Forgiveness Part 2: Breaking the Association

In the last blog entry, I went over the application of trauma principles as it relates to forgiveness and why it is so hard to forgive. If you have no idea what that meant, don't worry. This will be much more straightforward. So how do we break this cycle of unforgiveness? If we apply the principle of extinction (explained in the last blog), it means we would need to talk or think about the person/incident without feeling the negative emotions in order to break that association. OK, well how do we do that? To gain insight into unforgiveness, I like to look at the greatest injustice in the history of the world: Jesus dying on the cross. When Jesus was on the cross, he said, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). This is a particularly profound statement because it is an important aspect of forgiveness. Jesus was able to forgive because he understood. Understanding can be defined for our purposes as insight and awareness of other people's feelings. Specifically, the person who wronged you. Jesus understood the grave ignorance of the people crucifying him and it was his awareness of this fact that allowed him to forgive. We must apply the same concept of understanding in order to break the association between the memory of transgression and the rush of negative emotions.

Jesus naturally had understanding because he has the knowledge of everything. Unfortunately for us, we do not. Sometimes it can come easily and we have understanding for people in certain situations. But other times, especially when we have difficulty forgiving, we need to actively increase our understanding of the person or the situation. One effective way to do that is to talk to someone (perhaps a therapist!) about the transgressor in an empathetic way. This person can provide you with an objective point of view and can challenge you to think about the transgressor in a different light. When you talk about someone with the intention of gaining understanding, your compassion and empathy for that person increases. It requires some time and effort to process and talk about the person and negative experience without feeling (or minimally feeling) angry or offended. When you do, you will gain the ability to talk about a transgressor without feeling that rush of negative emotions. It may be hard to believe, but the association eventually will break and the memory of the person and what he/she did will simply become another innocuous memory.  Mind you, the person that helps you process and gain understanding will need to be wise. What is not helpful is someone who will collude in bashing the person or someone who will help you throw a pity party. They will need to have a certain level of empathy to help you see the person from different angles. In due time, this process will redirect you toward creating new thought patterns,weaken the old pattern of negative thoughts and emotions, and ultimately break the association altogether.

Let’s go through an example. Let’s say that you bought something from a stranger and you got scammed. You are a gamer and when you ordered Call of Duty, you received Call of Doodie instead and you couldn’t get your money back. That can be infuriating and you can wish all kinds of ill will toward that clever scam artist. Every time you see a Call of Duty billboard you remember how you got cheated and it makes you angry. You can’t help but wish the same thing happens to him. However, if you began to talk about the incident with an understanding friend, you guys can speculate in a compassionate and empathetic way. Maybe the scam artist just doesn’t know any better. Maybe he does but he is really down on his luck. Maybe he is desperate for money and scamming was the only thing he knew to make money fast. Maybe the scam artist comes from a broken home and is a single parent who was working 2 jobs just to pay the bills to feed his 3 kids and just got fired and didn’t have money for milk. Regardless of whether any of these speculations are actually true, talking about these possibilities allows you to talk about this person who did something awful to you in a way which does not trigger anger. The more you do it, the less powerful the association will be between the scammer and your anger. There will be new patterns of compassionate thinking the next time you look at the billboard and perhaps after lots of discussion you can think about Call of Doodie and laugh.

Unforgiveness is a bitter poison that will eat away at us if we do not do something about it. Fortunately, we are all given the ability and tools to live lives free of unforgiveness. A sign of true forgiveness is when you can think about the person, talk about, and even interact with him/her without any negativity. You have forgiven when you can freely bless them and wish them prosperity and peace. It is something we are all called to do.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins Matthew 6:15