The Challenge and Freedom of Forgiveness

This week’s episode covers the very powerful topic of forgiveness. How powerful is it? Well, some people live with the pain of not forgiving someone their entire life. The thought of letting someone get away with something, or admitting that they are over something, or whatever, can override ones desire to move on and be happy with life.

We’re going to talk about forgiveness today. What is it, really? Is it telling someone else, “You were right, and I was wrong”? Is it showing another person that what they did was forgivable? Is it something else entirely?

(this is a transcript of episode 0039)
Forgiveness has in it a mixture of emotions, and a lot of resistance. Just the fact that the word “give” is in “Forgiveness” makes it a lot harder to be forgiving about someone. After all, we typically don’t want to give anything to someone who’s done us wrong.

If anything, we want to take something from them, not give. Imagine that, Fortakeness.

“For what you did to me, I fortake you!”

I don’t know about you, but that sounds a lot more gratifying when I try it on.

***

But, let’s step out of that fantasy and come back to what really matters. Forgiving is really a process of self-love and healing. By the end of this episode, you’ll understand that the process is not about giving someone else anything. In fact, you’ll learn that it’s all about taking back what’s rightfully yours. I know that sounds a bit vindictive when I say it that way, but it’s important to grasp what is really going on when you are unable to forgive. I mean, it’s already bad enough that someone did you or someone you love wrong, so they “win” by hurting you. Then, when you’re not forgiving, they win again, because you hang onto the hurt.

It’s a double whammy. You’re hurt once, then you hold onto that hurt because maybe you think by letting it go, you are justifying them somehow.

Forgiveness is not justification. And you’ll learn why soon enough. There is a way out of the pain. And forgiving may sound like something that you can’t possibly do with some people. I totally understand this. I know people that I won’t forgive for what they did to people I love. But, I don’t carry any pain from it. I haven’t forgiven, but I’ve found ways to move on and be happy.

You’ll learn that sometimes forgiving isn’t necessary. Sometimes some other shift needs to occur within us to let things go. We’re told to be forgiving all of our life. Yet, in some circumstances, you may believe it’s absolutely impossible to do so. Again, I get it! And I’m not going to talk you out of that belief. After all, who am I to know your pain? Who is anyone? And if you’re not the one in pain, think of someone who is. We all know probably 2, 3 or more people that refuse to forgive or move on in some way.

You know those people, who bring up the same stories of those who did them wrong over and over again. Their stories usually start with, “If he hadn’t done that”, or “if it wasn’t for her, I’d be happy”, or whatever. You can tell that they’re stuck at a certain progress level in life. They’ve stopped learning and growing because they can’t get past that pain or anger. Or, if they are learning and growing new things, every new thing they learn has within it a seed of that negativity that they just can’t seem to shake.

Like about 10 years ago when I thought life was as good as it gets. I would have these moments where as soon as I started to feel good about something, I made sure to remind myself of all the bad things I had going on in my life. This took away the good feelings right away and brought me back to my miserable reality. Well, I was happy in some areas, but because I held in all my pain, whenever I got too happy, that pain would remind me not to be happy.

It was a vicious loop of emotion. Have you ever felt that way?

***

When I was 30, about 14 years ago, I stopped communicating with my real father. He called me one night, and my girlfriend at the time knew I was kind of annoyed that he called so late, so she said something aloud that he couldn’t really hear. What she said was something like, “Maybe he can call earlier next time.”
Well, this was at a time when I didn’t know how to protect and honor my personal boundaries. I actually agreed with her, but didn’t want to tell my dad to call earlier because I didn’t like confrontation. But after she said that, I did tell him ‘I have to go now. ‘

My dad said, “Oh, I see what’s going on, you don’t have to explain.” My thoughts were that he believed she wore the pants in the family and that I had been sufficiently whipped. Though, this wasn’t entirely untrue at the time, it was completely none of his business nor his place to make any comments about the living arrangement my girlfriend and I had grown accustomed to.

You see, I’d been growing resentment towards my father for some time anyway because almost every time he called, he’d ask to borrow money. In those days, me saying “no” was like finding a solid gold brick under my bed – it just wasn’t going to happen. I was so afraid of standing up for myself, I just kept lending him money. Well, my girlfriend knew this, she knew that he annoyed me, so she spoke up that night hoping he’d hear that he needs to call earlier next time. Of course, her comment wasn’t about the money he always asked for, but her frustration was.

Her speaking up made me uncomfortable, because I wasn’t used to standing up to anyone, and now she’d put herself between my dad and I. She had no problem speaking her mind, and she didn’t want my dad putting me in these situations or calling so late. To her, it made sense! Tell him to stop calling so late. She was trying to stand up for me.

Well, after that call, he called one more time and asked for money. This time, I decided to conjure up all my courage (which didn’t take long, because I didn’t have much), and tell him, “No. I can’t lend you money.”

I didn’t give him a reason, I just said “no”. He was like, ‘Oh, OK. No problem”. But from that point on, I didn’t talk to him until he was on his deathbed ten years later. I spent ten years in a place not really angry with him, but also not forgiving him for only calling to ask for money all the time. I realize this is tame compared to what some parents have done to their children, but I only knew my suffering and knew what it felt like to hold onto something for so long.

I was upset that my dad never wanted to just connect with me as his son. He always wanted to borrow money. And I didn’t like what he spent his money on either, because I knew it was just getting smoked away. So I had that issue I still hadn’t dealt with too.

But when my brother called ten years later, around 2010 or so, and told me my dad had some weird bone cancer and that he wasn’t sure how much time was left, I decided I needed closure. Whatever I was carrying around needed to be let go. And the best way to let it go is to face the person and start fresh. Since by then I had learned about personal boundaries, I was ready to start a brand new relationship with him. I was even prepared if he asked to borrow any money. I knew he might, but I was OK with that, because that would give me a chance to practice what I learned about myself.

So I booked a flight from California to Florida, and visited him in the hospital. He looked a lot older, but we got along great. He was happy to see me, and we really connected, and did start a new relationship from that point on. I don’t remember if it was a few days later, or a few weeks, but I think it was my sister who sent me an email telling me that my dad had gotten worse, and she thought he was going to die very soon.

And I remember that day vividly. I was inside at a Panera Bread, enjoying my tea, working on my laptop. The sun was shining, and there were very few people in the restaurant. I got on the phone, and called my dad. And it was probably the best conversation I ever had with my father.

***

Many people think that forgiveness is giving something to the person who wronged them. They believe that by forgiving, they are letting that person get away with what they did to them.

No matter what you believe it is, I’d like you to adopt the belief that forgiveness is not about the other person. Ever. It’s about you.

Let’s talk about a worst case scenario, where a father beats his kids. The kids grow up being resentful toward their father. They harbor much anger and hatred towards him.

Then someone comes along and says, “Why don’t you forgive him so you can move on with your life?”

The kids say they will never forgive ‘that bastard’ and hope he ‘rots in hell’. I’m paraphrasing a made up scenario, by the way! So the kids hold onto the anger and hatred, thinking that by doing so, it is holding on to their power. After all, if they forgive and forget, then he could easily start abusing them again. Maybe not physically, but in other ways. They feel that by carrying the burden of anger and hatred, that it will somehow keep the father distant and feeling bad about what he did.

Now, some of that may actually be true. And perhaps it’s also true that the father should feel bad and stay distant. I won’t deny that in this situation, he should feel bad. But it’s also possible he won’t feel bad at all, and doesn’t care what the kids think or feel. After all, he’s been beating them their whole childhood, so he probably doesn’t have the compassion towards them a father should have. But regardless of what’s going on in the father’s mind, the kids now bear the burden of anger and hatred. They are reliving the abuse in a whole new way by continuing to hold onto their feelings about his behavior.

Imagine that for a moment. Someone did you wrong, and you feel a certain way about it. Let’s say you feel angry. Then, after it’s over, they never apologize, so you never forgive. So you now keep the anger as a reminder of that time. They made you mad once, then you kept that anger from that point on. It’s like that person found the magic switch inside you that controls you. “Uh huh! There’s that switch.” Click. They turn on your anger, and they walk away free and clear.

And you see, that’s just it. Whether you forgive them or not, they are now free of the situation. Sure, maybe they blame you for that moment in time and won’t forgive you, but for the purpose of this discussion, you are angry. They found the switch, clicked it on, and walked away. That was easy!

But for the person who doesn’t forgive, it can become a lifetime of hurt, pain, and disintegration. Yes, disintegration. I’ve seen it in a lot of people. The longer you hang on to the hurt and anger, the more your mind, body and soul disintegrates. It’s like a car that gets exposed to salt, eventually, if the salt isn’t washed away, it will rust the metal of the car. Rust spreads throughout the entire car. If the salt never goes away, the rust will eventually cause the car to fall apart.

If you hang on to the anger or upset you may have towards someone, it is only hurting you. Well, it may be hurting them too, but you have to take care of and nurture yourself first no matter what. You don’t want to rust away because you refuse or simply can’t let go of the bad feelings. You want to wash away the salt, and I’m talking all of it, along the frame, the underbelly, the body, the engine, everything.

Let’s talk about some steps you can take to get past the upset. Remember forgiveness is not about the other person, it’s about you. And that’s where we’re going next.

***

Forgiveness is about you. What do I mean by that? I mean that when someone does you wrong, you feel a certain way about it; Let’s say angry and hurt. That anger and hurt is now inside you. And by carrying it with you, you are not giving to yourself, you are taking from yourself. Worse yet, you could almost say that the person who caused you to feel this way is still taking from you!

A personal boundary or two was violated, and they took something from you. Whether it was your dignity, your love, your trust, compassion or kindness, or something even deeper. They took it, and by not forgiving, you allow them to keep it. Wow. They get to keep what they took from you, because you are angry or upset with them. That doesn’t sound very fair!

Forget what you’ve heard about forgiveness, unless it matches what I’m about to say:

Forgiveness is the result of full, unfiltered expression of what you felt the moment it happened.

Let me reword that because it’s kind of a loaded phrase:

To experience forgiveness is to express exactly what you’re feeling. What you felt then, and what you feel now. It is the verbalization of the raw emotion inside. It is the physical release of repressed anger, upset and hurt, by channeling it through words or actions.

In the episode on Depression with Carla White, I talked about going into a room alone, or your car, or somewhere where you can just let it all out, and say everything that society doesn’t want you say, in order to express yourself fully. Say or scream every thought and feeling you are hanging on to as if there were no such things as good manners, morals or laws. Say or scream anything, and don’t judge what comes out of your mouth.

In that episode, I really laid out how much anger and hatred I had towards my stepfather. It was at a time where I had just started a relationship with my future wife, and she was trying to help me get over this depression I was in. After some deep talk with her, I finally screamed how much I hated him. I also said some other pretty nasty things about him too. Some things society would probably think was unacceptable. Society would probably say, “You should forgive him. You should honor him as a person. Accept him for the spirit that he is, not the behavior he displayed during your youth.”

If someone had told me that, I might have listened, but continued to hang on to the anger. That’s why I think a lot of that kind of talk is BS from people who’ve never felt what it’s really like to hang on to pain, then learn to grow beyond it. Maybe this will give you an idea of why I’m so cynical sometimes.

It wasn’t a matter of loving him more. It wasn’t a matter of accepting him. It was a matter of allowing myself to hate him so much that I had a meltdown. I had to pop in order to let the anger go. I realize this is so opposite of what we think we should do, but I also know what works. I know that by finally allowing myself to not love his soul, to not accept his behavior, to not see him as another person just trying to get along in the world, and by completely hating him through and through, screaming everything I want to happen to him, and just letting it all out, set me free.

I became free.

I (for)gave myself the gift of full expression without fear of going to hell, or being looked down upon by anyone who might judge what I say as immoral or “bad”. I cried it out, I yelled it out, and I practically collapsed because so much negative energy escaped my body at that moment. Forgiveness just happened on its own. It happened naturally, after I was able to express all those years of repressed thoughts and feelings. I had a safe place to express, with someone who allowed me to do so. It was a pivotal moment in my life where I felt no more hatred.

What was strange is that I didn’t even know I was holding on to this stuff! I’ve been Mr. Nice Guy all my life. Every time a negative thought would come up about him, I’d remember to honor and be compassionate towards everyone, because that’s the “right” thing to do. When I was given permission to throw that out the window, everything poured out, and I felt liberated.

***

I did not have to forgive him. I didn’t have to forgive anyone. I just had to feel safe enough in my environment to express myself fully, without repercussion. When I did that, forgiveness happened on its own.

Again, forget what you know about forgiveness, especially if there’s someone in your life you haven’t forgiven yet. Because if you know forgiveness, and still haven’t forgiven, then it’s time to learn a different way to approach forgiving. Forgiveness is something you give yourself. Right after that time that I fully expressed myself, it was like unlocking the handcuffs I had on. One handcuff was on my stepfather, and the other was on me. I was dragging him around everywhere I went.

When I got into a new relationship, there was my stepfather, locked to my wrist. When I started a new job, there he was. When I was driving down the road by myself, and heard a song that really pumped me up, there he was, locked on me, bringing me down. Forgiveness, in the sense that you fully express yourself in a safe environment, unlocks the cuffs and allows you to be free of the burden of dragging the person around.

It doesn’t mean they were right, it doesn’t mean what they did is now forgiven, it just means you give yourself permission to be free of dragging around this burden. And something really interesting happens when you forgive. The person you used to be locked to suddenly doesn’t bother you anymore. Sometimes, they just disappear from your life forever. Or, if they don’t disappear, they simply don’t behave the way they used to around you anymore.

It’s almost like they know they don’t bother you anymore, so they don’t respond to you the same way. When you’re able to release all that thought and emotion, you become centered, and at peace inside, at least with this particular issue. What used to trigger you is now just a mundane, everyday occurrence that doesn’t affect you at all. You become confident and your self-esteem gets higher. It’s an interesting phenomenon because you have to reach your “lowest”, most vulnerable state, to gain more power than you can imagine.

Your breakdown absolutely leads to your breakthrough. And the person who wronged you doesn’t know how to behave around you anymore, because you are no longer affected, in any way, by what happened. That person loses their control over you. Yes, it was control that they had over you. And because you had that episode of full expression, you unlock the cuffs, untether their power over you, and take the reigns of your emotions.

Where do you even begin to express yourself though? What’s the first step? Let’s start the forgiveness process now

***

I make it sound so easy: Just find a safe place and yell and scream everything you are thinking and feeling. The only problem you might run into is that you do that and nothing happens.

You might say, “OK, I hate his guts and I want him to die.”

This may work if you’ve never thought this way before. Or, if you have thought this way before, maybe you chose to suppress that thought and stuff the emotion before it was expressed. Either way, this works for some and not for others. The reason this doesn’t always work is because it doesn’t tap deep enough into your emotional well. Some emotions are so deep, it’s going to take more than an abstract comment to access them.

Saying, “I hate her and want to kill her” might be closer to something you have inside you. You may not want to say something like that, but that’s the point of this entire exercise: Saying things that you wouldn’t normally say. When you think about it, everything you’d normally say has already been said. And if you’re still holding on to the negativity, then what’s been said isn’t effective.

That’s why we have to shock our nervous system a little – give it something unexpected: “I want to push him in the path of an oncoming train!”

I realize this might make you uncomfortable, and you don’t have to go as far as I do when something is really bothering me. But expressing like you’ve never expressed before helps you materialize the pain inside, so that you have something tangible to release. You may be so used to saying things like, “He ruined my life!”, or “She caused all this to happen!”, that when you repeat things like that over and over again, it loses it’s energy. It fizzles out. Your mind and body aren’t affected by it, except in the sense that it helps to continue feeding your negativity.

But when you say things you aren’t used to, then your mind and body start to listen. You almost hear a voice inside that responds with, “What did you just say?” You are telling yourself to pay attention, in a way. By doing this, you are now drilling further down into your emotional well, to hit on some of the pain or hurt that’s been stuck in there. By shaking things up, saying the things you would never say, you are communicating with the part of you that can be expressed and released.

So, I’m going to give you specific wording you can use to access the deepest parts of your well, so that you can show this pain a way out. This is your opportunity to release some deep, buried stuff, but only if you want to now. Hey, you may be perfectly fine and won’t need any of this. In which case, these questions really won’t affect you. Maybe you can use them with other people. But if you find yourself unable to forgive in your life, use the following as your path to freedom from emotional pain.

Are you ready? Let me give you a moment to breath deeply…

***

Alright, we’re going to access a deeper part of you now. And while we do this, I want you to know that you are perfectly safe right here and now. And even if you are interrupted during this process, no matter where you are, you’ll be able to return at any point back to your world and feel completely comfortable.

So just know that you are safe here and now, and as your mind opens to new possibilities, know that you will also be safe from anything that wants to come up and express itself.

You may or may not have any hurt, pain, anger or sadness inside of you, but no matter what, you’ll always be safe during this process.

Now as you allow your mind to open, let me address the conscious part of you and let you know that I’m not hypnotizing you. I’m not going to have you sleep or anything like that. In fact, if you’re driving or operating a carnival ride, I definitely want you to stay aware during this process. But if you’re just relaxing right now, then go ahead and be restful.

So as your mind opens and allows my words to enter, here is the first question to ask yourself. And when I speak it, I will ask as if my voice is yours:

What happened to me that I am unable to forgive?

You may know this pretty quickly, but if you need time, just pause this recording at any time. What happened to you that you cannot forgive?

When you have something, the next question to ask yourself is this:

Knowing that forgiving is really about giving myself freedom to let go of the upset, and that by letting it go, I’m not justifying that person’s behavior, what inside me hurts the most?

Come up with what really hurts the most. You may have negative feelings towards someone else, but you also have something else that directly affects you.

For example, if your partner or spouse cheated on you, you may feel animosity or other feelings towards them, but when you dig deeper, what do you feel about you? What got hurt in you?

I’m not sure if I was ever cheated on, but if I found out that it happened, I think the deepest level hurt for me would be that I wasn’t loveable. So forgiving for me would be about giving myself freedom to let go of the thought that I wasn’t lovable. I might still be angry at the person for compromising our commitment to each other and for making me feel like an idiot, but when I really dig, deep down, I feel like I must not be lovable.

Logically, I know I’m loveable because before this relationship, I certainly was. And maybe even during this relationship, I was. So I know that now, I am just thinking irrationally because there are so many emotions mixed together.

So what is the deepest part of you that was affected. It will be only about you, and not another person. If you point to something outside of yourself, then you haven’t dug deep enough inside you to know what’s really hurting or upset.

You may know, or it may take a while for it to come up in you. Either way, the last question to ask yourself is this:

If the deepest emotional place inside of me prevents me from forgiving and letting this go easily, would it be possible to feel protected enough in my personal boundaries to know where I stand if this ever happens again?

Sometimes we hang on to the upset that someone else caused, that we actually stay in a place of no power. We may think we have power, because we can show a tough exterior to the world, or perhaps feel like a victim in the world. But if you can accept that your personal boundaries will never allow this to happen to you again, then it might be a lot easier to let go of any of the pain or hurt associated with the event.

If you honor your personal boundaries, you stand firm when someone tries to violate them. You’ll be like a samurai who walks calm but will honor his boundaries to the death. Now, I don’t mean literal death, but when you have that kind of presence in you, that calm confidence, there is no need to hang on to upset. Many people will hang on to the pain or hurt because they believe that by letting it go, the other person wins. But what really happens when you let it go is that you allow more strength and confidence to enter and be a part of your life.

Strength cannot build within you when you are holding on to the past.

Strength, confidence and assertiveness can only grow and thrive in an environment free of blame and victimhood. When you allow qualities to flourish inside you, forgiving occurs naturally. It has to, because there is no power in holding on to the past.

Forgiving is not absolving someone of blame, it is restoring you of your power.

And this is a belief that you just have to plant as a seed in your unconscious mind so that it blossoms from within to light your path to true power.

I realize that there are unforgivable acts that people have done. I know people who I have not forgiven, but I developed the strength and willpower inside me so that I am absolutely determined that the person I won’t forgive has no power over me. By expressing the hatred, I let it go. Emotional energy needs a valve, and twisting it will let all kinds of thoughts and emotions out. It’s a matter of saying the worst of the worst that comes out of you, without judging what comes out.

But expression by itself isn’t always the way to let things go. In fact, you may do everything I suggest, and still have so much pain or hurt or anger, that you are still having a challenge of letting it go easily.

Let’s conclude our exploration of forgiveness with the final segment about what to do when all else fails.

***

People are complex. We are a bundle of thoughts and emotions with an infinite combination of ideas and possibilities. We can feel extreme joy in one situation on one day, and extreme sadness in the same situation the next.

We have memories, we have physical feelings, we experience emotion, and the environment affects us too. To think that there is one way to let go of every possible bad thing that happens to us is a bit ignorant, so I won’t. To think that you can absolutely let go of all the pain you’ve ever experienced in life may also be a bit ignorant. And just because I believe that we absolutely can, it doesn’t mean it’s true for you.

What is true however is where letting go actually starts. If you feel wronged, and you refuse to let go of the hurt it brings you, then that is a choice you are making. Refusal is a choice, I hate to tell you. If however, you feel wronged, and you’ve tried to let the hurt go, but just can’t seem to do it, then you’ve made the choice to let it go, but need a boost or something else because you just can’t seem to get over a hurdle or two.

The first step for you is making the choice that you want to let the pain or upset go. This feeling that you want to release is different than the feeling you may feel towards the other person. You may still be angry at them, and that’s OK, but I’m only referring to the pain or hurt inside you.

The question is: Do you want to let go of the pain inside of you?

If the answer is no, then that is your choice and I honor it. But I will ask you to consider that the pain you feel in you is different from the anger you feel towards them. I know if you really check inward, you’ll find that’s true.

That’s typically where people get hung up. They keep the feeling they have inside connected to the upset they have toward the other person. But if you truly accept that what you feel about them and what you feel inside you are two distinct feelings, you can start the healing process pretty quickly. And again, you don’t have to forgive anyone or anything, because that is just a byproduct of the separation process anyway.

If you make the choice to let go of the pain or upset, the next step is to ask yourself those questions we already talked about in the last segment. And I promise, I’ll cover those again in the quick summary after this segment.

But if you’ve done the questions and still can’t seem to let go of the hurt in you, there’s one last thing to ask yourself:

What am I gaining by holding onto this pain?

And here’s the trick, don’t say “nothing”. In fact, come up with something, even if you have to make it up. Emotional pain and upset sticks around for a reason. And there’s always some benefit to keeping it with us. Maybe as a reminder, or to use against the person that wronged us, or something else.

How does it benefit you? Do you feel better when people comfort you about it? Do you always mention it every time you’re around certain people so you’ll get attention of some sort? Or, if you don’t talk about it, do you use it as an excuse so you won’t have to accept responsibility for your own actions in life?

I’m sorry if I’m hitting a nerve or two in you, I’m just asking the questions we typically don’t ask ourselves, because there’s a part of us that wants to keep the feelings in for one reason or another.

What is it for you?

There are so many answers to that question, and I couldn’t possibly go over each and every scenario so I’m going to leave it at that. But remember, this isn’t about answering all the questions and healing from years of hurt in 45 minutes (though, it can be because I’ve seen people do it), it’s about planting the seed of change that sprouts inside you to reveal the path to freedom.

Everything I said here today is part of the process of change and growth. Even if you know things aren’t changing in you now, or the processes I’ve described don’t work for you, you’ve still given new thought to old problems. And with new thought comes new direction, and more new thought. There is a chain reaction that goes on when we access those really deep parts of ourselves. And we can either let them happen, or stop them in their tracks.

My advice is to simply let it go, and not worry about what works and what doesn’t, because you have a way of changing and healing inside you that is unique to you and no one else. And as we come to the end of this last segment, come back into the world you know because I need you to be fully conscious as we wrap things up.

I realize that one can get lost in all this talking I do, but just allow all of it to soak in in the background so that you can come back to the here and now, and we can summarize today’s episode. It’s great to have you back!

***

Wow, what a ride that was. This show is a bit different than the typical episode, as there were some journey segments. If you played along and really followed through, good for you. If you had a lot a pain when we started, and you dove into that, good for you. And if you listened to the episode going, “What in the world are you talking about?” then you may be much farther along the path to forgiveness and probably don’t even need this particular episode. Well, I guess I could have told you that in the beginning. Oops!

Seriously though, let’s do a quick and easy summary of what we talked about:

1. Forgiveness is not about the other person, it’s about you. When someone does you wrong, you feel a certain way about it. By continuing to hold on to how you feel, you are taking from yourself.

And by not forgiving, you allow the other person to also take from you. It’s a double whammy.

2. Forgiveness is the result of full, unfiltered expression of what you felt the moment the original event happened.

3. Forgiveness is not something you do, it’s something that happens when you are able to release your pain, whether you’re angry, sad, hurt, or whatever the upset is.

You do not have to forgive, in the traditional sense of forgiveness. Forgiveness really ends up being something you give yourself.

4. When forgiveness happens, the person who wronged you is suddenly no longer influential in your life. It’s like the energetic bond you had with them was severed. And they become less and less of a burden over time.

5. If you think you’ve already expressed your deepest pain and your darkest desires of what you want to have happen to the other person, then you probably haven’t dug deep enough.

Safe, full expression of the thoughts and feelings from very deep in your emotional well is needed to shock your system to start the process of healing.

You’re not really going to do all the things you express, well, at least I recommend you don’t do those things, but think of it as writing a letter to the person, but never mailing it. You’re creating a tangible expression of what’s going on inside of you either way. By the way, writing a letter you never send has a lot of therapeutic value as well. You should try it!

6. Use questions to help pull the pain from deep within your emotional  well. The first question is:

What happened to me that I am unable to forgive?

The second question is:

Knowing that forgiving is really about giving myself freedom to let go of the upset, and that by letting it go, I’m not justifying that person’s behavior, what inside me hurts the most?

And the third, and longest question, is:

If the deepest emotional place inside of me prevents me from forgiving and letting this go easily, would it be possible to feel protected enough in my personal boundaries to know where I stand if this ever happens again?

7. Honoring your boundaries and standing up for yourself helps start the healing process, and allows forgiveness to occur.

8. Strength cannot build within you when you are holding on to the past. Forgiving restores your power.

9. The first question that starts the entire process of healing, and allows forgiveness to take place naturally is this:

Do you want to let go of the pain inside of you?

It seems like a simple yes, right off the bat, doesn’t it. But I’ve asked this question to clients before, and some have said ‘no’. Sometimes there’s a benefit to keeping the pain. If you are in pain, and you benefit from keeping it, be honest with yourself and find that benefit so you know the facts.

We sometimes carry things around with us, not realizing that a small part of us wants to keep it, but the rest of us wants to let it go.

And when you get stuck where a part of you wants one thing and another part of you wants another, then listen real close, and answer the following question with a yes:

Can the one part of you that wants to hang on to the pain, see that the other part of you understands why, and wants to work together towards a solution that helps them both?

And by saying yes, can each part of you come together, bringing with them only what gives them strength, and work as one to bring healing and wholeness to you as a whole individual that wants what only you know is best for you?

And by coming together, you can start the healing process, but only at the speed and pace you want. Whether that’s an hour, a day or a week. Whenever you’re ready, the process can begin.

Now even if you didn’t understand what I just said, just allow what you did understand to sink in at the unconscious level so that whatever needs to take place, can.

This episode is about forgiveness, so I want to do whatever it takes to help you get there.

10. The pain or suffering you feel from the event, is different from how you feel about the person who wronged you. Keep those two separate, and you get to keep your power.

***

When I called my dad from the Panera Bread that day, I remember he sounded so alive and energized. He said, “I’ve never felt better! I can’t believe it! I don’t think I need to be in the hospital anymore.”

I was so happy to hear that he was happy and doing great. We talked about getting together and how he wanted to show me a car that he wanted to buy. And also how we’ll go fishing or do other things that we missed out on all these years. Some real father-son things.

And though I don’t like to fish anymore, it was a chance to connect with him in a way I hadn’t in so many years. So I chose to love fishing during this conversation. He felt great, and was excited that he beat this cancer.

When I got off the phone, I emailed a friend of mine to share the news. She echoed the thought that had already crossed my mind: That he was near death.

She said that when people come to the end of life, the body will sometimes release chemicals or endorphins or something like that that makes all the pain go away.

And she was right. Three days later, he died.

But it was alright. I had made peace with him, and was able to accept his death knowing that he was no longer suffering. This actually made me feel good. I had let go of the pain I wrapped around our relationship to let him in again.

I was able to do this from a new place inside me. Where even if he tried to be that person who always wanted to borrow money, I could easily, without anger, say no, because I honor my personal boundaries now, and I could stand up for myself.

But he never did ask for money again. We reunited after 10 years, and then he died.

The lesson I learned about forgiveness is powerful. I know that some of you out there are listening right now thinking to yourself that you maybe you didn’t forgive someone before they died. But remember that forgiving is not about that person, it’s about you.

When I separated from my dad for 10 years, I finally came to a place inside me where I honored myself and became stronger and more confident. I developed stronger values and built up my boundary walls. I just learned and grew from the inside out.

And when I thought about my dad, and how I hadn’t reconnected with him yet, I came to a place of forgiveness in myself. I (for)gave myself the gift of self-esteem and self-confidence so that he couldn’t cross my boundaries again.

I could have told my dad that I forgave him for always asking for money and never trying to connect with me as his son, but it was never about him. It was always about how I felt inside when I couldn’t express myself from a place of inner strength and surety.

It always comes down to how you feel about yourself when someone else does you wrong, or does something “unforgivable”.

When you feel upset or angry, it becomes unfinished business; an open loop, that needs closure. And you’re the only one who can close it within yourself.

If you enjoyed this episode, make sure to sign up for your weekly personal growth message
image source: http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/everydayinspiration/files/2014/06/Let-Go.jpg