We all feel wounded by the behavior of others at one time or another. There’s not one of us who hasn’t felt hurt or let down by perhaps some of the most precious people in our life. The problem for our health comes when we carry this pain around inside us, refusing to process it or let it go. It’s been said that not forgiving others and holding on to resentment is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die. I couldn’t agree more.
It’s no coincidence that some of the world’s major religions encourage forgiveness. What our ancestors knew intuitively is now being confirmed by modern science. Research shows that an inability to forgive can increase our stress levels, reduce the quality of our sleep, affect our relationships and raise blood pressure. I’ve seen these processes play out many times in my consultation room. I remember one patient who was suffering from pain all over her body. She’d seen countless specialists and taken multiple painkillers, all with limited success. It was only when she started a regular practice of forgiveness that her pain really started to ease off. Carrying around the psychological pain of resentment can cause you to feel physical pain.
It’s easy to underestimate the value of forgiving even the little things that happen in our daily lives. Please don’t fall into this trap—these negative emotions quietly eat away at us and are corrosive for our health. Forgiving others is not about doing them a favour or letting them off the hook. It’s not about saying you’re fine with what they’ve done or being a doormat. It’s all about you. I’d like to free and empower you by helping you to finally let that pain go.
THE FORGIVENESS PRACTICE
Process your resentment by following these steps.
All of us have someone in our lives who we could do with forgiving. This health snack has been designed to set you free from the negative emotions you may have been carrying. Forgiveness is a skill which you can learn and get better at, just like anything else. The more you do it, the easier it becomes. My top tip is to start off with forgiving the small things and, over time, you will feel ready to move on to the big ones.
Sadly, some of you may have experienced significant trauma in your life. If this applies to you, these two forgiveness exercises are not appropriate. I would highly recommend you seek out a qualified professional to help you process your emotions.
•Find a quiet space and think about who it is you want to forgive. Choose one specific incident that you feel ready to work on.
•Close your eyes and try really hard to connect with how that act made you feel. Don’t rush this. It is really important to fully revisit this feeling. These feelings can be physical as well as emotional. We store and experience many powerful emotions in our bodies, yet we’re often so disconnected from our physical selves that we don’t notice them. For example, many of us hold tension and stress in our shoulders or lower back.
•Try to look at the situation from the other person’s perspective. Put yourself in their shoes. Is there anything you can learn from doing so? What might have been going on in their life at that time to cause them to behave in that way? For example, is the work colleague who shouted at you this morning having relationship issues? Was their daughter up all night with a cold? Could they be having a tough time paying their mortgage or credit-card bill? Consider whether you may have played a role in what happened? Imagine the possibilities.
•Try to forgive them. There are many ways of doing this. Some people can simply let the feelings go once they’ve looked at the situation from the other person’s perspective. Others imagine themselves giving the person a hug.
•See if you can start feeling any love or compassion towards them, while accepting that we all have issues in our lives and none of us is perfect.
•If the negative emotions are still there once you have finished, revisit the same incident on your next Feel Better Day. Remember, this is a process, not a one-off event. It may take some time.
It is very hard to give an exact time frame for the duration of this exercise. Sometimes it may take you longer than 5 minutes. It is very important that you work your way through to the end of the exercise and not stop halfway.
THE FORGIVENESS AFFIRMATION
Answer these four questions to help you let go of resentment.
This is a writing exercise, and some of my patients find it easier than The Forgiveness Practice (page 228). It’s based around an affirmation, which is a short statement about an intention you have. More and more research is showing that affirmations can be an effective way of changing how we feel. On a new sheet of paper or in a journal, address the following four areas:
1.Who and what are you ready to forgive?
E.g., “I am ready to forgive the driver who swore aggressively at me this morning.” How did it make you feel?
2.How did it make you feel?
Take some time to explore the full range of your emotions. E.g., “I felt upset, scared, angry, frustrated, and humiliated.”
3.Why are you doing this and what benefits will you receive?
E.g., “I will feel calmer. I will feel lighter. I will feel happier. I will feel less stressed.”
4.What might have led the other person to behave in the way that they did?
E.g., “Had they underslept? Could their child be getting bullied at school?”
Forgiveness Affirmation: Once you have answered these four questions, write down your forgiveness affirmation. E.g., “I forgive the driver and now I feel calm.”
After you’ve written down your affirmation, say it out loud several times if you feel able to. If not, repeat it under your breath. Say it as many times as it takes to really connect with the feeling. It’s quite possible that over the following days, intense emotions start to bubble up. If this happens, you may find it helpful to revisit the exercise again. Remember, for most of us, forgiveness is a process, not a one-off event. Again, it is very important that you work your way through to the end of the exercise, and not stop halfway.
If the two forgiveness exercises above bring up negative emotions that you are finding hard to manage, I would highly encourage you to seek out professional help.
CASE STUDY
Terri had been suffering from high blood pressure. She was in her early forties, a divorcee, and always seemed quite wound up and angry. If ever we were running a bit late at the clinic, she’d always find a way of letting her displeasure be known. She was the sort of person who feels the world’s against them and was pretty judgemental about other people, as well as herself.
I spent quite a bit of time with Terri as I wanted to understand a bit more about why she was always so negative. After I’d seen her a few times I realized that our conversations kept coming back to her ex-husband, who’d cheated on her. I was concerned that, even though they’d divorced eight years ago, she hadn’t managed to process what had happened and still held a lot of resentment about it.
Meanwhile, I was suggesting various lifestyle modifications to help deal with her blood pressure to see if I could avoid prescribing her medication. I had suggested some changes to her diet, and asked her to try reducing her alcohol intake and to go to bed a little earlier rather than staying up late each night commenting on Facebook. The problem was, I couldn’t get her to engage with any of my suggestions. Whatever she tried, there always seemed to be some problem with it that made her throw her hands up in irritation. Before long I realized that, in order to help her, I would have to change my approach.
I decided to tell her about some of the research out there around forgiveness and explained that holding on to resentment might be affecting her physical health. She gave me a sharp look. “Are you talking about my ex-husband? I’m not going to forgive him for what he did. Why should I?”
I explained to her that the anger she felt towards her ex-husband was not hurting him but it was hurting her. I recommended that she see a therapist but she was reluctant, so I taught her a short exercise.
Forgiveness is hard, so to ease Terri in I started off with really simple things. I asked her to think about the last thing that annoyed her at work.
“Annoyed me?” She thought for a second.
“Well, a colleague passed me in the corridor yesterday and didn’t even acknowledge me. He walked straight past me without saying a word. I was stewing on it all day.”
I suggested she try The Forgiveness Practice (page 228) and reflect on what had happened at work. To her credit, Terri sincerely tried the exercise. Six weeks later, she told me she felt ready to begin the process of forgiving her ex-husband. It took several more weeks of work, but when I next checked her blood pressure it had started to come down.
Practicing forgiveness had started off a classic Ripple Effect. She told me that because she was feeling happier in herself she felt less of a need to drink so much every evening and stay up late arguing on Facebook. She had still not got round to changing her diet but planned to make a start in the coming weeks.
When I last saw her she was easy-going, bubbly, and relaxed and her blood pressure was in the normal range. She was like a different person. It was truly wonderful to see.