Forgiveness and Emotional Wellbeing
Throughout the time I have been practising hypnotherapy and very noticeably lately, I have been helping people forgive others who have wronged them in some way, or indeed forgive themselves.
A state of unforgiveness towards anyone can have negative effects on our lives. When we have not forgiven a person in our lives, our thoughts may be continuously drawn back to the event or events we went through with them, resulting in unpleasant feelings such as anger and a gnawing sense of betrayal.
Many years ago, I shared a house with someone who had never forgiven her mother for sending her to boarding school. Her life and a large part of her everyday conversation was consumed by this. People around her were subjected to the behaviour resulting from her unresolved anger. I did not see her for many years but when I did, the first thing she started talking about was her mother, and the story was exactly the same.
You will have heard many times that forgiving someone does not mean forgetting what happened or ‘letting them off the hook’. Forgiveness is a decision we make that we will no longer let the event have a deleterious effect on our lives and wellbeing. Forgiveness is for our own benefit, not for the other person, who has probably already moved on from their actions. Indeed, being able to forgive is an act of courage and you will feel better for it.
Perhaps the most important thing we need to do in relation to forgiveness is to forgive ourselves. Recently I worked with someone who had in her opinion behaved badly to a classmate when she was a teenager. The upshot of that was that her behaviour with this person with whom she was still friends was to allow that person to make criticisms of the life she was choosing to live. She recognised that her guilt about the past was driving this. Once she had forgiven herself, she was able to make a more objective decision about how she would interact with this friend in the future. Furthermore, as a result of the forgiveness work this client did with herself and others, she said that she felt better than she remembered ever feeling. New decisions about leading her life in a way that better suited her, were developing. That’s the power of forgiveness.
Most of the time, we and others are doing the best we can. We are fallible human beings. When we are young we may be driven by peer pressure. We and others may act in certain ways because of events that are happening in our own lives or because of our conditioning. Sometimes the other person does not even intend to hurt us.
Remember, to forgive someone is a decision not to allow the hurtful event to have any continuing impact on how you feel and lead your life. A person of integrity has memories of times when they behaved in a way they now feel guilty about. This is to be human.
If you feel you have been unable to forgive someone, or feel guilt yourself about your own behaviour in a situation, hypnotherapy can help you let go of it and move on.