Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness. … Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing offenses.

What Is Forgiveness

Forgiveness typically involves:Letting go of anger or resentment you’re holding on to. Some amount of empathy towards the person who hurt you. Not necessarily reconciling or going back to the same relationship as before.

What Does It Involve

There are several reasons: Less stress, better for your mental health and self esteem. But it's difficult because we often believe forgiveness means lack of justice or weakness. And we're sometimes forced to forgive before we're ready.

Why Forgive?

Self-forgiveness can lead to the improvement of both relationship and partner satisfaction. Being more benevolent towards oneself after transgressing can promote a better relationship, and accepting responsibility for one’s wrongdoing

What About Self-Forgiveness

What is forgiveness really all about? Some see it as healing and 
restorative, and others view it as harmful and invalidating. This episode 
is covering some of the studies that have been done about forgiveness while 
we look at its benefits and potential pitfalls.

Love & relationship

342 - To Forgive or Not To Forgive — Multiamory

Moving forward can understandably feel difficult. The only person who can decide if moving forward is in your best interest is you. Ask yourself these questions:“Did this person deliberately betray my trust?”“Did this person admit their mistake, or did I find out from someone else?”“Is the indiscretion in question unforgivable?”Your answers to these questions will determine your path forward.

Ask Yourself First

If you’ve decided to work toward forgiving the person who wronged you, understand that forgiveness comes from within. People make mistakes. While we’re all human, that mantra in and of itself does not mean they deserve a second chance.Consider if this person has betrayed your trust before. Has this become an alarming pattern of behaviour, or is this the first time in your relationship that they’ve broken your trust?Once you consider the context of the indiscretion in question, you can make an evidence-based decision that you have full confidence in.

Only You Can Choose to Forgive and Move Forward

While we should all always put ourselves first, oftentimes after being hurt by someone we love or care about, only then do we come to realize we have been putting the needs of others before our own. Take this time of clarity to mend the most important relationship of all: the relationship you have with yourself.Recognize the insecurities you may have struggled with and ignored in order to focus on another person. Work through those insecurities.

Put Yourself First

It’s important to communicate what expectations you have of your relationships with others.For anyone who has broken your trust, communicate what your expectations are of them moving forward. Let them know your trust in them is broken and that you need time to heal. Explain what they did to break your trust and what they can do to regain it.When you communicate your expectations with others and they fail to meet those expectations, you have the answer you need.

Communicate Your Expectations

Setting boundaries is important with any relationship, including your relationship with yourself. Communicate your boundaries with the person who has broken your trust. Let them know the behaviours you will not tolerate, like lying or not telling the complete truth. Then, hold yourself accountable to stick to those boundaries that you set.Don’t allow yourself to be manipulated by the person and end up in an endless cycle of forgiving the same indiscretions over and over again. Once you decide upon your boundaries, stick to them.

Set Clear Boundaries

Don’t allow anyone to tell you that you just need to “get over it.” Those people do not have your best interest at heart, or they are not sure how to build good boundaries in their own lives.Take all of the time you need to rebuild your trust, either with that person or with people overall moving forward. You may need more time to come to terms with their pain, and that’s okay.Communicate with the specific person and anyone in the future that they need to respect your space and allow you the time to work through rebuilding trust. The right people will respect that.

Realize That Rebuilding Trust Takes Time

Communicating your triggers will help you to become more comfortable with the uncomfortable and help you along your journey to healing with any future relationships you might have.Even if the person did nothing wrong per se, communicating with them that what they said or did was upsetting for you will help the two of you work toward more open and honest communication and avoid future missteps. And they will know why you may have reacted the way you did and how to remain true to themselves while also avoiding the words or actions that you’d like for them to avoid in the future.

Recognize Your Triggers and Be Honest About Them

Talk therapy, also known as <a href="https://www.lifehack.org/437604/cognitive-behavioral-therapies-for-anxiety-disorders">Cognitive Behavioral Therapy</a> (CBT), can provide you with actionable solutions to address the root cause of the lack of trust you have in others. Speaking to a professional can help you on your journey as you begin to heal from the trauma of being hurt by someone you love or care about.

Speak to a Licensed Therapist

When you’re learning to trust people again, you may be very hesitant and at times overly cautious. While it can be easy to listen to the words of others and trust that they’ve changed and that they won’t hurt you the same way again, watch their actions for change.Are they sliding back into their old habits? Are they listening to you when you communicate your triggers with them? People’s actions will tell you everything you need to know about trusting them. Believe them.

People’s Actions Will Tell You What You Need to Know

Many people will tell you that starting fresh means starting over and that you should forgive and forget. However, no one but you will understand the journey you’re going on to trust people again.Starting fresh can look like many different scenarios: cutting off certain people in your life even if just for a time, forgiving the person who wronged you while moving forward with clear and established boundaries, or a combination of the two. All are completely valid paths to starting over with a clean slate.

Commit to Starting Fresh, Whatever That Looks Like for You

Wondering how you can learn to trust people again after you've been hurt in the past? These helpful tips will show you how to heal and grow.

Stashed ideas

How To Trust People Again If You've Been Hurt

Forgiveness is often viewed as the “happily ever after” ending in a story of wrongdoing or injustice. Someone enacts harm, the typical arc goes, but eventually sees the error of their ways and offers a heartfelt apology. “Can you ever forgive me?” Then you, the hurt person, are faced with a choice: Show them mercy — granting yourself peace in the process — or hold a grudge forever. The choice is yours.It’s reasonable to expect an apology when you’re the one who has been hurt or betrayed. But that’s not how it works in practice.

Forgiveness

<ul><li> How do you forgive someone who isn’t all that sorry, or who you can’t actually engage with?</li><li>Forgiveness exists separately from reconciliation, and also from accountability — which is why forgiving someone doesn’t require an apology or even their participation. </li><li>Reconciliation is a negotiation strategy between two or more people trying to make their way back together to mutual trust.</li></ul>

Forgiving Someone Who Isn't Sorry

Forgiveness might be a step on the path to reconciliation, but you don’t have to traverse the full route if you’d prefer not to.While forgiveness is separate from accountability, it’s not at odds with seeking justice. Many people think it’s either/or, rather than both. Forgiving someone can help you take a more clear-eyed approach to justice because you’re no longer seething with rage.

Expand Your View of What Forgiveness Is

<ul><li>Forgiveness does not require you to pretend the hurt didn't happen.</li><li>Forgiveness doesn't have to exist anywhere outside of you.</li><li>You are the one who was wronged, so why do you have to now give them something?</li><li>Once you remove reconciliation as a goal, it's easier to see how forgiveness will benefit you as much as - if not more than - the other person.</li></ul>

Think of Forgiveness as Something You’re Doing Primarily for Yourself

Being willing to let go of the anger and hurt can be one of the hardest aspects of forgiving someone, especially someone who isn’t sorry or who hasn’t apologized. In these instances, it can sometimes feel like your wound is all you have: It serves as proof that an awful thing happened to you and really was as terrible as it felt. Forgiving someone, then, can feel like you’re capitulating — like you’re acquiescing to their view of events when you know in your heart they did something wrong.

Don’t Let Fear of “losing” Stand in The Way of Forgiving Someone

<ul><li>Hang on to anger for a short time because it shows you're a person of worth and dignity, and no one should treat you this way</li><li>Over time, it brings us down with fatigue, rumination, and becoming far more pessimistic in life.</li></ul>

Witness The Anger

The person who has been treated unfairly focuses on the effects of the injustice in their life. These effects might be things like monetary costs, lost time, ongoing anxiety, depression, anger, sleep problems, or a more pessimistic worldview. In a lot of instances, people don’t even realize how much the injustice is still impacting their life.In this stage, you’re also asked to think about what solutions you’ve already tried for these problems and the extent to which they’ve led to meaningful improvements or change.

The Uncovering Phase

Researchers have led to the development of a step-by-step process for forgiveness, which can happen in therapy (ideally with someone who is trained in forgiveness therapy), or through a self-guided process using a workbook.There are four major phases of forgiveness: uncovering, decision, work, discovery, and forgiveness.

There’s Real Work Involved in Forgiving, and It Takes Time

This is where you’ll determine whether you want to try to forgive the person who hurt you. And the answer might be no! Maybe it’s too soon and the pain is too fresh, or you just know you’re not ready to let go of the anger. That’s okay; this is a process you can always return to, and, eventually, you might find that you want to forgive.

The Decision Phase

At this point, you’ll aim to broaden your narrative about the other person and develop empathy for them. So you might think about how they were raised, what difficult things happened in their life that led them to this point, and the ways in which that person is vulnerable. You start telling that story to yourself, over and over, we see a little bit of empathy, a little tiny bit of compassion, a little bit of softening of the heart. That takes time, and definitely can’t be engineered through therapy; it has to emerge.

The Work Phase

<ul><li>One way to do this is to think of your pain on a scale of 1–10, and to visualize that amount of pain in a heavy sack that you are holding on your back. </li><li>Acknowledge that it’s there, be aware of it, and stay with it. </li><li>Don’t try to run away from it. Don’t try to take anything out of it. Just let it be. What we find is, that when people do that, that sack tends to shrink. </li><li>This part of the process can also help you rebuild self-esteem because it’s a reminder of what you’re capable of.</li></ul>

Work Phase: Standing In The Pain

This is when you’ll reflect on the meaning you’ve found in your life from this experience. What we tend to find a lot of times is people become much more attuned to the wounds within other people. You may realize that you’ve become more patient with strangers, or less judgmental of coworkers or friends because you have a newfound understanding of how they might also be struggling.Going through this might also have made you feel more connected to other people, as you realize you’re not alone in the injustice you suffered.

The Discovery Phase

Being ready to forgive someone who hurt you takes time, as does the work of forgiving them. It’s impossible to know when — or if — you’ll ever be ready. If now doesn’t seem to be the time, that’s okay. We’re in relationships with many people over the course of a whole lifetime. Things can shift in surprising and sometimes dramatic ways just with the passage of time.

The Act Of Forgiveness

Some people will never admit wrongdoing. It’s still possible for you to move forward.

How to forgive someone who isn’t sorry

“It’s funny, but thinking back on it now, I realize that this particular point in time, as I stood there blinking in the deserted hall, was the one point at which I might have chosen to do something very much different from what I actually did.”

“Beauty is rarely soft or consolatory. Quite the contrary. Genuine beauty is always quite alarming.”

“I suppose at one time in my life I might have had any number of stories, but now there is no other. This is the only story I will ever be able to tell.”

“Henry’s a perfectionist, I mean, really-really kind of inhuman — very brilliant, very erratic and enigmatic. He’s a stiff, cold person, Machiavellian, ascetic and he’s made himself what he is by sheer strength of will.”

“His aspiration is to be this Platonic creature of pure rationality and that’s why he’s attracted to the Classics, and particularly to the Greeks — all those high, cold ideas of beauty and perfection. I think it’s what in the end that gets him into trouble.”

“And standing outside the Lyceum, I was struck with a black, incredulous horror, which in fact was not at all unlike the horror I had felt at twelve, sitting on a bar stool in our sunny little kitchen in Plano. Who is in control here? I thought, dismayed. Who is flying this plane?”

“These are powerful mysteries. The bellowing of bulls. Springs of honey bubbling from the ground. If we are strong enough in our souls we can rip away the veil and look that naked, terrible beauty right in the face; let God consume us, devour us, unstring our bones. Then spit us out reborn.”

“Beauty is terror. Whatever we call beautiful, we quiver before it.”

“It is is better to know one book intimately than a hundred superficially.”

“Forgive me, for all the things I did but mostly for the ones that I did not.”

“Love doesn’t conquer everything. And whoever thinks it does is a fool.”

“There is nothing wrong with the love of Beauty. But Beauty – unless she is wed to something more meaningful – is always superficial.”

INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER • A contemporary literary classic and "an accomplished psychological thriller ... absolutely chilling" (Village Voice), from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Goldfinch. Under the influence of their charismatic classics professor, a group of clever, eccentric misfits at an elite New England college discover a way of thinking and living that is a world away from the humdrum existence of their contemporaries. But when they go beyond the boundaries of normal morality their lives are changed profoundly and forever, and they discover how hard it can be to truly live and how easy it is to kill.

The Secret History

1 John 4:7-8 Love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is Love.John 13:34 -  I am giving you a new commandment, that you love one another unconditionally, just as I loved you.1 Corinthians 13:4-6 Love is patient, love is kind, not jealous; love does not brag, it is not arrogant or disrespectful. It does not seek its own benefit; it is not provoked, it does not hold grudges, it is not angry or fearful, but rejoices with the truth and forgiveness.1 Corinthians 16:14 - All that you do must be done in love.

God Is Love

James 1:19-20 - You should be ready to listen, slow to speak and slow to become angry. Because human anger does not produce the humility that Love desires.Psalm 37:8 - Refrain from anger and turn from vengeance; do not fear—it only leads to anger and hate.Proverbs 14:29 - Whoever is patient and honest has great wisdom, but one who is quick-to judge forgets the truth.Proverbs 18:15 - An intelligent mind seeks knowledge, but the wise mind understands knowledge through truth.Ephesians 4:25 - Be humble and speak truthfully to your enemies, for we are all members of one body.

Wisdom Is Knowing The Truth

1 John 4:18 - There is no fear in unconditional love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.Proverbs 29:25 - Fear will blind you to the Truth, but whoever trusts in Love is kept safe.Psalm 34:4 - I sought truth and forgiveness, and Love answered me; Love will deliver you from all your fears.1 Peter 4:9 - Offer hospitality to one another while withholding your judgment.  Romans 12:17 - Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is loving and humble in the sight of all.

Don't Be Afraid, Everything Will Be Alright

Luke 6:38 - Give Love, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, will be measured back to you.2 Corinthians 9:7 - Each of you should give what you have decided in your heart to give, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for Love is Grateful.Proverbs 3:27 - Do not withhold good from those who are in need, when it is in your power to act. Do not say to someone, “Come back tomorrow and I’ll help you”.

Give To Be Grateful Pt. 1

Mathew 6:2 - Be careful not to practice your charity in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from Love. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the churches and on the streets, to be honored by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then Love, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

Give To Be Grateful Pt. 2

Hebrews 13:2 - Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, some have entertained angels without knowing it.Galatians 6:2 -  Bear each other's burdens, and fulfill the law of Love.Galatians 5:14 - “You shall love your enemy as yourself.”Psalm 34:7 - The Angels of Love encamps around people who are fearful and angry, and delivers them Love.Psalm 91:11 - For Love will command concerned angels to guard you in all your mistakes and offenses.

Angels Shape Your World Everyday

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what Love’s future will hold.Proverbs 16:9 - In your mind you plan your course, but Love establishes the steps to your fate.2 Corinthians 5:17 - If anyone is perfected in Love, renewal has come: The old has transformed, and the new is here!

Love Is Always Changing Pt. 1

Mathew 19:14 - Love says “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of Love belongs to them. Truly I tell you, anyone who will not receive the kingdom of Love like a little child will never enter it.”Psalm 51:12 - Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a childish spirit, to sustain my Love.﻿

Love Is Always Changing Pt. 2

Luke 6:27 - Love your enemies, and do good to those who hate you.Proverbs 24:17 - Do not let your heart rejoice when your enemy fails and falls. Mathew 6:14-15 - If you forgive people for their offenses and mistakes, your Love will forgive you. And if you do not forgive other people, then the truth will not let you forgive yourself.Mathew 18:21-22 “How many times shall my enemy offend me and I still forgive him? Up to seven times?” Love said to him, “not seven times, but infinite times.”

Forgive Hypocrisy Pt. 1

1 Peter 4:8 - Above all, keep fervent and persistent in your love for one another, because love covers a multitude of offenses and mistakes.Colossians 3:13-14 -  Keep bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, just as Love forgave you, you must forgive also. In addition to all these things trust in love, which is the perfect bond of unity.

342 - To Forgive or Not To Forgive — Multiamory

How To Trust People Again If You've Been Hurt

How to forgive someone who isn’t sorry

The Secret History

Holy Bible, New International Version

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