How to Forgive Someone Who Have Hurt You.

When someone has wronged you, humiliated you, or hurt you, are you able to forgive that person?

Or do you swear to maintain a grudge and pray for the person’s suffering?

It is never easy to forgive someone who has treated you unfairly.

However, the process of forgiveness has the power to improve our mental health to a great extent.

Many studies have shown that forgiveness is associated with reduced anxiety and depression, and people who are more forgiving reported fewer physical problems than those who are less forgiving.

Conversely, continuing to hold a grudge means that you are constantly feeling the pain of the experience, putting it in a place in your memory where you can consciously bring it back at any time.

And, in many cases, people may feel angry at themselves and blame themselves for what has happened, feeling responsible not only for the other person but also for themselves for having caused the problem.

When such stress is experienced over a long period of time, psychological damage can accumulate, and this can lead to depression, anxiety, and other related issues.

So what does it mean to “forgive”?

Why should I leave the past in the past after he/she did such a terrible thing to me!

I think there are many people who would think like that.

However, “forgiveness” does not necessarily mean to condone and forget what the other person has done.

Nor does it necessarily mean returning to the relationship that you had before the problem occurred, or making up.

Psychologists Michael McCalla, Everett Worthington, and Kenneth Rachel explain forgiveness in terms of motivation as follows.

“Forgiveness” is

・Decreasingly motivated to retaliate against the other party,

・Decreasingly motivated to maintain estrangement from the offender, and

・Increasingly motivated by conciliation and goodwill for the offender.

Robert Enright, a pioneer in research on forgiveness, also says that forgiveness is not just the act of accepting and moving on, but also showing empathy, compassion, and understanding to the person who has caused you harm.

You can’t, or perhaps don’t want to, have compassion for someone who has done something wrong, can you?

But by doing so, we can let our anger out and lessen the damage of the stress on ourselves.

According to psychotherapist Angela Batimer, forgiveness helps our immune system function more effectively and stimulates the release of happy hormones like serotonin and oxytocin.

That is, you do not forgive for the other person’s sake, but for your own sake.

You “forgive” not to forget the unreasonable things someone has done to you, not to repair your relationship with the person, but to stop your anger and resentment from tormenting you.

So how can you “forgive”?

◎ Understand what “forgiveness” really means.

As I wrote earlier, forgiveness is not something you do for the other person, but rather it is a way to remove your anger and resentment and make you feel better for yourself.

Holding on to anger and resentment only makes you feel the pain progressively worse.

Understanding properly what “forgiveness” is can help you be willing to forgive in order to relieve yourself of your pain.

Of course, it is not as simple as saying, ” Okay, I forgive you!”

Even if you decide to forgive for your own sake, you may still find it uncomfortable and unfair.

Still, it is worth doing even a little bit at a time.

It is also important to understand that forgiveness is not a simple action, but a process.

◎Feel pain.

We feel hurt when someone does something unpleasant or unreasonable to us.

And we try to avoid feeling that pain.

To avoid feeling the pain, we get angry, blame the other party completely, take it out on others, or try to erase the unpleasant event from our memory.

This is natural for human beings.

However, if we continue to avoid pain, we are not facing the problem and leaving it unresolved.

It is the same as putting a bandage on the surface of a wound so that you don’t see the pain.

But if you leave it alone, the wound becomes worse and can open up at any time.

That is, if you do not forgive and continue to hold on to the wound, the pain can increase.

It is important to face and feel the pain as early as possible, even if you feel uncomfortable about what has happened, in order to prevent this from happening.

Then, it becomes easier to begin to think about “forgiving”.

Of course, if the problem is too much for you to handle alone, please do not force yourself to do so, but ask for the help of the people around you.

◎ Forgive yourself.

When someone makes you feel bad, it is not uncommon to blame yourself for causing the situation.

However, there is nothing we can do to change what has happened.

And there are also many things that are beyond our control.

Maybe if you had not acted the way you did at that time, things that hurt you might not have happened.

But take it as it is and forgive yourself if it happened.

By continuing to blame yourself, you are hurting yourself even more.

If you don’t admit what you have done and move on from the painful feelings, there is a good chance that something else will happen that can hurt you again.

Let yourself be forgiven.

◎Learn from experience and trust yourself.

From experiences of being treated negatively, you may think that you can be hurt by the same thing the next time, and that you should never forgive in order to prevent that from happening again.

However, trying to prevent yourself from being hurt by unforgiving is not worth it when you think of the damages to your mind and body caused by unforgiveness.

Instead, it would be better to focus our energy on learning from the experience to use our judgment to prevent that person from doing so if a similar situation arises again in the future.

By doing so, we can trust in our ability to protect ourselves and eliminate excessive anxiety that we might be hurt again.

◎Think about how the other person was feeling.

When we are made to feel uncomfortable, we focus on that particular action and our own feelings.

Of course, it is natural.

So, after you have fully felt the action and your feelings, observe the hurtful behavior of the other person from his/her point of view.

Try to consider the other person’s situation and feelings with empathy, thinking about how they were feeling when they were doing something that hurt you, what made them do it, what their own circumstances might have been, and so on.

This helps you feel more inclined to forgive them.

People have many different circumstances, feelings, and thoughts, and all these things come together to form their behaviors.

Just trying to know them can change the way you view the other person and their behavior.

It is important to look at things objectively from the other person’s point of view in order to heal your feelings.

Forgiveness is not easy for those who have been hurt.

But holding on to resentment and anger means that you continue to hurt yourself.

If you are suffering from an unforgiveness, try to understand that forgiveness is for your own good, and start doing what you can little by little.

It may be discouraging, but only you, not the person who has hurt you, can make your feelings better.