Is forgiveness a necessary part of healing?

A wise man once told me that Anger is a beautiful feast, until you realize you are feasting upon yourself.

When you forgive, it isn’t for them. It’s for you so you can heal and move on. I’ll never forget, but I can forgive.

I think so….it’s the start of trying to let it go instead of keeping it all inside.

Personally I learned to let go of the anger and accept what was done. I am healed but did not forgive. I feel it is between them and their God and my only obligation was to not allow their actions to destroy the remainder of my life.

I think you have to reach a point where you’ve forgiven the person to a point, but that does not mean a lack of all anger. I’ve forgiven many people for many things, but a few of them I am still residually mad at. There are some things that you can just never “get over” entirely. I don’t find the residual anger to be too detrimental to my mental health, in the few cases where I harbor it.

Yes it is.

For my own sanity, yes, I find it necessary to forgive the abuser.

I would not be the same person I am today, if I did not muster the courage and conviction to find it within my self to forgive all of it.

Not in my opinion. Facing reality, above all else, is what helps me heal. If that means I have to realize that some people are just that bad and there’s nothing I can do about it, or that there’s no changing them… You just accept it an move on. There are certain things, in my personal opinion, that do not deserve forgiveness.

I would also like to point out that there’s a difference, for me, between forgiveness and understanding. I can understand why the person did it, and even sympathize to a point, without forgiving them. Like what @DrasticDreamer said about accepting it without forgiving the person. And I also agree that some things just can’t be forgiven.

Good point @fireinthepriory . I think you do have to work through it and understand why it happened, and then decide whether you want to forgive totally, have a guarded relationship with the offender or cut them out of your life. But I think that all these options are possibly healthy ones.

I don’t view forgiveness as ‘okay, now everything is hunky dorey and I’ll let you back into my life so you can do whatever you want’. I’m going by the strict definition of the word.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/forgive

@janbb And, just because I’ve forgiven in my head does not mean I’ve forgiven them to their face or allowed the abusers in my life.

@gemiwing me too!

Holding a grudge doesn’t feel right to me. Forgiveness feels healthier/cleaner in a sense. I never forget though.

@FutureMemory Good Answer I hate saying “GA.” Makes me feel like I’m choking!

@FutureMemory Actually staying angry feels healthier in some ways to me. I think we’ve grown up on this (Christian?) idea of forgiveness but I wonder is it better? I don’t mean raging at the universe and being a bastard to everyone – I think you have to get past it – but I still don’t see why forgiveness is so important a concept in the healing.

To me actual forgiveness feels like a gift to the person that they are not capable of appreciating and do not deserve. They have never asked for it and I will never offer it.

I am content simply accepting and letting go of the anger. I do NOT hold any grudge.
I do not wish them evil, I do not even think of them. I choose to never interact with them again.

@janbb I know someone for who anger is just a part of who they are. Makes it very hard to live with them…..it may not hurt you, but I guarantee it’s hurting those around you.

@Dog That’s exactly what I mean. I agree with you 100%. Lurve.

@Val123 I’m not speaking of being actively angry at anyone at this point. This is not something I’m going through right now. I’m just questioning the idea.

@Dog‘s thoughts are closer to my thinking.

That’s the amazing thing about us Humans. We have a million and one ways to do something and each one works for someone.

@janbb I also know what you mean. People act as if anger can never be a positive emotion, and I disagree, wholeheartedly. Anger can push people in a direction that will help them better their situation. Anger can stop unjust things from taking place, etc. It’s not bad. The key is moderation. :)

@DrasticDreamer I agree. Controlled anger isn’t always wrong. When I substitute teach, I can get very angry! But I learned quickly how to make it work for me. So no, anger isn’t always wrong. But burning anger stuffed down inside for years will always come leaking out on to other people, often over really minor things. Like total over-reaction And it can get to the point where the person doesn’t feel like himself if he isn’t angry! It’s not fun.

@Val123 Well, I was talking about the process of healing which of course means looking at your anger, not stuffing it down. But it sounds like you’re getting in to a more general discussion of anger.

Verily.

I had two abusive parents. Before he died, my father apologized to me for something that he felt, through his Alzheimer’s-induced haze, that he may have done which hurt me – he no longer knew what it was.

My mother kept her wits up to the very day of her death, and was entirely unrepentant for a lifetime of emotional abuse (which continued beyond the grave: I have a younger brother who inherited her $Million estate when she explicitly disinherited me. I didn’t know that was coming, so she was actually able to take an additional slap.)

Now, I do not choose my feelings about these two people, I merely have them. I remember the things about my father that were decent and lovable, I miss him, and think of him daily. I continue to despise my mother, and as I said elsewhere, if I could have her die a second time, I would, as long as it were painful.

I’m not sure about forgiveness, per se, but as far as anger I think we can choose how we want to feel. We can either let the default emotion continue, or we can inflame it and get angrier, or we can choose to stop feeling angry by deciding to “forgive” to “let go” to “see the positive” – whatever works for you, whatever works for the situation.

If the anger is productive, I agree it can be useful. (I don’t know what “healthy” means in this context.)

If the anger is lingering long past the hurt, and the only one still being hurt by the anger is you (for example, you seethe whenever you think about it, and the other person doesn’t even know), then you’re continuing to re-create and re-entrench the hurt over and over again. That doesn’t seem like it’s in your best interest (although probably we all do it to some extent.)

If forgiving the person ends your suffering and allows you to redirect your energies to things that are productive and desirable for you, it might be well worth doing.

i don’t understand the concept of forgiveness at all’’ i am always confused about it. seems pompous or patronizing??

I think the concept of forgiveness is not really about ‘forgiving’ the other person- it seems like it’s more about you taking back control. And yes, I do think that’s a necessary part of healing as wll as what @DrasticDreamer mentioned; dealing with the true reality of the situation.

It’s not so much achieving forgiveness that is important, as it is to be able to stop taking time in your life thinking about a situation you can no longer do anything about. When you’re angry about something, you tend to think about it a lot, maybe even obsess about it. You want some kind of justice, and the anger keeps you pushing for “justice,” which is often seen as retribution. The injustice just eats you up, inside.

So you spend some of your time thinking about or pushing for something that will make things even. Some people spend a lot of time seeking justice, and some people pursue it for years, fueled by anger.

You have to ask yourself if it is worth all this time trying to fix an injustice. What are the chances you will succeed? How important is it? A lot of people never stop to ask this question, and they let their anger fuel their need to keep going to put things right—or as right as can be.

As long as you retain your anger, you will be thinking about this incident in the past. As long as you are thinking about it, you won’t be able to spend that time doing something fun or fulfilling. When you maintain your anger, you lose that time.

Anger is useful for a little while. It helps you guard against getting hurt the same way again. It helps impress the lesson in your brain. But it can also impress the lesson so hard, you can’t stop obessing about it, even when there’s nothing left to learn.

This is why it can be important to stop being angry (let go of your anger). The longer you hold it, the more time you lose for good things. A lot of people call forgiveness “letting go of your anger.”

I don’t think you have to tell the person who screwed you that you forgive them in order to let go of your anger. However, it can be a ritual that helps you truly let go. In my opinion, what you want is to stop having the anger eat you up and keep you from enjoying other things.

It can be helpful if the person who screwed you over apologizes. That makes it easier to forgive. But like I say, forgiveness does not require a meeting between the person hurt and the person who did the hurting. It just requires letting go. It requires that you no longer want to fight about it. It requires you to rearrange your priorities.

I’m big on letting go. I’ve found it to work well in my life. Sometimes it’s harder to let go than other times. It just feels so unfair. But I tell myself that I can’t right every wrong. This is not going to affect me in the long run.

Is “letting go” forgiveness? I think so. Maybe not overtly, but certainly implicitly. You stop trying to get even. You let the offender off the hook. You move on. That’s forgiveness in my book.

I think forgiveness is a necessary part of healing. I think holding onto anger hurts the angry person much more than it helps them. I think getting even is overrated. I think people really underestimate the value of moving on in life, and stopping spending valuable mind time on something that is in the past. I believe forgiveness is helpful for everyone, if they want to heal and enjoy a better quality of life.

Not at all. If someone does an evil thing it is their fault. If you are confident in your inherent goodness you can choose to dismiss those who did you wrong with head held high. Forgiving them is a choice based on their deservedness not your benevolent character. Believe in yourself.

@daloon Thank you for clarifying the issue, but I have to disagree somewhat. I was sent to prison on a minor drug beef, something I consider an injustice almost beyond telling. It wasn’t that my sentence was all that out of line with what others get—far from it—it was that the normal sentence (3 years) for possession of drugs was incomprehensibly harsh, mostly because I refused to betray my friends even though some of them had betrayed me.

People have no idea how destructive a year in prison is to a person, especially when the whole prison system is run at 200% of designed capacity and everyone is so on edge that the least little thing could set off a riot or a beating. I won’t belabor how awful it was since I’ve written about it elsewhere. But suffice it to say, that my sense of outrage and injustice—as much for others as for myself—is both palpable and deep. It is the first thing I think about when I get up in the morning, and it is the last thing I think about when I drift off to sleep.

In a way it sustains me. I have forgiven all other trespasses against me in order focus on this. Certainly, “letting go” would be more comfortable and healthy for me. But it would mean letting the injustice go on. Most people have no idea of the torture being committed in their names, or they think it somehow “justified” that people are treated as less than human and broken in America’s prisons. We are one of the most punitive societies on earth, and most people are either not aware of it, they are stymied by the sheer boldface evil of it all, or they think it is not punitive enough.

It is simply too much to let go. What kind of a person would I be if I witnessed this crime against humanity and said nothing? It would be worse than witnessing the holocaust and saying nothing because it is still possible to speak freely about the matter and be heeded by one’s countrymen. It would truly be complicity in evil.

The whole point of forgiveness is that it is a gift that the offender does not deserve. If it were something they deserved, it wouldn’t be mercy or forgiveness, it would simply be their “just deserts.” The problem with withholding forgiveness is that one soon loses perspective on what people truly deserve, and one becomes excessively punitive. One begins to punish out of one’s own pit of rage, rather than asking, “What if I were being punished in their place?”

This is no idle intellectual exercise. When one over-punishes—when one punishes in such a way that one personally could not endure— one dehumanizes both oneself and the other. One commits a new injustice which becomes the focal point of powerful desires for revenge—desires which will not be tempered by any thoughts of mercy or forgiveness.

In my view, there is no offense so egregious that a person should be deprived of his or her humanity. When we deprive another person of their humanity, it not only diminishes our own, it creates a vendetta between that individual and society. After the Apartheid in South Africa, and the genocide in Burundi, there came the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions to help the whole country to forgive and move on. But such a healing process could only get under weigh when the evil was over and done with.

For me, to forgive and forget would be a luxury that neither I nor my county can afford.

I don’t think that systemic wrongs are like personal wrongs, at least, with respect to forgiveness. Social injustice is pervasive and won’t change unless you fight it. Individual injustices are the ones that you have to decide how much effect you are going to let them have on your life.

In your case, your anger gives you purpose. The other option, I think, is not forgiveness, but apathy. How can you forgive a system? How can you forgive something that is not a person? It just doesn’t make sense. At least, not to me.

Fighting a social injustice benefits not just you, but a whole host of other people. It is a cause. Fighting a personal injustice—you have to make a cost benefit sort of analysis. Is the change of getting justice worth the struggle to you? If yes, fight on. If no, get past it.

Anyway, the issue of the Criminal Punishment System is so much larger and more complex than just about anything one individual can do to another. If you’ve suffered at it’s mercies, fight on. But that’s more like being an advocate for any oppressed minority that about anger or forgiveness.

When fighting social injustice, one option is seeking reparations. But mostly people will be happy if you just make the oppression stop. But I am rambling.

@pdworkin :( I’m so sorry.

I don’t think forgiving and letting go, go hand in hand. You can do one without the other. I will never forgive one or two abuses I’ve endured but I don’t think about them much either. They happened, there is nothing I can do to make them unhappen. I can move on, I can let go, I can refuse to feel victimized and I can do all this without forgiving my abuser. That’s their burden to carry, not mine.