We all talk of forgiveness, but what is forgiveness truly? And why is it so hard Forgiveness means different things for different people, each person has their own definition of what forgiveness is. Forgiveness can simply mean dropping the topic for some people, but on the other hand, for some people, forgiveness is an elaborate process that they can sometimes struggle with. Some people find forgiveness very easy to practice because of this definition, and some despite it.
No one likes being hurt. In fact, if we could, we would never want to get hurt. We would protect ourselves from any kind of hurt or unhappiness that could possibly befall us. Unfortunately, life doesn’t work the way we want it to. Inevitably, there is going to be a time where we get hurt. And being hurt is one of the experiences of life everyone goes through, so don’t worry, you are not alone. Hurt is stable throughout life, the only thing that changes is the time at which we get hurt, the intensity of it and the people or situations that hurt us.
There are many ways to get hurt, many ways for us to be taken advantage of by the people we love and trust. Sometimes it may be intentional, but a majority of the time it is unintentional. The sad irony of life is that we cannot be hurt by someone who is not important to us. If someone is not important to us, we simply do not care enough about their opinion or what they think of us to be offended or hurt or angered. Someone not important to us also has very little power or influence over our life. On the other hand, people we do care about, people who are important to us and the people who we have opened our hearts to hold great power to hurt us if they wish to. And sometimes even when they don’t wish to. People can hurt us, unbeknownst to themselves.
We may feel the need to forgive them because we care about them and want them in our life, and they did not intend to hurt us anyway, so why does it matter right? It does, actually. It matters a lot. Even if their intention was not to hurt you, they did end up doing that. You deserve an apology and they need to understand their fault. So even if it was unintentional and they do care about you, if they did or said something that hurt you, it is important for you to communicate it to them, and for them to know and understand what hurts you so they can avoid it in the future before you can forgive them.
Intentional or not, by people who are close to us or not, there are many ways you can hurt a person. People can physically hurt other people. It is the most direct and visible way to hurt someone. Be it a classmate tripping another classmate as they are walking, or two friends descending into a physical fight that ends in punches, it is all meant to hurt someone. People can mentally hurt you too. Your teacher or professor giving you a higher workload than what is mentally feasible for you, or your boss giving you more projects than should be expected of you with ridiculous deadlines that not only stress you out but also put a huge chunk of unnecessary strain on your brain are all ways to mentally hurt someone. Emotional hurt is a little more different. It is not very easy to hurt emotions if you are not close. Emotional investment in the first place is a sign of closeness. Emotional hurt in that sense, then, becomes difficult to recover from and difficult to forgive. But it is very easy to hurt someone emotionally as emotions are fragile. If we like and trust someone we are very likely vulnerable to them to some degree. Something smaller can still be easily forgiven, forgotten and moved on. Is something small hurts us emotionally, like our friend not waiting for us if we have stopped to tie our shoelaces on a walk, or if they ghost or leave us hanging after making plans to meet at the last moment. These are incidents that hurt, but we still can move on without making a big deal out of it or just quickly discussing it with them for once.
But things that cause significant emotional hurt can be hard to forgive and move on from. But holding on to it doe not help us either, as it does not magically make our hurt go away either. The thing that will bring us more mental peace will be to forgive them.
So, to help you through the journey of forgiveness when someone has hurt you emotionally, here are a few things that may help you if you think about it.
1. Forgiveness does not mean condoning.
The biggest reason we may have to hesitate forgiving someone who has hurt us emotionally is that we are afraid to be hurt again. Nobody likes being hurt, and it is our first instinct always to protect ourselves. To cross this hurdle in forgiveness, we must realise that forgiving something does not mean that it was okay. The possibility of forgiveness itself is the confirmation that something was wrong in the first place. There is no reason for forgiveness if something is not wrong, correct? What may further help you feel forgiving does not mean what happened was okay, is to clearly express the same to the person who has hurt you. You can simply say that what happened was not right, and it cannot happen again, and the only reason you are forgiving them is that you value their presence and the relationship you share or that you see they regret their actions. Realising this will make it much more likely for you to be able to forgive them.
2. Relax our concept of “right”
This does not imply lowering your standards in the kind of behaviour by others is acceptable towards you, rather it is a change you need to make within yourself and in your outlook, the perception of the situation and the assumptions you hold of the other person. We need to let go of this incessant need to be right. We are humans and we all make mistakes, we are not infallible and will most likely be in the wrong more times than we would be in the right. That doesn’t mean we give up, it just means we don’t have to hold ourselves, and as a by-product - others, to ‘perfect’ standards. So try not to think too much over whether or not you are in the right or wrong by forgiving someone who has hurt you emotionally, rather focus on whether or not you feel like you are ready to forgive and whether or not they deserve your forgiveness.
3. Punishment is not our job.
Punishment may be too severe a word to use in this context, but it is only natural that when we are hurt by somebody, we want them to hurt as well. We want them to understand what it feels like to be hurt, in hopes, it will make them empathise with us and they will be more careful before hurting us next time. Again, it is not our job. They are as human as we are, we are not superior to them nor do we reserve the right to decide whether they deserve to be ‘punished’. We feel like if we don’t forgive them and let them stew in their own guilt, it will somehow stop them from ever being mean again, but we don’t know that. We don’t know if it will actually discourage them from being mean or hurtful towards others. Don’t burden yourself with the weight of that too. Forgive them whenever you are ready to do so, and communicate, that is your best shot to ensure you and other people are less likely to be hurt again.
4. Don’t hold on to anger.
Sometimes we hold on to this very wrong notion that if you are the angrier person in a situation, you hold the power in the situation. This is precisely why in any altercation of any kind people try to gain the upper hand and one-up each other in order to feel powerful and in control of the situation. Because an argument in the first place makes them defensive, and they feel the need to establish their authority. In a situation where you have been emotionally hurt too, you feel cornered or looked over, and may feel the to establish your identity and assert the fact that your emotions deserve to be considered too and it is unfair for someone you care about to completely disregard them. And to do this, you might hold on to the anger even after it has fizzled out, to reiterate that you have been hurt. Don’t do this, because ultimately the only person you end up hurting is yourself. Anger is a very intense and draining emotion and never helps anyone. Forgiveness, instead, will help you move on from this incident.
5. Focus on what will be better for your if you forgive.
Often, we hold back on forgiveness out of fear as to what will go wrong if we forgive someone. Like we discussed before, we may assume that forgiveness means we are okay with whatever it was that hurt us. We also believe that forgiveness will somehow reduce our importance in their perception of us or that they may take us for granted. But what might help in our struggles of forgiving someone who has emotionally hurt us would be to think of the variety of benefits in our favour if we forgive someone. The first and foremost is, of course, the fact that you can let go of the mental and emotional baggage of the situation. Being upset, hurt or angry by someone can also be draining and takes a toll on us even if we don’t realise it. Another major benefit is that our health and social life gets better too. Not being forgiving and accumulating all the hurt will weigh down on you, not only emotionally but physically as well. Being upset can cause a host of health issues like stress, fatigue, lethargy, loss of appetite etc.. which detrimentally affects your body’s health. Being forgiving prevents these issues.
Being a forgiving person also improves your social life, as you come across as more friendly and approachable, which makes it easier for you to make friends and connections. And your existing friends, too, will surely appreciate the fact that you trust them enough to give them a second chance and are forgiving of them when they make mistakes.
6. Point of View.
Try to think from the point of view of the person that hurt you. We often get so taken up with our emotions and the fact that we are hurt, that we develop tunnel vision and end up completely disregarding the other person’s perspective or what their side of the same event may have been. But it is just as important to understand their motivations and why the situation unfolded this way, as it is to process our own feelings. You never know, sometimes you may save yourself from a lot of hurt that may come from a misunderstanding that can very easily be resolved if you were to try and understand their side of the situation that may have nothing to do with you.
Reframing is also a technique used by a lot of therapists that help us create a more 3-dimensional impression of the event that hurt us so that we can put into perspective how much of the hurt directed towards us was truly intentional. It involves trying to think like the other person, or at least trying to understand their actions based on what we know that gives us more context than a simple assumption we may have made of their behaviour from that one isolated incident. It will help us give reasons to justify forgiving them.
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- The Indiaparenting Team
