By Anita M. Titone, LCSW, LMFT
 

	Introduction
	Why Forgive?
	Obstacles to Overcome
	Lack of Forgiveness as a Defense
	The Process of Achieving Forgiveness
	The Result

Introduction

Sometimes forgiveness is an important part of what a client wants to achieve in counseling. In order to be successful, he or she must be clear about why achieving forgiveness is important to him personally. He must overcome certain obstacles. He must also be willing to receive forgiveness himself — as needed; and then he must commit to the process required for achieving forgiveness. The result is worth all the effort spent. Energy is released from past hurts and made available in the present. New skills, learned in the process, can add to the quality of current relationships.

Why Forgive?

There may be religious beliefs of a client that require him to forgive, since all major religions teach the necessity of forgiveness. However, when forgiveness is the subject for attention in counseling the client hasn’t been able to achieve it by a simple decision. There are reasons for the difficulty. A better understanding of the nature of the hurt, the motivations of both the offender and the victim, and some understanding of why a resolution has not been achieved — all these things create a logjam of difficulty. Therefore the motivations to change the logjam must be strong. Very personal motivations must be present if the victim is going to be successfully forgiving. Here are some of those kinds of motivation:

• To have peace of mind with a dying or dead parent
• To mend a close relationship — maybe even save a marriage or regain closeness with a child
• To free energy used up by feelings (resentment, hurt, etc.) originating in the past, in order to live fully in the present.

Sometimes when no resolution is reached, the past hurt results in serious mental and emotional problems.

Obstacles to Overcome

Many times a client has mistaken ideas of what forgiveness actually is. These mistakes in thinking can make forgiveness impossible: they tell the person that he must do something that he just can’t honestly do. Examples are these:

• Forgetting the offense is necessary.
• Forgiveness requires the victim to deny the degree of hurt and/or resentment that he experienced.
• In order to forgive, the victim must relate to the offender as though the hurt never took place.
• Forgiveness is entirely for the benefit of the offender.
• If you really want to forgive you can just do it.

Lack of Forgiveness as a Defense

Sometimes, without realizing it, a person will hold onto resentment towards someone in order to avoid facing something that he does not want to face. For example, a wife may continue for too long to be angry with her husband for something he acknowledges that he did wrong because she knows if they get past what he did wrong she may need to work on her part of a marriage problem and she may be afraid of that. In this case the wife needs gentle help in acknowledging her part of the problem so she can be forgiven, as needed. As a result she will have one less motivation to hang onto her resentment towards her husband.

The Process of Achieving Forgiveness

The process can take many different turns. It can also vary in length of time required, from weeks to years. These are some reasons the process can be so different for different people:

• How severe the hurt is
• How close the current relationship is
• What the victim has done to attempt to forgive
• The reasons the victim is having trouble forgiving

Even with these differences there are certain requirements that are needed to complete the process.  A person must:

• Have a strong desire to forgive.
• Be willing to work hard to achieve it.
• Acknowledge occasions when the victim has needed forgiveness in order to be able to empathize with the offender.
• Commit to understanding the offender in a new way.
• Understand the exact nature of the offense, acknowledge and honor the feelings that resulted.
• Make a decision about the best way to relate to the offender, taking into account the new understanding and the degree of trust in the current relationship.

The Result

So when all is said and done, what exactly is forgiveness? It is the state a person reaches when what happened in the past is emotionally in the past. The person knows that it happened and how it affected him, but his current life is not determined by that experience. His decisions and way of relating to the person who hurt him are based on his current thinking. He can also use the understanding that he got from going through the process to be loving with himself and others when he/they hurt someone. And be can be slower to hurt others and more realistic about what it takes to forgive and be forgiven. This will add quality to all of his relationships.