The first step to forgiveness is compassion. Pain is not created in a vacuum. Aim to understand how someone’s ignorance or dysfunction drove them to do something that caused so much pain. You’re not excusing it or justifying it, just understanding. Challenge yourself to empathize with the other person’s worst suffering and accept them in spite of it. It will help you better understand the suffering which was placed onto you.
The second step to forgiveness is separation. Separate the person’s actions from their humanity. Understand that what they did was merely a faulty strategy to meet their own emotional needs. Their needs are like yours and mine. The way they went about meeting them was not. They have hurt and have suffered injustices as well.
The third step to forgiveness is acceptance. The transgression is a permanent part of you. You can choose to learn from it and become a better person, or you can hold on to it and let it drag you down for the rest of your life. Channel the pain into progress, something positive, something beautiful. Some of the world’s most beautiful art and greatest achievements were borne out of the worst suffering and injustice. Become a conduit and transform pain. This will allow you to become grateful for the experience which hurt you.
The caveat to forgiveness is to not forget.
And for those rare deeds which are unforgivable: sit with them, cease to see the separateness, and let them dissipate in the waves.
You should be taking a psychology degree and helping people on psychotherapy, this is really good. This is that kind of posts that take hours of deep pain and nights awake, asking yourself the same questions ” Why? Why now? Why did they do this to me?” till you reach this conclusions.
I reached similar conclusions myself before but this helped completing.
I think you should have had some pratical examples so people can take the most out of it.
Thanks.
I thought about using the example of my ex from years ago who cheated on me and left me, because we’re now friends. It took me a long time to forgive her.
I actually considered going to grad school for psychology a couple years ago, but after some research and talking to people, I decided against it.
Hi Mark,
In your about section which I now think has been updated, I don’t think I misread it, it says “Bachelors Degree in Psychology from Boston University”. Intern mistake?
Btw Why did you decide against it?
“Born in Austin, Texas, I graduated from Boston University in 2007.”
I graduated in International Relations and Business.
A lot of reasons:
1. Massive time commitment without an immediate or obvious benefit for my business.
2. Academia is quite political, and Ph.D students are expected to fall in line and do what they’re told to a large extent when they start out. I don’t really handle authority well.
3. The credibility it would have given me is becoming less and less useful.
4. I would have had to take the GRE, volunteer in a lab, network with professors — all in all, it would have been 6-12 months of work just to get my application up to par. I actually think I could put together a stellar application if I put 6-8 months into it and get accepted almost anywhere, but that’s a lot of time and effort for something I was only so-so on to begin with.
I love the subject and I’m open to doing it one day. But it would be more for my personal satisfaction and fulfillment than anything else.
There was a time, when I was doing the pick up stuff (and getting sick of it), that I considered it as a back-up career option. I decided to change to Postmasculine and give it a run, which has turned out great.
I see, I remember reading clearly ‘Bachelors Degree in Psychology’ before. Maybe it’s just me, my consciousness is fooling me. Oh you neurons..
I agree with you. You practically described what I feel is an antiquated schooling system.
i dont know why just never really felt it.
For some reason, this article seems to me as contradictory to who you have revealed to us to be so far, Mark.
I mean, substitute someone causing pain, for a dumb girl acting dumb.
I know you hate that. And what I understood is if a girl does not stimulate you, at least intellectually, you will move on to the next one.
Well, why not have compassion for the girl? Separate her “beautiful humanity” from her faulty strategy to meet her human needs, it is not her fault, right? And finally accept and love her no matter what?
I mean, maybe this Forgiveness applies to people who matter to us most, that we cannot leave out of our lives, then there would be no contradiction.
But why would we forgive someone for causing pain, and not forgive them for being, through human natural coping mechanisms, dumb / without a fashion sense / unfit / unhealthy / not understanding our world etc, etc, etc?
Just because you forgive someone doesn’t mean you have to be with them. You still have boundaries. You just don’t hold a grudge or anger for the person anymore.
If someone robbed my house, I could forgive him and let go of my anger towards him, but it doesn’t mean I invite him over for tea every week. HUGE difference there.
I think a major part of earning someone’s forgiveness is doing something to make up for it. For example, let’s take your robbery example above. If someone stole money from me, I may be able to forgive them if I felt their apology was sincere. But that’s not enough. A sincere apology would ALSO mean paying back the money, even if it would take them time to do it. I don’t think a person is sincere in asking for forgiveness if they then do nothing to compensate for it, be it in deeds, behavior or whatever. And of course there’s no forgiveness from me if the person doesn’t ask me for it in the first place. I will only consider forgiving a person that is 1) Acknowledges what they did was wrong. 2) Is apologetic about what they did. 3) Actually wants to be forgiven and 4) Tries in some way to change or make up for their bad behavior.
What if they’re dead? Or you don’t know where they are? Or they did something which can’t be compensated (i.e., broke your trust)? You plan on just being angry at them for the rest of your life?
If someone dies, then obviously that changes the equation a bit. But it also depends on the severity of their act. As you previously implied, some things are simply unforgivable(IMO – things like murder, rape, pedophilia). I might be able to forgive someone for breaking my trust, but I might not be able to trust them again for a long time. Confidence in their trustworthiness would have to be rebuilt.
Luckily, nobody has ever done anything so bad to me that I am scarred by it. I don’t know what it’s like to be in that situation or how easily forgiveness would come. When someone has hurt me in some way in the past, I can forgive on the conscious level, but the anger at the primal level I’ve found for me only dissipated with time. Time heals wounds as they say and I’ve found that to be consistently true.
The point is trying to make sure -you- are no longer burdened by negative emotions regarding an act that is long past.
Forgiveness is not a clean slate, you do not forget. You simple stop paying attention to what happened then and live in the now.
What Joost said.
Some people seem to be able to get past murder too, and not only that, they now employ 2 of the murders of their daughter:
http://theforgivenessproject.com/stories/linda-biehl-easy-nofemela-south-africa/
I doubt I could ever do that, but I have no doubts this lady has a much happier and fulfilled life than your average parent of a victim.
I suppose one of the things that has been danced around a bit here, but not explicitly touched on in the comments is that ultimately forgiveness is as much for you (if not more), than it is about the person you’re forgiving. There is an excellent book that was published earlier this year called “Self-Compassion: Stop Beating Yourself Up and Leave Insecurity Behind” by Kristin Neff (she’s a psychology professor at Berkeley) that explores this in-depth. A quote that really stuck with me from Buddha is “Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one getting burned”.
True true.
I’m not sure whether it’s the same thing, but I rarely actually forgive someone, rather I just let things go. To me forgiving is allowing what they have done it’s own personal space, whereas letting it go stops it from growing in my mind and causing long term resentment. I’ll be honest I haven’t thought too much about this before.
I think in some cases this could be fine. I think in others you could just be burying/avoiding the issue and it will bubble up in unconscious ways.
I try to forgive people when I can. I understand that quite often, there are things going on in others lives that are bigger than me.
Life is a relative thing and so I try to be understanding. I believe that some things are unforgivable but I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about.
I think if you can’t learn to forgive you’re just limiting your self to a life of resentment and bitterness. If we held a grudge over every little thing people have done we would get literally no where in life and quite often those people that can’t forgive are labelled as dangerous, psychotic and damaged. I think we label them that for a reason be it a stereotype or not… Quite often those with anger issues have deep seated problems with forgiveness. Is this because of what has happened to them in the past? Is it ignorance of the fact of the relativity of others lives and our own? That’s the real question. Regardless we all have the ability to change and this is why we’re here on this website.
This article was very helpful to me. I have been struggling to forgive someone because I could not understand why they would do what they did. However when I look at it from the angle of: “Understand that what they did was merely a faulty strategy to meet their own emotional needs. Their needs are like yours and mine. The way they went about meeting them was not. ” I can step back a bit from the situation and begin to understand them better.
[...] an amazing trigger within human nature, the minute someone acknowledges their flaws, not only do we forgive them for it, but we actually come to like that [...]
The last time I dated I ended up running out on the girl. Felt I’d tried everything, but she couldn’t see it. I’ve beaten myself up for it ever since. Refuse to get back in a relationship even if I thought I could. I’ve felt self-loathing , anger, anxiety, weak, afraid, manipulated, and controlled. I’ve carried it every day for two years. It’s transformed me into something I never wanted to be. Got me reading all this manosphere stuff that only seems to make things worse. The positivity and light seems to be leaking out of me. Feels like everybody is judging me everywhere I go. I want to forgive and be forgiven for failing her. I want to know how to do everything perfectly. It’s causing a great deal of chaos and mental anguish that’s snowballing everything I touch.
I liked this post.
I see it as my own core issues that have been brought to my attention and need to be addressed or I’ll just repeat the problem. That’s partly why I struggle. I feel so responsible.
I suppose this can be applied to one’s own past misdeeds as well.
Hey Mark,
I like that article. But what is the difference between compassion, the first step, and separation, the second? In both steps we try to understand, why the other person did behave in a way that made you feel pain. If my girlfriend cheated on me, I try to understand why she did it: for example she felt boring with me, she just wanted the validation of another man or she was just … drunk. Sooo … whats the difference between step one and two?