that they
knew before they got hurt. Those are easy to release. The ones that are harder to
release are the ones where we continue to have contact with that person. Either
through a work relationship or a family connection or whatever it is. Those are a
little tougher and it might take a little bit of coaching. A little bit of
help. When we're working on these things inside of our own mind and inside of our
own skin, it can get kind of troubling or problematic sometimes. So engage a coach
if you need to or get a therapist or someone who can give you some feedback
about how you're showing up or how you're interacting with this person or
what you might be hanging on to that you didn't even see before. Remember what
forgiveness isn't and then it's easier to take these steps that will help you
to forgive someone who keeps hurting you. The thing I love most about forgiveness
is how it frees us up, personally. There's a lot of other ways to power up our own
personal development. You'll find many of those here on the playlist for a
positive personal development. Check it out.