Forgiveness is your ability when you feel ready to let go.
Let me be a little more specific.
Forgiveness is not about forgetting.
You will always have the memory of an unfortunate traumatic event. You cannot forget it unless there are serious neurological problems.
The memory will always be there. However, that is not why you forgive.
Forgiveness is also not about making right what is wrong.
If someone has wronged you, it will always be wrong. You can’t change that.
Indeed, the wrong-doing as such is not the problem either. So, what is the problem after all?
The problem is the emotions connected to the event.
In order to heal, you need to let go, not of the memory, not of the event. You need to let go of the emotions.
Of the sadness, of the anger, of the hurt, of the fear of it happening again.
It may take a while for you to let go, for you to heal and you need to allow yourself to heal by letting go of the emotions.
There are two types of emotions related to forgiveness.
- The appropriate emotions: when somebody wrongs you, it is absolutely appropriate to feel anger, to feel sadness, to feel hurt and fearful that somebody else will hurt you again.
All of these emotions need to be felt. You need to allow yourself to feel these emotions as part of the healing process, as part of forgiveness. - It is also very important to pay attention so that these emotions do not go from appropriate to becoming a burden. A burden by definition is something heavy. Something that drags you down and makes you stuck.
How can you know the difference between the appropriate emotions and the burden?
You need to pay attention to your emotions.
Emotions do not come from your head. You cannot rationalize emotions. They come from inside.
You know they are a burden because I like to think that we all have an internal thermometer that gauges the temperature of our emotions.
Only we know how high this temperature is because it’s different from person to person.
So, the emotions become a burden when they are so high that they are about to explode, or you are about to explode. And only you know that.
When you snap at someone for no reason and the person goes: “hey, where did that come from?”.
Or when you can’t sleep, when you wake up crying, or angry. And you feel sad all the time perhaps.
In these cases, you know that these emotions are now a burden. Then, they have to go.
So, you fell light again, you can do whatever you want to do in your life. You can move forward.
If you find it difficult to let go, if you are struggling to let go, then let’s talk. Get in touch with me and request a 30-minutes free consultation.
And if you know of somebody else who is also finding it hard to let go, please share this article with them.
Here’s the video version of this article:
