Learning to Forgive

[Left Coast]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

 

[VoidCat]

If you feel forgiveness is needed I cannot help you as I have issues forgiving some folk myself.

But my therapist said to me when I spoke to her about me not wanting to forgive that I don't have to forgive to move on or to heal. I could just accept what happened to me and move on

 

[VoidCat]

Anger is more tricky. Before you try to resolve it...know this...i have cptsd. And the anger I have is great but it's there for a reason. If I stop being angry without proper supports in place that I do not have right now I'll fall apart. No if ands or buts about it. The pain will be too much. That anger is keeping me alive. So if you are angry as a result of trauma just know you may need to find some coping mechanisms first before tackling it.

 

[Left Coast]

If you feel forgiveness is needed I cannot help you as I have issues forgiving some folk myself.

But my therapist said to me when I spoke to her about me not wanting to forgive that I don't have to forgive to move on or to heal. I could just accept what happened to me and move on

That's interesting. I suppose what I mean by forgive is not to convince myself that what they did was okay, but to release the feelings of anger and resentment towards them.

 

[VoidCat]

That's interesting. I suppose what I mean by forgive is not to convince myself that what they did was okay, but to release the feelings of anger and resentment towards them.

That can be tricky

 

[Stevicus]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

I know what you mean. There are some things which I might be able to pardon or forgive, but can't really forget. If the offense was significant, I might still get angry about it, even if I felt I could forgive them in the past.

I suppose it would largely depend on whether the offending person actually apologized, realized they did something wrong, and asked for forgiveness or made some kind of amends. When people try to gaslight or make it seem like the offense was "no big deal," then it becomes harder to do.

 

[Fool]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

so in any relationship, if where there is abuse or neglect, the person shouldn't be in that relationship. in fact, probably no one should be in a relationship with that person. if the relationship isn't friendly and mutually supportive and nurturing, it's not good to hold onto. I was able to understand how forgiveness works. some people are their own worse enemy and they will simply go through friendships like someone caught on a merry-go-round, or in a revolving door. continue to love them, but do it from afar and for your own well being.


service to self types, will never be able to maintain healthy relationships because they are so focused on themselves, they don't see how they are harming another. if it isn't one person, it will be another. and you're just another person in their grinding mill.

holding on to that animosity is only weighing you down, baggage, and once you forgive that person, you don't carry that baggage anymore. nor do you carry that relationship still. once you step out they will pull someone in to replace you.


love yourself as much as another. unconditional love doesn't exclude self


best wishes. travel light and travel far

 

[VoidCat]

@Left Coast
If you are angry as a result of trauma I suggest a therapist. They could help more then I could. There is this exercise you could try doing that might help a bit tho. Write down every bad thing these people have done to you. Say I release you from my life. And burn the paper. If you worried about not handling fire safely then just tear it up and put it in the garbage.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

That's interesting. I suppose what I mean by forgive is not to convince myself that what they did was okay, but to release the feelings of anger and resentment towards them.

Here is one from a Holocaust survivor. She forgave them and hold no anger towards them and learned to do it, because otherwise they would have won. Don't know if that one would work for you.

 

[Left Coast]

@Left Coast
If you are angry as a result of trauma I suggest a therapist. They could help more then I could. There is this exercise you could try doing that might help a bit tho. Write down every bad thing these people have done to you. Say I release you from my life. And burn the paper. If you worried about not handling fire safely then just tear it up and put it in the garbage.

Fear not. I'm in therapy.

 

[VoidCat]

Fear not. I'm in therapy.

Same
I have two group therapists and if the group home manager would get their butt in gear I'll have a third therapist so I can have indiviual therapy. I also have a support group I attend monthly.
I also live in a group home for disabled folk. Technially they can help with mental health stuff too.

Therapy is a good thing

 

[74x12]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

Sometimes to forgive; it helps to forget. It's like a wound that needs healing. If you keep remembering what they did then of course you keep the wound from being healed. You're continuing to reopen the wound by remembering what happened over and over. If you want to forgive them then the wound needs to heal. So forget what they did.

 

[Revoltingest]

I don't forgive unless amends are made.
I'm fine despising some people. It just
doesn't run my life.
Note that this doesn't apply to minor
skirmishes with petulant posters. Those
things just don't matter.

 

[Hermit Philosopher]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

Dear Left Coast,

I am sorry to hear about your current struggles. Please remember that the “residual” emotions you describe are natural in the process of forgiving and should not be taken as a relapse into one’s hatred.

In light of @RayofLight ’s response earlier, it may be useful to firstly remind ourselves that:

• Forgiving is one’s means of ridding oneself from hatred and has little to do with releasing another from blame. One’s perpetrator often may not feel blame at all and that is in fact out of one’s control. But one’s perpetrator also does not care about one’s hatred; hatred is only self-consuming - and that is why it is meaningful to aim to forgive.
• Forgiving is a process - it occurs in stages and takes the time that it takes. One must be kind and patient with oneself and allow for emotional setbacks during the process.

I cannot know if this will work for you @Left Coast, but when residual anger and resentment rear their heads in me, I cuddle them to sleep as if they were wounded children in need of shelter, because what they truly are, are my own pain and sorrow, in desperate need to mourn for all that was lost in the trauma that I am forgiving.

In the process of forgiving, the stage of mourning should not be frowned upon because it is emotionally different to that of mourning in hatred.


Humbly
Hermit

 

[sun rise]

I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return

Your question reminded me of a poem about fear. It might also apply to the feelings of anger and resentment. What you are working on might have more to do with accepting that you are human and that feelings don't disappear because we want them gone. It might be that the path of accepting them as part of being human might be helpful.

My companion is fear
Walking behind me like a shadow.
He sees obstacles where none are,
He knows death as disintegration,
He comes from hell to cherish me
Saying 'turn right,' 'turn left,'
'Look, there is a lion in the road
And no resurrection.'

Yet I will make my torturer
My dear companion.
For in acceptance he grows honest,
Showing that a skeleton is only bones
And one moment no longer than another
And pain only sensation
Like the color of the rose,
Less than the falling of a leaf.

See, I shall turn my head,
Diminish him with pity,
Kill him with understanding
Even love . . .
Looking him in the eye
I shall observe his dwindling
Because he is only a shadow
Lost between me and the sun.

Rosemary Harris

 

[Debater Slayer]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

I felt resentment toward certain people and society at large for several years. Eventually, meditation and my view that we have no free will both helped me overcome that and move on. My time in the army also added to my ability to foster acceptance.

I don't know whether you believe in free will, so I can't go into further detail (as much of my answer revolves around the lack of that). However, I strongly recommend meditation either way.

Feel free to ask about anything if you'd like more details!

 

[Koldo]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

You don't have to forgive anything. You can forgive if you want. Only if you want though. You don't need to forgive to move on with your life. I can't stress this enough.

Your problem is a different one: You are clinging to the past, to what happened to you and perhaps to what your life could be if it weren't for what those people did to you.

I am going to go over a few topics:

1) Is it over?

Have you done everything you wanted or could to deal with those persons? I don't know what happened, but this could entail a lot of different things. Perhaps it is a family member and you would feel better if you could scream into their faces and letting everyone know what they have done. Perhaps it is a criminal and you haven't reported the crime to the police. If it is not over, then make it be.

2) Don't live in the past

Some people love to hear old songs and to watch an old movie exactly because it brings back memories. But sometimes memories might only make you feel more miserable. Be careful when handling things that bring back memories.

3) Live in the now

Fill your life with things that make you happier. Find new interests and hobbies. Get yourself to meet new people. Small changed are still changes. The more your life feels happier the easier it will be to let the past go.

 

[ChristineM]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

I've had a couple of instances that have caused me deep anxiety and hatred for the perpetrators. I can't ever forgive what these people have done to me and mine but counseling and therapy have helped me accept thus driving the hate to a minimum.

It's important to find a counselor/therapist who actually understands as opposed to someone doing a job and going through the motions.

I do hope you can do something, the continued hurt is not healthy

 

[halbhh]

For quite some time I have struggled to forgive certain people in my life for ways they have hurt me in the past. There have been times when I do forgive them, and even feel great compassion and empathy for them. Yet the feelings of anger and resentment return. These feelings have gotten to the point that they really are harming me, causing me to lose sleep and so on.

Does anyone have advice on how to forgive and resolve these feelings so I can move on? I'm not a theist so God-based replies won't be particularly useful for me.

Forgiving where it isn't easy, the harder case.

While like you I had the basic idea (that's been around in psychology articles for many decades) that forgiving is a very beneficial thing for oneself -- you escape the weight of what they did to you -- I went further after I was intrigued to read the message from a far older source. (I was systematically learning and testing things from around the world, and across many ways to live life better (to find the best ways so I'd have the best, and get an even more rewarding life), including psychology, philosophy, religions, techniques, and so on.)

And so when I read what the teacher Jesus said to "forgive your brother or sister from your heart", that was the bigger impetus to try it out in that more difficult case, with the less forgivable offense.

Here's what I did.

What I did was try to think of that person that had done wrong towards me as themselves like only a wounded child (in an adult's body) who was only acting out of their own pain/confusion/lostness.
But they were really just like a child inside.

So, by realizing they had done wrongs even in some parallel somewhat like (even if lesser) wrongs I had done in life ...

In other words, they were like me, in that very rough parallel (different, but in a way similar, or what I might have been on another path).

Then, thinking of that, I was from that thought then able to forgive that harder case, and just accept them as a victim, and even feel some sympathy for them.

 

[Ella S.]

I think forgiveness is cognitive, not emotional.

Quite frankly, your emotions are going to do whatever they want. You can't just get rid of them when they're detrimental to you, unfortunately. You have to let yourself feel them and accept them, even if it's unpleasant.

No matter how you feel, though, you can still control your actions with discipline and challenge the thoughts that pop into your head. My advice would be to challenge the patterns of thought that keep making you angry and to analyze them to see what's upsetting you about them. Then try to reason your way out of that thought process. It sounds like you keep reopening your own wounds before they get a chance to properly heal. Maybe all you need to do is try to take your mind off of it for awhile.