The Struggle to Forgive - YLAM240020

SPEAKER A This programme presents ways to optimise health and wellbeing. When considering lifestyle changes, please consult with your health care provider to ensure they are suitable for you. SPEAKER B Hello and welcome. I'm Kaysie Vokurka. Some of the hardest things in life are often the very things that help us grow in profound ways. Many people have found a new purpose and direction out of tragedy and heartache. This idea is summed up well in the words of mere love, difficult things aren't easy, but they're worth it. Stay with us as we discuss why forgiveness isn't easy, but why it's worth it. SPEAKER A This is your lifestyle as medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television. SPEAKER B It's great to have you with us on this programme where we look at ways you can shape your lifestyle as medicine. Forgiveness is really important for your overall health, yet it isn't easy and many people struggle to do it. Today we are going to talk about some of these struggles with the help of health psychologist Jenifer Skues. Thank you for joining us once more, Jenifer, thank you. SPEAKER C We've got an important topic to discuss. SPEAKER B We certainly do. And, you know, the last couple of programmes, we talked about, first of all, how to understand forgiveness. And then we talked about what it looks like in our daily present life. And today we're talking about why forgiveness challenges us. And I guess I want to ask you, why do people find it hard or very challenging to forgive others? And some people would also say, forgive themselves or acknowledge forgiveness for themself. SPEAKER C Well, I find that people feel very hurt by what others have done to us. And often, as I said before, we internalise it, we don't necessarily action it and we start to build it. So if when we internalise and we build it, we shut the other person out and then we can punish the person. And you've probably seen people do that. We give can be nonverbals, just tone a voice, stare at them, you know, do things that are inappropriate, showing them we're not happy. But usually the other person doesn't know why. And then we can actually punish ourself. We can look at ourself and punish ourself, or we. But the third alternative is to truly forgive the person and that sort of where we're at. But a lot of people really punish themselves and carry this for such a long time. And in thinking about this, I have my own example with a long term friend who was doing things that I wasn't happy with. I felt hurt by sometimes I'd try and resolve it, but she would be defensive and then other times I'd let it go and I let it build and build over a long years, actually, when I look at it. And it was to do with her personality, my personality, how we functioned. But there was a point where I became so angry and I realised, one, I was holding a grudge, but two, I was actually resentful of her. And it wasn't until after it all blew up that I realised that, because what I was doing, building it up, you end up getting aggressive or angry with the person or you say things that come out of your mouth. You think, oh, what do I say that for? And you can see you've hurt the person, but if you don't deal with it, it sits there. You don't like who you've become, but you don't like the other person. So you can see how. And that's with one person. And then I had to go and look at, why am I doing this? And then I understood it. This is where I started to look at forgiveness in a different way. And that's what we're going to do in this session. Because if we can't forgive those who wrong us, we can't heal. SPEAKER B Yeah, absolutely. So that's very interesting, especially with the example you gave as well, because we're talking about why it's so challenging for us to forgive. And what I was thinking, as you're sharing that is, is it because the natural response is to just roll with the emotion? Like whatever hurtful emotion we. Well, emotion we feel that's associated with the hurt of the path of, I don't know, least resistance, if you will, is just to roll and act with the emotion rather than choose to do something instead of that. Would that be what's feeding into it? SPEAKER C It can feed into it, but certainly the other thing I realised is that in my own life, that I hadn't been given a good model of forgiveness. It's like, from a parental level, particularly, my mother was. You just put up with it. That's what life is. You never express your anger, you sit on it and she doesn't. Or a lot of mothers, my mother and a lot of other mothers don't necessarily say, this is what you do, you model from them. That's how she didn't deal with life. So she had a lot of anger and pain and resentment and I didn't realise I used that model as I was growing up. So now I became aware of it, I could do something about it. SPEAKER B Mm. Yeah. So when you said then that you just deal with it like you just put up with whatever has happened, deal. SPEAKER C With it, move on? SPEAKER B Yeah. Would that be the same as just, say, bottling it up or trying to ignore it, shelving it, pretending it's, like, too hard? So you're just going to soldier on with life and pretend it's not an issue, even though deep down it's eating away at you? SPEAKER C Absolutely. Sometimes there are people we're not going to see again. It might be a work environment and we leave and move on, but we've still got that resentment. And then we build on it and we actually then connect to other people or we have friends, we do it with family members. If you have a look at the anger and resentment, and resentment is really a bitter anger. Right. And it's how we perceive it. We perceive we've been treated unfairly. That's the issue. And unless we address it at the time, and that's one of the things we'll look at a little bit, is how do you address it? And it takes courage if you've not done that in your life. Some people don't sit on it. They just, whatever it is, they blurt it out. Other people sit on it and then it blurts out. So, you know, by blurting, it comes out aggressively. SPEAKER B Yeah. And what about, like, I know you've talked about resentment and bitterness, anger. All of this is another thing. Or is it the same thing to be called, like, if you have a grudge, is that the same kind of thing? SPEAKER C It is. We hold grudges. You know, people say, oh, you've got a grudge? And people go, what do you mean? You know, but we do, because we've got all this anger, resentment and bitterness, and it becomes a grudge. Some people in our culture, we refer to a chip on your shoulder. SPEAKER B Oh, yes. Yes. SPEAKER C Which is a very good term. SPEAKER B Yeah. So I guess it's something that you're holding against. That's someone who's done a wrong to you, you're just continuing to hold it against them and that's affecting your actions toward them. SPEAKER C Yes, yes. I mean, there are a lot of different aspects of forgiveness. One, we have to forgive others. Right. We need to seek forgiveness. When we talked about that, God's forgiveness, God will always forgive. Others might not forgive, and we've got to learn to deal with that. But the other thing people often ask me is, can you forgive yourself? SPEAKER B Yes. That's a very common question. SPEAKER C It is, isn't it? And I find that I did research it because I thought, well, I'd not thought of it in those terms, I think we can come to terms that we've now understand we're doing the right thing and that's a healing process. But when I looked at it, there was some interesting information. I did a bit of research, and this was from an interview with a yemenite, John Piper. And he said, the Bible doesn't really say anything about self forgiveness. Maybe the reason the Bible doesn't think in these categories of self forgiveness is that to have forgiveness you need a person who has been wronged and a person who did the wrong. So in the Bible, and he gave some interesting perceptions where he said, what do I do? Have a chat with myself and say, look, self, you've done the wrong thing. And self says, oh, well, forgive me. I laughed because it is. How do you do that? Okay. But I find that, for me, I realised that in accepting God's forgiveness, because not everyone will forgive us, human beings find that difficult. If God forgives us, then we can be right with ourselves. We have to accept we've been forgiven, and if we've been forgiven, we can be at peace with ourself. So that to me is more about how can I forgive myself? But if God forgives me, then I can accept that, and that means I'm forgiven, if that makes sense. SPEAKER B Yeah. Yeah. So you're saying that forgiving yourself, in its sort of truest, most logically consistent sense, is actually a matter of accepting the forgiveness that is offered to us because of the wrongs that we have done in whatever relationship affected by our choices and behaviour. SPEAKER C I mean, the Bible talks a lot about forgiveness. And then one John one nine, we've got a very, very good verse there that is just a nutshell verse, I find, and it says, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. So if he purifies us, then we're right with ourselves. And that's why I think understanding the spiritual model of forgiveness helps us to move on and be able to, if you want to call it forgiving yourself, but accept you did the wrong thing, you are forgiven and all is right how I see it. SPEAKER B Yeah. And that's really good, because then you can sort of let go of any of those behaviours that are, I guess, like when you're being really hard on yourself for what happen, you know, you can keep beating yourself over the back sort of thing with your own stick sometimes. This is how it is like in people's lives. And so I guess we can once we accept that forgiveness, we can let all that go and just move forward without that weighing us down. SPEAKER C Yeah. Without the resentment, anger, bitterness. And I find it is a bonus if people actually forgive us as well, because I have people in my life who I don't think will ever forgive me. But they're very embittered people and when I look back, when I first met them, they already had those issues there. I added to it. So that was what I felt bad about. But I have had what I call a heartfelt apology to these people, but they don't seem to have got beyond it. Not all of them. There's a couple of people like that in my life, and it's sad. I feel sad, it affects me emotionally, but it's also the reality of where people are at. But when someone forgives you, oh, it's a wonderful blessing, don't you feel great? And it reconnects, you know, that grudge or anger, bitterness, it stops it, it's gone. Just that action of doing that within a minute can dissipate that energy and that unforgiveness. SPEAKER B And I guess that means then you've got a completely restored relationship, don't you? It's not like, well, I've done my bit, but you haven't done yours. So we kind of can't work the same way as we did before. Yeah. SPEAKER C So both people have to do the forgiveness thing, and from a heartfelt perspective, for that grudge or that resentment, it smelt, it's no longer existing. So it's very, very important. But there are some. I found some very interesting points on how do you do this? It's easy for me to say, we'll just go and do a heartfelt forgiveness, but some people can't. You can prepare yourself to do that. One, identifying what the issues are and what the person did. And just a few points. I found understanding your emotions, or our emotions, is important. Accepting the responsibility of what happened or what you did, it's an acceptance factor. But being kind and compassionate with yourself for the fact of whatever happened. And when you've made a mistake, if you're the perpetrator, then being able to have remorse for those mistakes. Because sometimes we are hard hearted and unforgiving and then we realise we're the one who's done the wrong thing and we need to deal with that. Or that the person did the wrong thing and we now need to move on and deal with that. Another one I found. Make amends and apologise. We can express remorse. I mean, if someone is truly sorry. They express it, you know, by their tone of voice and the way they look at you, that they're obviously suffering and they really are sorry for what they've done. So this is where the nonverbals as well as the verbals are important and look to ways to learn after the event. What have I learned from this? How can I use it not to repeat this problem? Because often we have a repeated pattern. It's a habit. Yeah. And then focus on making better choices in the future. This is an important thing where we can go. Right. This is now I want to choose not to do it again. And you can do that. And I find when I really treat people badly is when they front me a bit aggressively. That goes back to my patterning through my life and I have worked on that and I've prayed about it and asked God to heal that. And recently I had an event where someone came up. They weren't happy with what I'd said, but what I said was the truth, but they didn't want to hear it, so they paid out on me and dumped on me and blamed me. And normally I would have gone into defence mode, which is what we do, and maybe fire back or, you know, really have a tone of voice. And I didn't do that. And I was so thankful to God I was able to talk to him. Not that it made any difference, but I was thankful because I no longer had that resentment and that tone that I would have had. But this is where the more we deal with it, the more the healing occurs. SPEAKER B Yes. Yes. So it's something that you are practising more and more in your life and it becomes more and more part of your own attitude and approach to people. SPEAKER C It is. And it's very powerful, which I really like. And we are the only ones who can do it. No one can do it for us. SPEAKER B Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Now, another question that's often a roadblock in people's minds is they perceive that forgiveness is somehow letting the other party that wronged them off the hook, that somehow what they have done isn't as grave as it is and that they've just made it of little consequence when it's actually something really serious. SPEAKER C Yes. SPEAKER B Talk a bit more about that. How can people work through that kind of a barrier in their minds, I. SPEAKER C Think realising, accepting that not everyone is going to forgive us back, you know, or accept our heartfelt apology. And you're not. Who are you letting off the hook yourself? You're starting to heal. Because I'm no longer doing this or I'm no longer like it. If the other person won't let it go and isn't going to come to the party, so to speak, and accept your apology, or I uses it, as you said, it's like using it. Oh, now I'm. Right, now you've forgiven me. It's all as well. And that can happen in relationships, but in actual fact, they don't change. Right. So you haven't really left them off the hook. The only way the change will occur, if two people have had that heartfelt moment where they know they have forgiven each other. So you're not letting them off the hook, because the bottom line is, if they haven't changed, you're going to keep going through it. It's going to keep damaging the relationship. SPEAKER B Right. And so I guess what you're saying then is even if there's no guarantee of another party's cooperation, it's still worthwhile for us to make the forgiveness process at our end for the sake of, as you said, letting us off the hook so that we're not caught up into the bitterness and anger and resentment that comes from that experience. SPEAKER C And this is where, by letting us off the hook means we've actually done it the right way and the right way with God, the right way with the other person. And it's come from the heart, not just from the head. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER C That means we're free. We've been set free from it. We're no longer bound by that, if that makes sense. SPEAKER B Yeah, that's fantastic. SPEAKER C Okay, well, this is where, I guess, anger and bitterness has a lot to do with that. And this is where it is to do with the mind. Because if we dwell on hurtful events or situations, the grudges build. Right. And then, you know, this is where that resentment and hostility comes in. And if we now allow the negative feelings to crowd out positive feelings, you might find yourself swallowed up by the bitterness. Or you build it. The more we think about it, the more we build that, the grudge gets bigger and bigger. That makes sense. SPEAKER B Yes. SPEAKER C But the moment that we go to say we're sorry is that's when the turning point of healing occurs. If we don't, we're going to be depressed, even anxious. Avoid people we isolate. And it can be a very lonely place if you live life like that. SPEAKER B Yeah. And that's a very interesting thing you bring out there because I know we were talking earlier about how often some people respond to these feelings by sort of bottling them up or shelving them. And they may not even be able to recognise that they have those feelings. Right? SPEAKER C Yeah. SPEAKER B At the same time, if you are the opposite end and you're someone who's over dwelling on these things, that's going to send you down the grudge path. And it seems like, is there some sort of balance here where you need to be aware of your feelings enough to focus on them, enough to be aware of them, but then not stay there? Does that make sense? SPEAKER C Yes. Well, you need to resolve it. That's what we talked about. We can only do that in the present. So we need to resolve it. And I think we have to resolve it with ourself. And this is why writing it down and looking at it and why am I feeling this way about the person? It keeps coming up. What have I not dealt with? Other person isn't aware of it unless we communicate. And we have to come from love, we can't come from anger and pain. So this is why I think we need to get some healing. And that, to me, is a spiritual thing. I don't think we go, oh, well, now I know I'm healed. I think we need to go to God, talk about it. If we've done wrong or they've done wrong, ask him to give us the heart to forgive and to be forgiven. So that way, then we approach the person. That means a two way communication. And as you said, sometimes they don't realise what they've done, that what they were doing was hurtful. And that means we can talk about it and find ways of them. If they need to give you that message, how can they do it? So you're not going to feel hurt, but you can hear it. So this is where you then negotiate and you start to try and resolve it. I know the next session we're going to look a lot more at that. How do you do that? What can we do with it? Because that in itself is a skilled to go to someone and say, I'm really hurt, because. So finding ways of doing that, I think is very important. SPEAKER B Yeah, for sure. So what does it look like? So say someone doesn't forgive, they bottle it up or whatever, they just keep it in and they just don't deal with it. What kind of effects does that have in a person's life? As in the, where is that going to take them? Where will it take us if we don't forgive? And what does that look like? SPEAKER C Okay, well, we end up with major mental health problems. We have a lot of grief we've never dealt with. We become embittered. So that spills out into not just that relationship, but it then transfers to other relationships. And so our life is miserable when we don't do it. Where the brain's constantly thinking of all these things. Every time you think about the hurt you've now added onto it. And this is what post traumatic stress disorder is, where we actually go over it and over it, or bury it and never deal with it. Doesn't mean we're not dealing with it. Every time we react because of what that person did, someone else does it. Even if we don't realise it's the same hurt. It goes in and adds what I call a house of cards. And there's a point where the house of cards will eventually collapse and that person ends up on major medications, in a hospital, or just isolates embittered and has a miserable life. So we really need to deal with this to have a healthy life, as we've already stated. SPEAKER B Yeah. And so, yeah, obviously it's the benefits of pushing through. The challenge of overcoming those emotions that are trying to take us the other way is far outweighing where we could end up if we don't do anything about it. SPEAKER C Absolutely. It's definitely worth the effort. There's a couple of good quotes that I've got here that really give that. And these are, again, well, one is a christian lady you might know, Corrie Tenbu. And she gives a really good quote here. She says, forgiveness is the key that unlocks the door of resentment. So there our resentment will start to go and the handcuffs of hatred. It is a power that breaks the chains of bitterness and the shackles of selfishness. Because when we don't forgive, we're incredibly selfish. Now, she had a lot to forgive because she was in the war in a concentration camp. Her sister died there because of the treatment. She watched the most horrific things that could happen. And when she came out of that and survived, she then would preach and teach in churches. And she said, one day I was shaking hands of people coming through and I looked at this man and I knew him. And he was one of the perpetrators. He was one of the men that had actually done these awful things. Right. She said, in that moment, I had to. She could feel that energy coming up. She had to choose to forgive or not to forgive. And obviously he'd come to Christianity, so he must have had some remorse. And at that split second, she chose to forgive him because she understood that principle as well. Wow, that's a pretty powerful testimony. SPEAKER B Absolutely. Because it really, I think the importance of practising forgiveness, a lot is so key here, because to be able to, in an instant choose not to go with your emotion, but to go by a principle like that takes a lot of mental control, I guess, that we have to cultivate, really. SPEAKER C Yes. And it's the same with the example I gave of this man who approached me very aggressively. Normally I used to react back in the same tone, but in that split second I was aware. You can feel it coming up and think, no, I'm just going to talk to him. And I was able to do that. So it's the same principle, but not as big an event. So we have to then contain it and be able to do it. Another quick quote. Marian Williamson. Forgiveness is not always easy, she says, and we know that at times it feels more painful than the wound we suffered to forgive the one who inflicted it. And yet there is no peace without forgiveness. We have to forgive, and it is a cure for a lot of the maladies, physically, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, that we go through. We cannot underestimate the power of forgiveness. It's the most powerful thing we can do in our life, to be free of the past and be in the present and not fear the future. SPEAKER B Yeah, and I think it's probably like it's something that's relevant to everyone, really, because this planet is one that is full of wrongdoing and, you know, we don't. Yeah, that's right. We mess things up and sometimes there's also very evil intent that's behind things. And so it's only a matter of time before we will experience something that we have to deal with in an appropriate way. And so that's where understanding this as a skill and learning how to do it in our life is so key, isn't it, for being able to thrive despite what happens to us? SPEAKER C Absolutely. And next session we're going to look at that a lot more so we can have a look at how do I do it? What are some of the skills? What can we do on a practical level as well? SPEAKER B That'll be fantastic, because I know that that's something which a lot of people can have a lot of questions over. How do I actually do this? It sounds simple, just forgive, but what does that involve? It just goes so deep inside of us. To have some ideas of how to actually apply it individually would be really, really helpful. So we look forward to that session and we just want to thank you so much again for sharing today on this topic. As we've been talking about the struggles that we have with forgiveness, and I'm sure people will be blessed by the insights you've shared. In the last few programmes, we've been talking with health psychologist Jenifer Skues all about the topic of forgiveness, which is a powerful healing principle that's often confronting and deeply challenging. I found this discussion very helpful so far and I hope you have two. In the next episode, we will talk about the benefits and the process of forgiveness and how to do it practically, so stay tuned for that one. If you have questions or comments about this programme, or if there's a topic you'd like us to discuss on this programme, then contact us at [email protected] dot au and remember to shape your lifestyle as medicine. SPEAKER A You've been listening to Your Lifestyle as Medicine, a production of 3ABN Australia television.