“Don’t bear grudges”; “Say sorry”; ”Move on!” These represent some of our early lessons about forgiveness. It’s unsurprising, then, that forgiveness is often regarded as something we bestow on others. We fear looking hard-nosed and selfish if we don’t, and then wake up knee-deep in adulthood feeling besieged by a lifetime’s worth of unprocessed pain, fear and guilt that we’ve accumulated.
In this week’s episode of The Baggage Reclaim Sessions, I revisit forgiveness and what it’s really all about.
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Some nuggets from the episode:
- Some people think that they’re really good at forgiving others but are really unforgiving of themselves. They’re highly self-critical while keeping up this veneer of everything being okay.
- Others silently hold onto resentment, frustration, guilt, etc., seething with a smile on their face while appearing to cooperate, and some make no bones about the fact they don’t let go.
- The religious connotations around forgiveness mean that sometimes people conflate letting go with pressing the reset button. It’s never a good idea to pretend that something didn’t happen, that we didn’t feel what we felt. Doing it within an interpersonal relationship blocks each party from getting what they needed from the experience. Bypassing our feelings and what we need only results in setting ourselves back.
No one has the right to expect you to press the reset button. That’s the very definition of bad boundaries.
- A lot of people hold onto the feelings from a painful experience and lose the lesson and the growth.
- Sometimes we’re a little (or a lot) hasty in our version of forgiveness. There’s often such a rush to ‘move on’ and, yes, make others feel good, that we don’t give ourselves the time and space to process. In fact, some people won’t even give themselves 30 seconds to feel something, instead quickly opting to shut down any tension with people pleasing and pressing the reset button.
- If we consistently feel our feelings and express ourselves by showing up in our life, we don’t have to fear eruptions where we experience an internal meltdown or unleash on others.
- Sometimes we’re still angry because we’ve bypassed our feelings and we need to confront whatever it is that we’ve avoided. And sometimes we’re angry because we’re still being or doing something in the present that effectively encroaches on the boundary that led to the original issue that we forgave.
Forgiveness is a decision to let go by gaining perspective — and then you choose and keep re-choosing to let go.
- It’s too much to expect that after beating ourselves up over something for an extended period that we’re going to leap up out of bed suddenly and all is forgiven.
- If we want to change our relationship with ourselves and others, we have to change our relationship with letting go.
Letting go as part of forgiveness is more often than not about letting go of the illusion.
- For instance, letting go of the illusion that they’re going to spontaneously combust into the person you want them to be. Letting go of the illusion that you’re not good enough, that you have to be perfect, that you can create a tipping point of people pleasing. We grieve the loss of the fantasy that we’d pursued.
- Change of perspective equals not telling the story in the same way that we always have. Am I telling this story based on the age (and perspective) I had back then? Am I telling this story based on the perspective of the anger and feelings that I had back then? Or, am I telling this story from a place of boundaries?
- Refusal to forgive others always points back at the anger we have towards ourselves.
- We often believe that the reason we get back together with someone who hurt and wronged us is that we’re so forgiving or madly in love, but, actually, it’s because we want to win.
When we make the decision to forgive, to let go, we’re making the decision to figure out what the boundary is. We’re making the decision to figure out what the next step is.
- When we acknowledge our part no matter how teeny tiny we might perceive it to be, we acknowledge that we can evolve something in our thinking, attitude and behaviour, which will change our feelings, which changes the story we tell ourselves, which changes how we show up.
- If we see forgiveness as “I forgive you, and now it’s over to you”, we expect the other party to do ‘everything’. We’re operating under the illusion that we had the utmost emotional, mental, physical and spiritual boundaries — and we didn’t. We’re always evolving.
- The reason we struggle to forgive is that if we’re still approaching things from the same emotional, mental, physical or spiritual place, so we’re still in the space that we were when the old situation took place, we can’t move forward. We feel stuck, and then we give ourselves a hard time.
Untrue stories always lead to painful feelings.
- I’ve given up behaving as if I am the proprietor of the magic wand of forgiveness. Like I could sprinkle fairy dust on loved ones with my forgiveness and then they’d be obliged to change.
- We feel as though because people have wronged us in the past and we’ve chosen to continue having a relationship with them (our version of forgiveness) that they shouldn’t put a foot wrong or that if we do, that we should get a free pass. “How dare you pick me up about putting a foot out of place?!” When we acknowledge that, actually, we’re still pretty pissed off, that maybe we haven’t forgiven anywhere near as much as we thought, this is OK. The sooner we get out of the pretence, the sooner we (and our relationships) evolve.
- I get angry first, and then I get to the gratitude and letting go.
- Recognising our humanness is recognising that we feel.
- When we choose to let go, we also choose to live differently on the other side of that. We choose to feel what we feel and move forward anyway.
Links mentioned
- Tidying up emotional baggage (ep. 125)
- Forgiveness made simpler
- Roles – I want to break free (ep. 128)
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Listener questions can be emailed to podcast AT baggagereclaim DOT com and if there’s a topic you’d love me to talk about, let me know!
Nat xxx
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I’m still angry at my child’s father. She is 7 this September. He left me in the beginning of 2017 while I was going through a 2nd miscarriage management at hospital in 6 months, and I had to deal with it all alone in hospital. He then left his daughter a year later, turned into a full on ice addict, doesn’t provide any financial help and has disappeared.
I’m very close to my daughter. I went from a BMI of 36.2 (obese) to 19. I am extremely healthy and so is my daughter. I don’t drink or smoke even.
I know I’m over the break up, I thankfully got over it within about a year. Because I knew he treated us badly.
But I cannot believe that there are people in the world who can be so horrible. And the fact that I let them into my life, and fall in love with them.
I know I have a horrible dad, he was abusive. But I tend to find just any guy appealing. It’s like I have no boundaries. I don’t even have to be physically attracted to the guy to get a crush on him. Why?
I haven’t been with any man for over two years. I haven’t even had sex. I talk to men. I don’t date.
But I have put up walls now. In the past I would be happy with any guy who liked me. And it wasn’t like I was searching for anything. I was a virgin until I was 25.
Why am I attracted to any guy who is kind to me? Have I set the bar so low that I am surprised at a kind man?
Like I said, I’ve never slept with anyone but my ex. And I don’t date or flirt. So I’m not the classic case of running off with a guy to escape myself.
But it pains me that I’m so willing to hold a kind guy up to a pedestal. The guy can be ugly and rotten teeth, I literally will crush on any guy.
What is that?? It’s weird.
Same here. I found Oprah’s Daddyless Daughter episodes from Oprah’s Lifeclass very enlightening, although pretty painful to face.
Thank you for this!! ????
Oops!! I didn’t mean to leave the question marks… It was a heart… I meant: Thank you for this!!! <3
I can’t believe how timely this is. I have been sitting here wondering why I feel irritated at someone I quite liked. And if I have not forgiven myself rather than him? Or in fact both of us.
Originally when we met online, then real life it felt like it was a “friends who had sex” thing. He said he had a child, was in an open relationship- I asked if he was married (a deal breaker) and he said “nope” and wanted great conversation and ideally sex.
A few meetings (and sex) later I assumed we would have sex again that evening, but he said he was too tired. We met again the next day and weirdly sex wasn’t even mentioned. I was so confused. Was I sexually unattractive to him? He has too many sex pals on the go, so dropped me?
He lives in a different city.
Two days later- via messaging- I asked what was up?
He avoided answering properly saying, yes that was right. We met again and I had to prise it out of him- he didn’t want to have sex any more because now ‘this’ was no longer under the radar, so to speak, and he felt I was in his “official” life ie part of a life he talked about with “the mother of my child”. I said I did not understand what he meant- we were doing exactly what we had set out to do, and if the agreement changed how had he not told me?
It was still a week later before I twigged he was married- we met at a work event and he was suddenly wearing a ring.
I was aghast- I told him I’d asked him, months ago, and he had misrepresented himself, and I had not wanted to even have coffee with a married man.
He avoided the subject.
I’m confused as to what I’m annoyed about- he lied, he took his ring off each time he met me… but arguably it wasn’t going to go anywhere as he had said it was only “casual” from the start.
Is there a reset button here? I feel it was my doing that I willingly went along with this. I’m still irritated by him- not at his personality , but because he lied. Sure he didn’t know me when he did. But it feels imbalanced. I like him now- I have no idea what he wants from me, apart from non sexual company. I know he is still looking for sex- just not with me.
Is there a time frame after which, by my being complicit, and going along with it, I’ve actually accepted what he did?
I feel I could have been angrier or expressed my disappointment better. Is it too late? Is there any point? It’s been three or four weeks, and we met since then, as friends (if that’s possible- it seems we get on better than ever- I wish I had not met him on a website).
So is it too late to say anything to him?
Or is the person I should be apologizing to or forgiving actually me?
Oh, yes, the changing of the rules. This has been a constant for me with the guy. Actually we started as friends and it was a couple of years before things got physical. But once they did it was intense and wonderful.
For me, an ideal situation. This very attractive man who helped with a lot of things regarding my house, grounds, and car. A great friend who seemed to really enjoy what happened between the sheets.
Until, of course, the one little glitch, and I am being sarcastic. Sometimes he is into me, and sometimes he is not. Sometimes he decides to disappear. Is any of this ever subject to discussion, or even any acknowledgement that I just might have any feelings? Of course not.
It is very exasperating and I forgive him because I don’t want to be totally without him. I forgive myself by thinking that I am being practical. For me, I say nothing and I don’t complain. My need for him outweighs his need (or want) for me.
But, can’t believe, I have invested years in this man. You have more options to explore and I wish you the best.
Do you tell him it’s exasperating?
I used to think it wasn’t worth saying so. But I’m not sure what Natalie would say: probable that it’s actions rather than words. And seems both of us are still hanging around thereby forgiving the inconsiderate behavior.
No, I learned some time ago not to comment on my feelings. He would pout, sulk and disappear. Besides, he does not really care how I feel and he and I each know this.
This is not a romance; this is not a relationship. I accept the boundaries and whatever else he throws out. He is dramatic and self involved- this will never change. You know, at this point it isn’t even an issue of forgiveness; it is one of acceptance (of both him and myself). I think decades ago there was a movie called “as good as it gets”. That pretty much sums it up.