“Life is an adventure in forgiveness.”
~ Norman Cousins

We know friends and loved ones are often difficult for us (especially when we’re cooped up with them in seclusion!), but we find it hard to believe that we can be difficult for others. Funny how that works!

Even the most careful and perfectionistic of us make mistakes. The more we demand of ourselves that we be perfect, the harder time we have forgiving ourselves and others. When we’ve been wronged, the advice “Don’t let the sun go down on your anger” is difficult to make good on.

Since several friends have been struggling of late with forgiveness, today we’ll focus on the idea of forgiving others which, according to this article by the Mayo Clinic staff, can benefit our emotional and spiritual well-being.

That’s if we can bring ourselves to do it.

A common theme for those who are grappling with this is feeling that they should forgive someone, but they can’t. It creates what psychologists call “cognitive dissonance,” the tension that you feel when one of your beliefs is inconsistent with another. They’re beating themselves up, believing that if they were truly loving, they would be able to do it.

But they just can’t bring themselves to cross the divide.

Most articles on this topic focus on the myths—that forgiveness means forgetting or condoning the bad behavior. What’s often missing in the discussion is the understanding that in the desire to restore a relationship after a serious rift, forgiveness is the last step in the process of healing, psychologically speaking, not the first.

Why can’t we just make a decision to let it go and move on?

For most of us, it’s probably because we’re trying to force it, before we’re actually ready. Much like grief, there are stages to forgiveness, which can take weeks or months to work through.

However much the offender might wish for or even plead with you to “get over it,” the pain of being hurt by someone you love affects you deeply. The dissonance comes from expecting yourself to “make nice” too soon, before you have done your own healing.

It takes time for us to process the array of emotions that comes with a significant transgression against us. Initially we’re hurt, disappointed, and possibly even shocked at the behavior of a friend or loved one who’s offended us. It’s especially upsetting when someone close to us does something we didn’t know they were capable of. We like security and predictability, and we like to think we know people.

However, all individuals are unpredictable at times, and they will surprise us. In one of my writing classes I learned that it makes a character more interesting if we allow them to have some traits or behaviors that seem to be inconsistent with who they are. That might work well for screenwriting, but when someone we love does something we don’t expect, it can shake our very foundation. It becomes bigger than that one event, causing us to wonder what else we don’t about our world or those around us.

This shock to our world view can be huge, throwing us into a personal crisis that requires emotional work on our part, separate from the precipitating event. It can make us feel unstable, temporarily, like the ground is shifting beneath our feet. We can recover, but it may require making an uncomfortable change in our thinking.

Sometimes we forget to allow people to be themselves rather than our image of them.

We have to adjust our image of that person to allow for this new information, and once armed with it, we can’t go back. We have to learn to accept a new reality. In order to do this, in addition to allowing our sadness about the words or actions that offended us, we also need to grieve the old world, the old concepts, the old surety that is no more. It takes time to accept the new scenario before we’re able to forgive.

If you’re not ready to forgive someone yet, consider that you may still be in this stage of shock.

Even if we accept that all people hurt and disappoint each other at times, we don’t want to believe that about those closest to us.

 Quite often our hurt has to do with our realization that our loved one has changed, as evidenced by their hurtful behavior, usually in a way that is not pleasing to us. We may have sensed an undercurrent of that before the final blow happened, but not wanted to acknowledge it. Perhaps looking back we can see that a friend started to pull away, and developed new interests that didn’t include us, even before they neglected to invite us to a special event.

 As individuals, we all want the right to develop and grow in whatever way suits us so that we can be happy. But when others start to behave differently from what we’re used to, especially if it seems sudden, it can make us feel insecure.

We don’t like the idea of change, and we may not like the attributes of the person they have grown into. We say we want our loved ones to be happy, but we don’t want them to change in ways that are hard for us. When we’re this stage of hurting, righteous indignation can get in the way of forgiveness.

Our defenses are designed to protect our wounded psyches for a period of time until we’re better able to handle things. Before we can deal with the event, we have to allow for our own reactions to the changing circumstances in our lives. It’s natural to feel pain when we’ve been hurt, to recoil, to put up a wall to protect ourselves.

 If we can do the work of sitting with the pain and sadness underlying our anger and acknowledge those feelings, eventually we can move through them and begin to accept the new reality.

At that point, when we’re truly ready, we can feel our hearts begin to soften, and sense that forgiveness may at least become possible, in time. I’ve been there, and I can tell you from experience that it can happen, if you are willing to be patient with yourself.

We’ll talk more about the complicated dynamics of forgiveness in the next post.

Affectionately,

Elaine