I'm a personal coach, a change specialist, helping clients make changes in their lives. Recently I had an "aha" experience as a result of working with a client who thought she had to forgive. It set me on a trail that led me to writing again about forgiveness.
The client, I'll call her Mary, was adamant that she had a forgiveness problem. She didn't think she could move on in her life, go for the changes she wanted, unless she could "forgive." And she needed to forgive a lot of people, she said. She was very angry, and unable to forgive the ones she thought were making her angry.
This was a great mountain for her to climb over, and though she'd worked on it, it wasn't getting better, it was getting worse.
I said I wasn't sure about the forgiveness part, that maybe we could make some other changes and then maybe the forgiveness wouldn't be a problem. I had an inkling, one of those hunches, that if we worked on other changes the forgiveness issue would disappear. The reason I had the inkling, I suppose, was a long, and growing, dissatisfaction with the whole area of forgiveness as promoted by the church and others who teach that forgiveness is an essential element in being happy and emotionally together. Additionally, my experiences with other clients had revealed a disappearance of the need to forgive when certain change techniques were applied to resentment related memories.
I said I'd like to work with Mary on some of the feelings associated with past experiences, the ones that were being a burr under her emotional saddle blanket, and see if that made a difference. She sounded doubtful, but was willing to give it a try.
I used, from the field of NLP (neuro-linguistic programming), techniques that basically take the sting out of persistent unpleasant feelings associated with experiences and memories. They work quite well in breaking the instantaneous snap response between a memory and a strong feeling.
After a couple of techniques had been applied to a few of Mary's anger producing remembered experiences, she said the feeling changed. It didn't really bother her to remember the experiences. She still didn't like them, but they didn't harass her with unwanted feelings now.
Our time for the session was more than over, and another client was waiting on the line for me. I didn't think any more about a possible forgiveness connection until later, on a walk outdoors. It suddenly came to me--the connection between what I'd been doing with clients and their disappearing need to forgive.
I realized that it was the feelings of anger and resentment that had changed, that they were the key problem to be addressed, not some vague requirement for forgiveness.
Where does the notion that we have to forgive people come from? Why is it such a troublesome issue for so many people? What are its historical roots? And, does my new insight bring a solution that is easy, simple, and accessible for everyone?
It's not what we've been taught it is.
Years ago I wrote an article about forgiveness that was published in the magazine Today's Christian Woman. I said, essentially, that forgiveness is not what we've been taught, some vague requirement that we force ourselves to do something internally so that what happened to us doesn’t matter. But, that forgiveness is a moving toward the other person with a willingness to restore a destroyed connection. And that it's not a one-way street for the forgiver, and it's not a making one's self vulnerable to someone who has proved they are not trustworthy.
Historically, forgiveness has roots in Hebraic thought and in the Bible's Old Testament. It probably has other roots as well from many sources. But, in Western thought, I suspect the Bible and interpretations of the forgiveness passages, and subsequent adaptations by the organized church have been the largest influences on what we commonly think forgiveness should be.
In the Old Testament, sins were to be paid for, period. Someone had to pay. The Old Testament Law was an eye for an eye and tooth for a tooth type of law. It was literally cause and effect. The Hebrew's religion was based on payment for sin. But, it also contained a provision for mercy and for forgiveness of sin, and forgiveness of debt. One did not always have to pay, there was a way out. God could forgive, and the individual could forgive, and the judge could forgive. The forgiveness consisted of not having to pay. It was simply that. If forgiven, one's debt was erased. The eye did not have to be put out, nor the tooth knocked out. The money was not taken from the debtor.
If we apply the Old Testament concept of forgiveness, then it is also simple, it consists of not exacting vengeance on the offender. It is not being vindictive, not "getting even." This would not be difficult to do. If we limited our ideas about forgiveness to simply not taking vengeance on those who have done us wrong, then we could do it. We'd be free to think what we think about them, and feel what we feel. We'd just not go ahead and act on those feelings.
But, somewhere along the line, forgiveness came to mean something vague and inexact. In fact, nobody really knows what the modern idea of forgiveness is, just that you have to do it to be emotionally healthy (what a great double bind) and you have to keep trying until you get there--wherever there is.
Forgiveness has become a hackneyed term.
Preachers insist on the need for their parishioners to forgive everyone who has ever wronged them. Some will say one needs to forgive and forget, which is even more difficult. It's supposed to not matter any more what they did to you. It's like washing the slate clean, or using a psychic leaf blower on one's memories. Not only internally violent, but probably impossible too. The result is more likely a denying of one's own perceptions.
Psychologists and counselors say the "You've got to forgive" mantra too. All sorts of dire consequences of "not forgiving" are mentioned in order to do two things, I suppose. 1. Motivate the non-forgiving to try harder, and 2. Absolve the counselor from any responsibility for failure with the client, because "They refused to forgive."
Forgiveness is an "in" term. It has the place of prominence "communication" used to have. For some time it was essential to "keep the lines of communication open." Nobody knew what that meant, but it sounded good. And "communication" was the solution of choice for everything from marriage problems to generational conflicts, to voter dissatisfaction. Now, it's "forgiveness."
Insistence on forgiveness as a prerequisite to "recovery" is based on a false premise.
The premise behind the requirement for forgiveness on the part of the victim is based on the presupposition that what the victim thinks about the offender is the problem. It requires that the victim do violence to the truth as they know it in order to be free of the anguish the memory of the abuse creates for them. It requires internal betrayal of the self in order to free themselves of pain.
My question, which I think I've found the answer to, is: What if the current presupposition is all wrong, and this isn't about forgiveness at all? What if the real issue/presupposition is that the problem is how the victim feels about what happened, and about the perpetrator(s)?
If I'm right, then it's a different ballgame. I can help you change how you feel about something and not do violence to your own internal honesty with yourself in the process. It's fast, and relatively easy.
Further, if I help the client change the feeling response to a memory of an experience so that it does not carry the fire power it once had, I can go on from that and help the client use the now neutralized experience as a resource for their present and future. It's not some vague, forgiveness-as-mystical-panacea thing, but concrete resources and benefits from a once demoralizing and hindering experience. To me, that's a great improvement over the forgiveness-is-essential model.
How it happens, how to fix it.
The problem is how the "unforgiver" remembers the experience. They have an instantaneous snap from the memory to an unpleasant kinesthetic experience. They experience "synesthesia," literally hear/feel or see/feel or feel/feel when they remember. They can't not do it. It just happens whenever they remember it. If I change how they remember the experience, by a little tricky maneuver, the intensity of the feeling response will be modified.
Improve Your Past.
Most people think you can’t do anything about your past. But you can.
That’s because your past isn’t as much about what happened as it is
about how you feel about what happened.
I teach my clients a couple of simple, quick techniques they can use to change the way they feel about irritating and moderately unpleasant experiences.
Experience is coded in our brains along sensory lines, that is: auditorily, visually, kinesthetically, gustatorily, and olifactorily. And because our brains are exquisitely precise in how we store information, often all we need to do to change the way we feel about an unpleasant experience is to create slightly different alternative imagined sensory experiences.
Because it’s easiest to create alternative imagined experiences visually and auditorily, I generally work with these to change how someone feels about a past experience.
Typically what happens with an unpleasant past event is that one experiences a recurring unpleasant feeling, that they would prefer not to have, when they remember the event. You can use a technique from my NLP toolbox to change the way you feel about such events to a more neutral, "that's something that happened," feeling.
Caution: Don’t attempt to use the following techniques on traumatic or phobic unpleasant memories. The reason I issue this caution is that you need to work with someone who is an expert using change techniques on those types of experiences, someone qualified and with a good track record for respectful, safe, and comfortable work.
Auditory Technique:
1. Mentally play the audio tape that you hear in your head when you remember the incident.
2. Play the tape again, but this time slow it down and hear the words v e r y s l o w l y.
3. Play the tape again, this time speed it up so that you hear the words very fast in a high squeaky voice.
4. Play it again, this time in a Donald Duck voice.
5. Play it again, this time with a circus music background.
6. Play it again, this time in a Mae West or other sultry voice.
7. Play it again, this time in a Goofy voice.
Usually replaying the tape five or six times in succession in distortion mode will be all you need to change the way you feel when you remember the incident.
Visual Technique:
1. Remember the visual image you have as a representation of the incident.
2. Notice if the picture is close to you or at a distance, whether it is in color or black and white, if there is movement or if it's a still picture, whether there is sound or not, if it has a frame around it, what it's shape is, whether it's clear or foggy, whether you are viewing it from inside the picture, or outside, etc.
3. Change the above elements, one at a time, noticing, with each change, if it affects the way you feel. If your picture is in color, change it to black and white. If there is movement, make it a still shot. If it is close to you, zoom it to a distance away from you. If it's clear make it foggy or smudgy, etc. If any change feels less comfortable for you, change that element back to what it was originally.
People vary as to which elements make the feeling shift for them, but typically sending a picture into the distance changes the feeling component to a less intense feeling, as does dulling color or making things less clear. But you need to adjust the particular elements that shift it for you.
4. Another visual distortion you may want to try, in addition, is to change some part of the picture content. A client of mine had a persistent troubling visual memory of being wronged by three people. We used the above techniques, and though they helped, she still had a residue of unpleasant feeling when she remembered the situation. So, innovating, I asked her if she could change the most dominant figure by placing a pig's head on the person. She said she could, and that it made a big difference. Then I asked her to make the less dominant troublemakers smaller pigs, and have them all say, "Oink, oink, oink." She began to laugh, saying that really worked for her.
5. You can also send the picture into the distance until it is a small dot, then have the dot pop and disappear.
Try these techniques on the moderately unpleasant and irritating memories you experience, and notice how they become rather unimportant and neutral in the way you feel about them afterward.
Gather resources from the past experience.
Unpleasant experiences from the past usually contain useful information that can be applied in the present and future. It is much easier to harvest that information after the intensity of the feelings associated with them is lessened or changed for the better.
Looking back at the experience from a more comfortable present perspective, what was needed that you did not have at the time? What could you have had in the way of experience or support or knowledge that would have caused a more satisfying outcome? Go back and imagine that those needed elements were there, and re-experience the improved event. Then notice how your life would be different if that had been the way it happened.
Apply those resources in the present.
Then go to the present and notice where you can apply the learnings from the experience itself and by adding abilities or other elements you needed then.
Notice any actions you can take now to enhance and apply these new learnings.
Put those resources in your future.
Imagine three different possible situations in your future where your
new learnings and skills from this exercise could be put to good use.
Imagine yourself having those resources/abilities and experience in
your imagination putting them to use in specific situations.
Determine what further action, if any, is needed now or in the future regarding the past experience or people involved.
Do you need to take any specific actions now or in the future to clear up any unfinished business from the original experience or its results? Are there people you want to contact? Requests you want to make? Actions to take?
If any action is needed, take the first action step.
It is also helpful to work with a personal coach trained in NLP technology, someone to walk the client through the steps, to decide what technique to use, to follow-up and test to see if it has worked well enough or if more or different is needed, and to make sure resources have been harvested and applied well.
My observation has been that clients experience relief and emotional freedom via these techniques. They are often amazed at the sudden lifting of long standing emotional burdens. One client told me that she had not realized how much of her daily life had been affected by the feelings associated with a betrayal by former friends. She said during the week following our brief changework she was struck repeatedly by how good she felt, and how free she felt. She said it just wasn't a problem anymore, but previously it had colored all her days in a somber hue.
I'm wondering if what we have labeled "forgiveness" is actually more an integration of experience that sometimes happens spontaneously over time, as one integrates experience with one's value systems and beliefs in a way that is ecological and not damaging to the self. But, when attempts at integration are forced, or coerced, as in the contemporary effort to pressure people to "forgive," violence is done to the internal processes of the individual, and to the self.
