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Forgiveness: A Path To Healing

By Gwen Nyhus Stewart

In our journey to inner peace and healing, both guilt and forgiveness of self and others have a profound effect on this process. Guilt is defined as a feeling of culpability especially for imagined offences or from a sense of inadequacy; a self-reproach; and forgiveness as the act of forgiving or the ceasing of feeling resentment against an offender. Guilt and lack of forgiveness of self and others, burdens many people with the heavy weight of inappropriate shame and the destruction of deep-seated resentments. In recent years, much has been written about the destructiveness of repressed emotions and particularly anger and resentment in contributing to life-threatening illnesses.

We are emotional beings. We are born that way and the repression of emotion leads to emotional distress and emotional dis-ease. This distress and dis-ease over a long period of time culminates in the manifestation of physical distress and dis-ease.

Emotions are neither positive nor negative. Feelings of anger, sadness, frustration, joy, love, etc. are not good or bad; rather they are just feelings. Many people are afraid of emotions such as anger in the mistaken belief that anger leads to violence. Violence actually results from the repression of emotions and feelings of powerlessness.

The belief that feeling emotion means we are weak is a dreadful legacy to burden people with. Teaching people that strength means not feeling or denying our feelings is tantamount to creating illness. Beliefs such as 'big boys don't cry' and 'good girls don't get angry' has resulted in men and women who are unable to get in touch with what they actually feel. Depression is thought to be caused by anger turned inward and is only one of the symptoms of the need to protect ourselves from the scorn associated with expressing feelings. Many other illnesses and particularly the addictions are theorised to be expressions of a deep level of emotional pain.

The need to change our thinking and thus change our feelings is paramount to creating inner healing and peace. Learning to express emotions in appropriate ways and the releasing of emotions allows us to create a state of inner harmony without which our lives feel out-of-control. The thinking, beliefs, and feelings culminating from the judgmental attitudes so prevalent in our society precipitate these feelings of guilt and resentment and lead us into the morass of despair.

These judgements lead to self-righteousness and the notion of oneself as a victim. In the twelve step programs they have a saying, which is, "To become free, you need to get out of your self-righteous resentment and off your pity pot." In other words, stop feeling sorry for yourself and do something about it.

Why won't we forgive? I believe it starts from our unwillingness to forgive ourselves. We believe that we are undeserving of love, respect, acceptance, appreciation, and the right to live a life where we walk in peace, joy, harmony, and abundance. Somewhere along the line, we started to believe that all the rules and regulations of the society in which we live defined who we were supposed to be. We stopped trusting and believing in our own inherent worth and came to believe that we were 'not good enough.' Messages such as 'you failed' or 'you should' became a litany for us to abuse ourselves with guilt. I call it abuse because it is just as painful when we do it to ourselves as when others do it to us. We became judge and jury and found ourselves guilty of our perceived offences. As we judged ourselves so harshly, we also judged others. As with everything, that which is within you is reflected outside of you. As we stopped loving ourselves, we stopped loving others and closed our hearts to the compassion and acceptance of self and others, which would lead us to a life, lived with peace, harmony, and joy.

This contamination of our inner sense of worth is perpetuated by the institutions that are such an integral part of our lives. Much material has been written about the need for children to develop a strong sense of self-esteem in order to succeed. When the primary caregivers such as parents, teachers, and other societal influences are unable to love themselves unconditionally, this 'learned attitude' is passed on to the next generation as shame in an attempt to control behaviour.

This doesn't suggest that letting children behave inappropriately is justified, it means that children are accepted, disciplined, and taught respect for themselves and others. It means loving the child unconditionally but not condoning behaviour that is physically or emotionally harmful to self or others. It means believing in the inherent worth of the child and setting boundaries to provide the sense of safety that children need in order to grow into healthy adults.

This sense of shame differs from guilt in that guilt is about behaviour. Shame is deeper and more pervasive. It is about your being and feelings of inferiority, inadequacy, being bad and unlovable become the conviction underlying your life. Children grow up believing they are 'not good enough' and become the caregivers for the next generation. And so it goes, on and on. I am not blaming the parents and caregivers here as we parent the way we were parented. My own definition of maturity is that maturity is achieved when we are able to forgive our parents and other significant adults for being human.

A sense of our own worthlessness is a state of being in which we come to believe that we are defective as human beings. This 'soul sickness' or 'spiritual bankruptcy' becomes the identity with which we engage the world and leads to the pervasive sense of hopelessness and powerlessness so common in our families and institutions. Underlying many cases of depression, anxiety, marital problems, family problems, and addictions is this painful belief. Arising from this belief come the punishing feelings of inappropriate shame, guilt, and resentment.

What Is Self-forgiveness?

Self-forgiveness is the willingness to believe that you are worthy, that there are no mistakes rather, you are on the planet, or in Earth School (as some people call it) to learn about being human. The opportunities to learn are just that - not mistakes - just opportunities to learn.

Author and lecturer Leo Buscaglia talked about how he always took the elevator to the wrong floor whenever he stayed in a hotel. He would scold himself repeatedly but invariably would get out on the wrong floor the next time he stayed in a hotel. He decided that scolding himself was obviously not working so instead decided to say to himself, as he patted himself on the shoulder, "You sweet old thing, you did it again." It does not matter. In other words don't sweat the small stuff and it is ALL SMALL STUFF.

Where did we get the idea that we were supposed to be perfect? If we were, we wouldn't be here. We are because the purpose in being here is to learn the lessons - and the first lesson in our growth to becoming all that we can be is to love and accept ourselves exactly as we are, to develop self-appreciation. One of the most important aspects of learning about love of self is the notion that behaviour changes when we think of ourselves as terrific instead of not good enough.

It is the same principle to use when we want children to behave in appropriate ways. What you stroke, is what you get. In other words, what you pay attention to expands. A child who misbehaves and gets attention will continue to misbehave. A similar reaction occurs with everyone because as we are criticised we become frightened. The more afraid we are, the more we do the very things for which we are criticised. This is called a 'self-fulfilling prophecy' or the 'Pygmalion Effect.'

Practical Steps to Self-forgiveness

1. Examine how you perceived a certain situation and how you can chose to change your perception. Remember that the thoughts we think create the feelings, and it is our perception that creates our interpretations of the situation.

2. Accept yourself and your humanness - you are not supposed to be perfect.

3. Admit when you make a mistake.

4. Remember that everybody is doing the best they can with what they know, and that includes you.

5. Let go of past-future thinking, stay in the ‘Now.’

6. Confront your emotional pain - own your own ‘stuff.’

7. Appreciate the lessons that have contributed to your growth and made you who you are now.

8. Say 'I forgive myself for ____________ (whatever).'

Remember:

“Women will forgive anything. Otherwise, the race would have died out long ago.”

- Robert A. Heinlein

“Forgiveness is not an emotion, it’s a decision.” - Randall Worley

“I can forgive, but I cannot forget, is only another way of saying, I will not forgive. Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note – torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.” - Henry Ward Beecher

(This article is an excerpt from my book, The Healing Garden: A Place of Peace. See Chapter 3, Forgiveness, pages 21 – 30 for more information about forgiveness and self-appreciation.)

See Inside The Book for Introduction and Chapter Information.

Buy the book here: Books.

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