Forgiveness is a personal journey only you can determine when to you are ready to take. Forgiveness is about what is best for you, are you ready to acknowledge your feelings and emotions attached to the hurt and pain? Acknowledgement come before forgiveness.
When you forgive, you are not pretending nothing happened, you are not absolving ourselves or the other person from responsibility. You are acknowledging. what has happened and the effect it has on us. You are acknowledging that the hurt, pain and occurrence has power over you, having a negative effect on your life. Forgiveness sets you free from holding on to something you cannot change. If we continue to allow our emotions to control us, we are blocking ourselves from growth and positive change.
Forgiveness take time. One has to be ready to remove themself from the problem and look at it objectively. You are releasing yourself so you can move on and live your life without being held back.
Traumatic experiences take time to heal especially if there is confusion and lack of clarity. When something has happened that you don't understand, it's out of the blue, or your trust has been broken, it becomes difficult to process the event.
When you forgive, you also release fear that has attached itself to you. Fear has the ability to stop us trying again. Many people overthink and ruminate over situations creating a negative pattern of thoughts and experiences and thoughts and experiences. Remember where energy goes, energy flows.
The process of forgiveness invites you to look at the whakapapa of the problem, the history of the problem. What are the emotions you feel come from, are they bringing old wounds to the surface that you need to face?
Sometimes it is you, you need to forgive. We have all done things we are ashamed of whether it is warranted or not. Guilt and shame can lead to anxiety, depression, low self-esteem, eating disorders, post-traumatic stress disorder, isolation, and violence towards self and others. For those reasons forgiving yourself is vitality important for your mental health and well-being.
Forgiveness Letter
Writing a letter allows you to think about your feelings and emotions. When we writing we are processing using our mind, eyes, emotions, body and feeling as we express our experiences on paper. It is not about sending the letter. It is all about you so you wouldn't normally send the letter.
Forgiveness letters are about letting go of anger and resentment, they are not about making the person feel apologise or feel bad.
You will need to tell the person or yourself why you are writing the letter, how their actions made you feel before, during and after. You can tell them you are forgiving them, your reasons for forgiving them and what it has taken for you to forgive them.
Take your time to think about the incident and what happened. What was going on for them at the time? What where the circumstances leading up to incident. We never know what another person is thinking but it can be helpful to try and think about it from their perspective. Of course, it does greatly depend on the situation. There are times when we cannot see the others perspective. You can tell them you do not understand the why and how the confusion has affected you.
Dear__________________,
I hope this letter finds you well. I have decided to write to you a am writing to you about________________________________
_________________________________________________________________________ (What happened? Who is involved? When/Where did it happen? What was said?)
Since this happened, I have been feeling __________________________________________________________
________________________________________________ Label the specific feelings
write about the effect how you have been feeling has had on you.
Why you have decided to forgive them
Write a statement of forgiveness.
Wish them well
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