The Therapeutic Tool of Forgiveness
Since COVID many have experienced unexpected events. Here are practical steps and a framework for healing and moving on...
Many years ago, when I was flying cross country every week for my job, and we had hit turbulence. The man next to me introduced himself to me. He could see I was nervous. He had been a fighter pilot, he explained to me everything that was happening with the plane. As he told me about all of the noises and shifts in a steady, knowledgeable voice, my fear disappeared, and I relaxed.
After we were through takeoff, he started to talk to me about being a POW during Viet Nam. He said during his first few months back, he had met Viktor Frankl, who had been in the concentration camps during Nazi Germany.
Viktor Frankl, the father of Logotherapy, survived concentration camps, and lost many family members in Auschwitz. From that experience Frankl became a psychotherapist and developed a philosophy called Logotherapy – or “meaning therapy.” He taught that, 1) Every person is born with a healthy core; 2) Our primary focus is to build that healthy core; and 3) Life has purpose and meaning but not necessarily happiness or fulfillment – i.e. there is a difference between happiness and meaning. Frankly also illuminated that how we can find meaning is: 1) Creating a work or a deed; 2) Experiencing something or encountering someone; and 3) Through the attitude we take towards unavoidable suffering. These concepts are useful when we talk about healing. Trauma or tragedy are part of most peoples' lives at one time or another, and we are meant to heal. (Frankl, 2006).
I would add that one of the compounding beliefs that often brings pain when we experience such events is that we personalize tragedies and believe that they are our fault (Beck, 1980). Almost every person experiences tragedy or trauma at some point in our lives and we are built to heal from it.
So why would I start a post called “Forgiveness” normalizing that bad things happen? For one it helps to change the expectations that we may have about life. Not to say that any injustice should ever take place, but that when they do occur it does not reflect upon ourselves but on the condition of living in a world where large atrocities take place and we are not immune from being touched by them. The difference between expecting life to bring happiness vs life to have meaning alone is a shift in understanding and thus releasing pain. It does not mean that happiness cannot be had but meaning is different. Having meaning can happen every day even in difficult or undesirable circumstances.
Oftentimes when we are injured and angry we are still tied to an event in an energetic way – either in escalation, or a reactive sense. When we are actively angry or unforgiving we are still mentally behaving in a way that something is still going on in our lives. A way to think about this is to imagine when you have had a picture or painting on the wall for a long time. When you remove it, you will see where the paint is different there, and your eye will always wander to that spot, until you repaint or rehang something else. Just removing it does not change your eye moving to that spot, in fact, its absence still draws your eye but in a more pronounced way.
So what does forgiveness look like, at least according to this framework? I will suggest practical steps here, knowing that there is more than one perspective. Forgiveness can be a therapeutic tool for healing.
One of my favorite practical frameworks comes from Dr. Wayne Dyer (2020), whom I have always found to have both spiritual yet grounded perspective on healing. I am not listing all of his steps. Dr. Dyer lists 15 steps. Dr. Dyer's perspectives are spiritual, yet not necessarily religious:
1) Move on to the next act – don’t stay steeped in the history of what happened. Let the past be the past. Paint over where the painting used to be on that wall – hang something new. Whether this includes therapy, changing friends or networks, forgiving yourself, journaling. Let the past be in the past. There are many people who have moved from the ashes of great tragedy to a new story, even if it is different than what they dreamed for themselves originally.
2) Reconnect to spirit. Find a new meaning in what you have learned or let it transform you – particularly if it has put you on a new path. Find a new meaning in love or service. As Dr. Dyer points out invoke the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi, “Lord Make Me an Instrument of Thy Peace,” and look for opportunities of let peace shine through you.”
3) Switch from blaming others to understanding yourself. Others cannot make you uneasy or control your inner peace without your consent. This is what you can control over and learn to work on this. Your emotions are neither right nor wrong, they are. Your peace and inner state is all that you control.
4) Avoid telling others what to do. When things are out of control around us, oftentimes we seek to control others and this puts us back into conflict. Do not do this. This may mean many things, including leading through service or example or through just being present.
5) Combining two of Dr. Dyer’s points: Being kind instead of being right and practice service. When we are focused on being kind and also on service, we are more likely to be in a place where positive interactions can happen and with persons with whom they can happen.
6) Embrace your dark times. You cannot avoid the darkness in your life. It comes into everyone’s life. When it happens we go through the stages of grief. When we come to terms with the fact that tragedy has happened in our lives, no matter the cause, the process of grieving the losses and changes will bring transformation. The transformation may not be in monetary value, or accolades, or accomplishments. But it will be different in meaning when you embrace the process.
The underlying focus is that we all have a solid core. and we are meant to heal.
References
APA (2017). “Disaster Psychology,” APA Books Blog,
https://blog.apabooks.org/2017/09/12/disaster-psychology/ retrieved June 21,
2020.
Beck, A.T. (1980). Feeling Good The New Mood Therapy. William Morrow and
Company, Inc.
Dyer, W. W. (2020). “How to Forgive Someone Who Has Hurt You in 15 Steps”. Dr. Wayne W. Dyer Blog retrieved on October 26, 2020 from https://www.drwaynedyer.com/blog/category/forgiveness
Frankl, Viktor E. (2006) Man's search for meaning, Boston : Beacon Press
Herman, Judith Lewis. (1992) Trauma and recovery, New York, N.Y., BasicBooks.
