Perhaps the number one killer of mental and relational health in America is the refusal to go through the learning experience of emotional pain. But I believe our next biggest mental health buzz kill is our refusal to forgive others and ourselves. I just have to take a stab here at trying to reduce this colossal waste of serenity.
Forgiveness is a private act. It is first of all an act of the mind and the will. You first have to promise with all that you are that you will no longer scheme, hope, and work to get even, to make the other party hurt so bad they will repent and try to make it up to you. If you think you can’t, start with praying for the welfare of the one who hurt you, and ask for the courage and wisdom to make that promise and keep it. Only then can the words, actions, and finally the emotions of forgiveness come through you.
It may never include an “I forgive you” talk. Sometimes the purpose of forgiving someone is to restore our closeness in that relationship, and other times it is to allow detachment to create more distance. How forgiveness is expressed depends on the other person, on the relationship, its purpose, and how it will be acted out. But some purposes are common to all occasions of forgiveness. Let’s look for some motivations to forgive.
Christians are told that when the children of God forgive each other, it makes God happy.
I believe it, as I believe God loves us and knows that forgiveness is good for us. It reduces the war and crime in our society, and on a personal level, it reduces our resentments, arguments, divorces, ulcers, insomnia and addictions. Besides, being kind and polite to our enemies without needing or expecting anything in return is just the best way to keep our enemies at a safe distance.
Everyone! We need to forgive whoever we are angry at, whoever we dread seeing at Walmart or McDonald's, and generally, anybody that can make us mad just by being happy. We also need to forgive ourselves. Believing that we have been forgiven by God or another person without forgiving ourselves is just like leaving a Christmas present all wrapped up under the tree -- it gives no joy to the giver or the receiver until we take it out into our everyday lives and enjoy playing with it.
We need to forgive everything they have ever done wrong, to us, to our loved ones or theirs, to themselves or others. We also need to forgive every good thing they have failed to do, and every bad thing they will ever do in the future. Past, present, and future, we are to love the sinner and hate the sin.
Now understand that forgiveness is not trust. Unlike forgiveness, trust has to be earned. We need to forgive for our own sakes, long before the other person has earned our trust that they won’t hurt us again. And if our enemy DOES mess up and try to hurt us again, we need to trust ourselves to get over it when they do. This is a heck of a lot easier to do when we can kindly and politely forgive and wish them well without expecting anything in return. We can trust ourselves to get over another betrayal if we know how and why to forgive, and how to set and enforce healthy boundaries for ourselves (more about those below).
And forgiveness does not mean condoning the other person's behavior. It may or may not be a good idea to tell the other person you still think what they did was wrong, but it is always okay to say, "It is not that I am condoning or excusing what you did, I am just forgiving you."
ASAP. Don't wait until the other person repents, reforms, asks for forgiveness, or even admits that they were wrong. You sure don't need to wait until you feel like it, because forgiveness is a matter of faith, not feeling. Don't wait until you understand the other person, or why they hurt you. When it comes to forgiveness, just do it.
First, make a decision to forgive yourself as well as others, because you can’t hold onto forgiveness unless you keep giving it away. Forgiveness can't be given until it has been received, not from your enemy, but from someone that accepts you as you are. To accept yourself as you are, warts and all, you must first admit and accept your weaknesses, and repent of your mistakes and bad habits. Strength is only made perfect in weakness. Only when you know you need more grace than you deserve can you give forgiveness that isn’t earned. Like with money, you must have some forgiveness to give it away. Before you can put a smile on your face, you have to put one in your heart, every day. Treat yourself as you treat others: hate the sin (yours included), but love the sinner (yourself included).
The next step to safety is to drop the rock of resentment. Figure out other ways of making yourself feel safe without carrying around anger to bodyguard your heart. Believing that a resentment can be justified and smart is like wearing a gun on your hip – it keeps gentle people at a distance, attracts fighters, and generally provokes suspicion and rejection. Commit to a life work of daily giving up your resentments, justifications, plans for revenge, and wishes for your enemy to suffer or fail. Carrying a live resentment around is like loading up your gun and wearing bullets on your belt – you 're carrying a chip on your shoulder, wearing your hurt on your sleeve, and just asking for trouble.
Third, choose and meditate on healthy beliefs. You can never prove these beliefs right or wrong, but you can prove without a doubt the internal results of holding these beliefs. You can know if they calm you down. So taste the following beliefs, see that they have a healthy and calming effect on your relationships. Then start meditating on them, so you will remember them on the spot, and be able to act upon them: ~ All human beings are capable of repentance and reform. ~ If we were born into our enemies’ bodies and situations, we don't know whether or not we might have turned out much worse. ~ “Who are you to judge the servant of another?” asks Paul in Romans 14:4. ~ When we are kind to them without needing or expecting anything in return, it delivers deep and painful wounds to their prideful and vengeful egos. ~ What our enemies may need to hear they wouldn’t be able to hear from us. ~ So we can just “Let go, and let God.”
Finally, resolve to protect yourself by showing love and respect from a healthy distance. Set and carefully keep healthy boundaries. A boundary is not a threat to another person, but a promise to yourself of what you will do to protect yourself if they violate your safety zone. Protective behaviors that do not attack might include remarks such as, “Well that's your opinion,” or “I'm sorry you feel that way.” The important thing when you are threatened or insulted is to immediately change the subject or end the conversation, before you take offense, or let yourself get upset. Otherwise, your distress will show, and that would be showing blood to a shark. You can’t play it cool on the outside without being cool on the inside, and you can’t do that without forgiving all around. If you pray for them in private, you can speak to them and about them respectfully in public. Or, instead of talking, make brief eye contact, give a quick little nod of recognition with a quick little smile, then move on to avoid them. If you don’t shine a light of goodwill on your enemies, you remain the frightened deer, when you could so much more enjoy being the headlights on high beam.
The key to managing worry and fear is learning how to change the channels in your mind. We learned last time how to switch awareness from the involuntary nervous system that takes feelings TO the brain, and give it to the voluntary nerves taking messages FROM the brain out to the muscles. We also learned how to go into the right brain that imagines scenes, and change the channels there.
Overcoming fear might start with changing the channels on your TV. The best breeding grounds I know for fear are horror and action movies, crime shows, and the evening news. Then learn to change the channels in your left brain, where words live. That’s where fear talks to you, and if you’re smart, where you’ll learn to talk back to it.
Write down all the negative things fear says to you, and later when you’re not afraid, write down comebacks that express your faith. Rather than running from pain, solitude and death, embrace the thoughts of them. Don’t let them be impersonal, faceless foes, but talk with them. Learn to think of them as your friends and teachers.
Whatever you believe in as being stronger, wiser and better than yourself, that is your god, and you can substitute that for "God" in the guidance below. Speak to your fears in your left brain and if you can, out loud, with words like these:
This too shall pass. . . . Let go, let God. . . . One day at a time, one moment at a time. . . . I don’t need worry—it’s just the interest paid on borrowed trouble. . . . No one can take my self-esteem without my permission. . . . Focus on the fire drill, not the fire. . . . If I focus on the problem I watch the problem grow, but as I focus on the solution I am watching the solution grow. . . . I will not act frozen as if I’m a slave to fear, but I’ll act out my freedom and my faith. . . .I can see God holding me, right here, right now. . . .
Write down your favorites of these and other sayings, and keep them with you in your wallet or purse. Bible passages that will help are the 23rd Psalm, Matthew 6: 25-34, Philippians 4: 6-8, and I Peter 5:7. Remember and identify with courageous people from fairy tales (I love the moxie of Hansel and Gretel) and from history. My favorites from biblical history are David and Goliath, Daniel in the Lions Den, Esther defying Haman, Jesus defying the Romans and the church, and the woman who crashed the Pharisee’s kosher luncheon in Luke 7. My favorite role models from modern history are Winston Churchill, Lech Walensa, Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks, and Pat Tillman.
School children practice their fire drills when they know the building is not on fire, so that when it is, they can get to safety with peace and calm. Remember these things will only have the power you give them by mediating on them in advance. When you give your mental channel-changing muscles a few work-outs, come the next crisis, you’ll be cool.
For most people, and especially I believe most Southerners, "Thou shalt not hurt thy neighbor’s feelings" is right up there with the Ten Commandments, except higher. They would much more freely admit to lying, coveting and idolizing than to saying or doing something they knew would hurt someone’s feelings.
The problem is that the truth hurts, especially the truth that sets us free from illusions and bad habits. So who is a good enough friend to bruise our ego, and hurt our feelings with the truth we need but do not want?
Sure a good friend is one who helps you out (a do-good friend), one who compliments you (a feel-good friend), and one who makes time for you and includes you in things (a good-times friend). These are all signs of a good friend, and we all need friends like this.
But these things are rather easy to give. You know the friend will like it, and will be more likely to make you happy by doing you the return favor down the road.
Now here are eight things a really good friend would say to you, and you, if you were a true-blue good friend, would say to them. Score yourself and your friend zero to ten to see how good a friend you both are to each other. I’d say 6 to 8 is a true blue, honest-to-goodness friend, and 0 to 2, though perhaps a do-good, feel-good, or good-times friend, is also a false-front friend.
1. If you my friend are doing something you have admitted to me isn’t good for you, something like drug/alcohol abuse or an eating or spending disorder, but you go on acting like there’s nothing wrong with it now, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
2. If you my friend are enabling one of your loved ones to destroy his or her life with a bad habit like those in the previous paragraph, and you are excusing, funding, provoking or covering up the loved one’s bad habits, but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
3. If you my friend have done something to insult me to my face but haven’t apologized for it, something you would certainly expect me to apologize for doing to you, but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
4. If you my friend have done something to insult one of your loved ones (child, spouse, close friend) to their face but haven’t apologized for it, something you would certainly expect someone in your position to apologize for doing to you, but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
5. If you my friend have cursed or degraded someone or something you know I hold dear (like taking God’s name in vain, or saying my best friend is no good), but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
6. If you my friend have left me out of a social event you know I would have loved to attend, inviting my friends while not inviting me and yet acting like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
7. If you my friend have been confirmed for saying to someone else something that is critical of me but which you have never said to my face, yet you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
8. If you my friend have obviously bad breath, or you have obvious food on your clothes, mouth or teeth, but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you about it.
So do you have a true-blue friend, and are you an honest-to-goodness friend for someone? If you don’t have a true-blue friend, and you aren’t one to anybody else, I’ll be the friend who tells you that you aren’t being a very good friend to yourself either.
Imagine that you have messed up big time—physically abused your child, cheated on your wife, stole money at work, or lied to your husband about where you were. And let’s say you really want to make sure that both you and the people you’ve hurt can trust that you have learned your lessons of how and why not to do that again. How would you go about crafting an apology that would do all that?
The purpose of most apologies today is merely to minimize pain for the apologizers, protect their image, and enable them to avoid the work they need to do but don’t want to do. Like any other form of lying, over time, a weak apology fails at all three of these goals.
Most people don’t know how to go about restoring both the trust of others and their own trustworthiness. That’s because there are so few role models in America for genuine remorse. I can’t recall when I last heard a satisfactory apology from a public figure who had made a moral mess, can you? An effective apology needs to answer three simple questions.
Don’t blame it on the situation, or on anybody else’s behavior, because you can’t guarantee those won’t come up again. Besides, that doesn’t take responsibility for the choices you made about how to handle your feelings.
Sure, maybe you put yourself in a bad situation, and you can change that. But what else do you need to change? attitudes you have harbored that provoked your choice? beliefs you have used to rationalize or excuse your behavior? images you’ve had of yourself and the other people involved here? These ideas in your head can’t be proven right or wrong, but you and others can prove the kind of words and actions these beliefs will provoke and excuse.
Put yourself in their place. Imagine a situation where they could theoretically do something like this to you. Imagine how you’d feel, if there were no real remorse in the other person, how hard it would be to carry on like nothing had happened. What would this do to your mind, your heart, your ability to go on like before, doing things for that person, facing your friends and family, trying to go to sleep at night, or fighting off your own bad, stress-related habits, like eating or drinking to your frustration?
If you have hurt someone in your personal life, you can apply what you have learned to your situation, and to your loved one. “I understand that I have made you have to carry around feelings of ______ and _______, that I have embarrassed you in the eyes of ____, and that now you’re going to have to really struggle with your ________ and _______. This is what I have done to you. What else have I messed up in your life? I know that I have hurt _____ and _____, but who else do you think I have hurt, and how?”
How will you clean up your side of the street? What will you do to help heal the hurt, and earn back the trust you have broken? Again, put yourself in their place—what would you need them to do in this situation to resolve your hurt and mistrust?
Do you need to go have a talk with others you have hurt, to see how your actions have affected them, and tell them you were wrong and you are sorry? How can you show them that you are going to teach yourself a lesson, by making sure you suffer more than all the pleasure you have derived from your bad habit over the years, even if it is possible, more than they will have to suffer for your actions?
Do you need to get an education, like anger management training, or understanding another culture, gender, or generation? Do you need to talk with someone to learn new role models for your behavior in certain situations?
Do you need counseling to work through old feelings that you’ve never expressed toward people in your childhood, feelings that piggyback on your natural emotions to provoke and rationalize your bad habits? Do you need residential treatment to break an addiction, to let your family have a break from you to heal, and to get you away from temptations you can’t resist?
Changing your beliefs requires admitting that you can and should change them, because they caused harmful behavior. You first confess this to people you’ve hurt, but real change inside requires you to tell others who share these attitudes and beliefs, especially the friends and family who may have taught them to you in the first place, by their words and lifestyles. And your lifestyle will also have to change, to express and firm up your new attitudes and beliefs.
Why don’t we ever hear apologies that answer these three questions in America? Very few of us really believe in and practice personal growth. Spin doctors say the public would see repentance as weak, weird and wacko, but I think those words better describe the conscience of any nation which values image over substance, and anesthesia over the truth that hurts while it is setting us free, free of the illusions that we are better than others, and don’t need them.
I pray that America may soon see a genuine, effective apology from one of its celebrities. I pray that you and I will amend our wrongs by helping others get over our messes, by cleaning them up. That way we can bring some major good things out of the next bad situation we create.
Dr. Schmidt is a psychologist life coach with offices in Middletown, Lexington, and Shelbyville.
You can feed your depression these body-building nutrients, or you can starve it to death. Can you see how self-defeating and avoidable these behaviors and attitudes are?
1. Shame: Hurt somebody, and don’t ask them or God for forgiveness. Don’t make amends either, or learn from it--just forget about it. That way you can’t forgive yourself either.
2. Resentment: Expressing anger is the normal human response to injustice. Hold it inside so it can turn its energy against you. Don’t forgive people until they repent and deserve it.
3. Chronic Frustration: We get depressed when life doesn’t meet our basic needs for friendship, affection, health, and the necessities money can buy (food, shelter, transportation, etc.), so take care of everybody else and just hope somebody takes care of you. Don’t take care of yourself—that would be selfish.
4. Unresolved Loss: When you lose a job or people dear to you, don’t replace them--just live in the past, the hole left behind.
5. Drifting: Avoid a life that has purpose and meaning. Avoid joining a group or reaching out for better relationships to get a sense of identity or belonging, as this all gets too confining.
6. Buried Hurts: If you were shamed or mistreated in your youth, don’t tell anybody about it. If you do tell, stay in the victim role. Don’t let God come into the memory for healing.
7. Unrealistic Expectations: Set your personal goals so high you can’t succeed, or so low you don’t feel any challenge.
8. Avoid Cure: Be too proud or scared to get medication. The same for counseling—be your own person. And avoid the support of groups—the people and principles of recovery are only for the sick, not you. Stay with your false pride, or your false humility, whatever preserves your privacy.