WHY FORGIVE? HOW TO FORGIVE | WHAT DO YOU DO! | Don’t LOSE
Heart Break – Forgiveness MasterClass
It’s not okay, you have a wound.
YOU NEED TO TAKE A BREAK!
YOUR WOUND IS HERE: SAYING:
“I don’t want to hold us captive to this thing anymore.”
YOUR HEART SAYS:
“I can heal myself, and I don’t need anything from you.”
THE “YOU” —-> THE STRESS. . ANGUISH… PAIN.
From literature to plays and movies throughout the world, Humanity’s fascination with love is just as strong as our obsession with heartbreak. But, is a broken heart simply an abstract concept, or are there real physical effects on the body and the brain?
Perhaps physical pain and emotional pain aren’t as different as we once thought. Think about the ways in which we describe lost love.
“He ripped my heart out”, “it was a slap in the face”, “I’m emotionally scarred.”This use of physical description paints a clear relationship, at least in language, between emotional and physical pain. In fact, studies have shown that human beings would rather
be physically hurt than feel social exclusion.
But why would these two different experiences elicit the same feeling in our bodies? It’s clear that our bodies use physical pain to the prevent the risk of imminent danger. But, from an evolutionary perspective, anything that increases our overall survival and fitness as a species is likely to persist. The rise of relationships and social bonds between lovers and friends alike became an important part of survival for many species. You look out for me, and I’ll look out for you. And just like your desire to not be burned by hot coffee again, animals desire not to be socially alone. The pain from both instances increases our chance of survival by avoiding less desirable outcomes. You’re more likely to survive and reproduce if you’re not alone.
For humans, a breakup, loss of a loved one, or isolation can trigger a similar reaction, creating the perception of physical pain. So, how can we alleviate this pain? After all, band-aids or creams are meant for physical wounds. Studies have shown that high levels of social support are related to low levels of pain, whereas socially alienated individuals show the poor adjustment. So if you’re feeling brokenhearted, surround yourself with friends and family, as difficult as it may seem. And if someone you know is suffering emotionally, be there for social support. Because, scientifically, us humans – we all just want to fit in somewhere.
I can heal myself, and I don’t need anything from you.”After you say that, and you mean it, then it’s just you.
No chains, no prisoners. Just the good, the bad and the ugly of whoever that person was from the start.
Our culture thinks that vengeance is freedom, but it is a total prison.
Any act of violence, whether it’s emotional or physical, is this weird, twisted form of intimacy.
WHY FORGIVE? THE TYPICAL REASONS! AUTOMATICALLY
One: you think that forgiving quickly will make you a good person. That’s an easy mistake to make, right?
If forgiveness is good, a good person should forgive right away. But in all my research, I actually didn’t find a timeline for forgiveness.
Everybody was just really desperately urging us to get around to it because they knew we didn’t want to.
Even Jesus, when he talks about turning the other cheek, isn’t talking about forgiveness. He’s talking about non-violence. There has to be a middle ground between letting someone of the hook right away and going full an eye for an eye on them.
Two: victims feel a lot of pressure to forgive from everyone else. It can come from your friends, from your family, from the media, from mixed up religious messaging. But the truth is, everyone wants you to forgive quickly so they can feel more comfortable, and they can move on. That’s a crappy reason to do anything.
Three: you think that forgiveness is a shortcut to healing. You think if you skip to the end of the story, you can bypass all the angry, vulnerable, messy healing crap. Spoiler alert: that one will come back to bite you in the butt.
For most people, you want to be a good person.
You love pleasing other people, and I hate the vulnerable, angry, messy, healing crap.
But it turns out that forgiveness is such a potent force that none of those reasons are strong enough to make it stick.
Just like love. If your motivation is selfish, even a good selfish thing like healing,it will collapse in on itself like a bleeding heart!
So why do it? Why forgive?
It can’t heal you; it won’t save you or the other person; it can’t make you a good person – at least not all by itself -because that’s not what forgiveness is designed to do.Forgiveness is designed to set you free.When you say, “I forgive you,” what you’re really saying is, “I know what you did.It’s not okay, but I recognize that you are more than that.I don’t want to hold us captive to this thing anymore.I can heal myself, and I don’t need anything from you.”After you say that, and you mean it, then it’s just you.No chains, no prisoners.Just the good, the bad and the ugly of whoever that person was from the start.Our culture thinks that vengeance is freedom, but it is a total prison.Any act of violence, whether it’s emotional or physical, is this weird, twisted form of intimacy.That’s why the Greeks said that a death by a good man was a good death.Think about it.Every time somebody thinks about my mom and my brother, they think about the fact that they’re not here,and then they think about the kid who did this.That one act of violence actually bound the three of them together in people’s minds for eternity.When we choose vengeance, we’re actually signing a blood oathto chain our story to our enemies for the rest of time.Forgiveness is the only real path to freedom.But to get free, you have to get super specific about what exactly it is that you’re forgiving because you cannot forgive something that didn’t happen to you.In my research, I came across this idea from Judaism that hit me in the chest.In Judaism, the family can’t forgive murderers, because they were not killed.They can only forgive the pain, anguish and grief that the loss caused them.This was a total jackpot moment for me.I had to compartmentalize my damage: not what happened to mom and Jim, not what happened to my family,not what happened to society, what happened to me.This is why justice often feels really cold for victims.It’s justice’s job to assess what is owed.And it is the criminal justice system’s job to assess what is owed to society.Not to victims.It is up to us to get really clear, individually, on what we are owed.You can’t forgive your father for beating your mother.You can only forgive him for how sad, alienated and angry that made you feel.I couldn’t forgive him for killing mom and Jim.I’m still here.I had to assess my damages.The wedding that I had without the two of them.The parts of me that my husband and kids will never get to understand without knowing the two of them.The way my life was supposed to start at 22, and he broke it.My inherent sense of safety and belonging, which, I got to be honest, I don’t think are coming back.Those are my damages.Most of us avoid forgiveness like the plague because we do not want to look at our wounds.Wounds are scary, they are nasty,they are icky, it is why most of us look away when we donate blood.It is way easier to take all of that emotion and channel it into rage at another person.I got to be honest with you, I say: do it.(Laughter)You thought this would be about forgiveness, huh?It’s an important part of the process.Anger is important; it is the fire that cauterizes our wounds and lets them scar over and heal.Too much anger, and yes, you’ll get third-degree burns.Without a little bit of heat, you’ll never scar over, and you’ll never know exactly what happened to you.If you don’t know what happened to you, you can’t know what you’re forgiving.But once you know what’s happened to you, it’s time for some good old-fashioned justice.Sorry, I married a Texan.So what in justice’s name am I owed?An apology? An explanation?A front-row seat to their torture chamber?Maybe – not the last part -but maybe you are owed those things in general.Nine times out of ten, if you ask for those things, you will get them.Which is why forgiveness is not the right thing in most situations.Forgiveness is only right when waiting for what we’re owed comes at too high a cost.In all those years, with that guy chained to my side,I got a lot done.I went to grad school, I married a wonderful man,I started a career that I honestly really love.But I did it all a little more slowly, and I wasn’t just dragging him along,I was dragging my mother and brother in the process, twisting the three of them up together in those chains.Pretty soon, that little posse started to crowd me out of my own body and my own experience.And one day, losing myself in order to punish him and keep the two of them alive felt like too high a cost to bear.It was there, in that crossroads, when I knew what had happened to me.I knew what I was owed, and I decided than choosing myself was more important than being right.That’s when I was ready to forgive.So I stepped away from Google, and I didn’t ask any more questions,and I wrote him a letter.I tore unused pages out of my mom’s journals, actually, and I wrote.I told him that what happened on December 19th, 2008, was not okay and would probably never be okay for either of us.But just because it wasn’t okay, that didn’t mean he owed me anything -not an apology, not an explanation, not his role as my villain.I told him that I hated to be reduced to one thing that happened to me one day.I yearned to be more, to be whole, and I didn’t think that I could do that if I looked at another person and reduced him to one thing he did one day and made evil the sum of its parts.I told him that I wished him a life full of healing and that I forgave him.Then, without thinking, I plopped that letter into a mailbox on the corner of Flatbush Avenue and Church.For the first 10 steps, there was this lightness of being, and then that lightness started to feel like a lurch in your stomach when you hit the spiritual tripwire.My chest unwound, it burst, and suddenly, I was alone with myself.I mean, really alone, giving birth to a stranger, saying hello to a girl that I hadn’t spoken to in seven years.(Sighs)Sometimes I miss him.(Laughter)Not him, the monster that I created.Things were a lot harsher and black and white, but they were a lot simpler when I had a villain to fight,and more familiar.As long as he was around, mom and Jim were never that far away.They were characters, just offstage, waiting in the wings, the rest of us on stage, talking about them.But my story was about the three of them, always.To get free, I had to get clear on exactly what contract I was shredding.Once I did that, I found myself alone, center stage, in the spotlight, with endless possibilities.Real forgiveness has to let go of all expectations.You can’t expect a certain outcome.You can’t accept them to reply.You can’t even expect to know who you’re going to be on the other side of it.Forgiveness is really tricky.It’s one of those tools that is only properly wielded when we have healed just enough that we have nothing left to lose.If you’re still hemorrhaging in pain, it is too soon to forgive.If you can’t roll up your sleeve and show me your scars and tell me exactly what happened to you, it’s still too soon to forgive.But it’s never too late to let go of your villains and reclaim yourself.And if you’re ready to let it all go -the grief, the pain, the anger, the trauma -and you’re open to finding out who you are instead of always trying to prove yourself -I got to be honest with you -all this forgiveness hype is legit!(Laughter)Ten out of ten, five stars, would highly recommend.
