Daily Om - Releasing Guilt: Permission to Forgive Ourselves

This was the Daily Om from a while back. I wanted to share this because I see so much of myself in what this brief message conveys. It's easy for me to forgive others, but it can seem like turning lead into gold to forgive myself - a nice idea in theory, but unrealistic in practice.

And yet, holding myself accountable is essential to growing and learning. And guilt can be a part of that - but when it is held over time it can transform into shame - the sense that I am bad.

It's important to distinguish between guilt (I did something that was wrong or that feels bad) and shame (I am wrong, I am a worthless person). Guilt can be useful in inspiring a change in behavior, but shame is destructive.

As I said above, my experience is that guilt not released when the necessary changes have been made can transform into shame. Learning to forgive our own mistakes is essential to avoiding the toxicity of shame. I have been working at this for years and I am finally getting it.

Releasing Guilt: Permission to Forgive Ourselves

by Madisyn Taylor

Dwelling in guilt is like living your life with an anchor tied to your ankles dragging you down.
Learning to accept the things that we perceive as wrong can be a difficult task for many of us. Often we have been brought up to accept that it is normal to feel guilty about our actions and that by doing so we will make everything seem alright within ourselves. Even though we might feel that we have a reason to make up for the choices we have made, it is much more important for us to learn how to deal with them in a healthy and positive way, such as through forgiveness and understanding.

When we can look back at our past and really assess what has happened, we begin to realize that there are many dimensions to our actions. While feeling guilty might assuage our feelings at first, it is really only a short-term solution. It is all too ironic that being hard on ourselves is the easy way out. If we truly are able to gaze upon our lives through the lens of compassion, however, we will be able to see that there is much more to what we do and have done than we realize. Perhaps we were simply trying to protect ourselves or others and did the best we could at the time, or maybe we thought we had no other recourse and chose a solution in the heat of the moment. Once we can understand that dwelling in our negative feelings will only make us feel worse, we will come to recognize that it is really only through forgiving ourselves that we can transform our feelings and truly heal any resentment we have about our past.

Giving ourselves permission to feel at peace with our past actions is one of the most positive steps we can take toward living a life free from regrets, disappointments, and guilt. The more we are able to remind ourselves that the true path to a peaceful mind and heart is through acceptance of every part of our lives and actions, the more harmony and inner joy we will experience in all aspects of our lives.


What do you think? Discuss this article and share your opinion

Lisa Hickey - Forgiveness Is Macho

Lisa Hickey offers up a first-person account of her own feelings toward Germany - her inability to forgive the nation for its Nazi past - and then visits a country that does not reflect her beliefs. From The Good Men Project.

I might add that "macho" is the wrong word, but I get her intention - I'd prefer "mature," or "compassionate," but she's trying to sell forgiveness to men who often want to be seen as macho, so, yeah, okay.

Forgiveness Is Macho
AUGUST 17, 2011 BY LISA HICKEY





Lisa Hickey travels from Germany to the comments on a blog post to discover that forgiveness is an action word.

♦◊♦

I didn’t expect to like Germany. It wasn’t on my itinerary, just an accidental stop on my way to better places. But I love that I can rent a bicycle right there at the train station; and even though the words on the signs are long and look unpronounceable, at least they have letters I recognize. I am immediately at home among the clatter of cycles on the city street. Everyone bikes. The buildings are sweeping expanses of stone, large archways, and red roofs.


I pedal out of Munich, over rolling hills, and past clock towers. I’m looking for a lake 20 miles south, and when I arrive I’m surprised to note everyone is topless.


The only reason I am in Stamberg, the German city-by-the-lake, is that I was in Italy the night before. I had a rail pass and no place to sleep, and a train with a sleeper car was Munich-bound. The lake water is delightful. The people are cheerful and talkative. I feel like I’ve stepped inside an 18th century European painting and I don’t want to leave.


I thought I’d hate Germany. I didn’t want to go because it was a country I couldn’t forgive. I couldn’t forgive the fact that much of the Holocaust happened in Germany. I couldn’t forgive all the nightmares that caused me. The sick feeling in my stomach every time I thought about it. I couldn’t forgive the fact that I would pray in school that teachers wouldn’t make me learn about what happened in concentration camps. Please don’t let that really have happened. I would crinkle my eyes shut in an effort to block out the images formed in my head from the stories I read.

♦◊♦

Clouds roll in; there is the smell of thunder. The lake people and I disperse to a shanty that sells waffles and ice cream. People are laughing and running. A couple kisses, their wet t-shirts wrinkling around their skin. A few hailstones fall.


The logical part of my brain knows that I can’t hate an entire country because of some unspeakable acts by a small faction of people some 60 years ago. I am a logical person. Most days I am open-minded and non-judgmental. But when I try to think my way into forgiveness, I can never do it.


Yet, of course forgiveness is possible. And the key for me came from a mantra that makes its way around recovery rooms: “Act first, feelings will follow.”

Read the whole post.

The Art of Manliness - What Does It Mean to Forgive?

This post comes from The Art of Manliness a while back - on the nature of forgiveness for men. The idea runs counter to much of what we see in the media. The article begins with a look at the prevalence of justified revenge in male films - my personal favorite is The Crow. Then they move toward what it means (and how it benefits us) to practice forgiveness.

Anyway, this is a great post . . . . From Is Forgiveness Manly.

What Does It Mean to Forgive?

by Brett & Kate McKay

As men I think we often resist the idea of forgiveness both because it seems contrary to the idea of justice and because it seems like an action born of weakness. After all, many people equate forgiveness with letting someone off the hook for their crime and allowing them to get away with wrongdoing. Doesn’t the lack of just punishment encourage the person to commit the same act again and put us in the position of condoning their crime? And if so, is forgiveness for suckas? For whipped push-overs?

But true forgiveness shouldn’t involve ignoring the issues of justice. It does not preclude justified anger. It shouldn’t be a get out of jail free card you bestow upon everyone willy nilly. It is not something you agree to simply to avoid conflict. It should not involve being a doormat who allows someone to hurt you over and over again. It is not the same as reconciliation, and it does not mean that you forget what has happened, nor that you automatically trust a person again.

What it does mean is that you let go of both your ill-feelings towards the offender and your need to personally balance the scales of justice. It’s a process whereby the antagonism you feel for the offender is replaced with compassion.

Sound sissy? It’s not. In fact, summoning the strength to forgive someone can increase your manliness is a variety of ways-

Forgiveness:

Shows Maturity

The reason it’s easy to cheer for revenge in a movie is that typically the plot is set up in a very black and white way. The hero is an admirable and virtuous guy; the villain is pure evil and kills the hero’s family simply because his heart is a black lump of coal.

Of course the real world is rarely so simplistic. Seeing things in black and white is generally reserved for children.

At a certain point the boy must become a man. Maturity involves the ability to step into another person’s shoes and see things from a different perspective. It requires a mind that understands the human condition and recognizes people as truly complex creatures, with frailties, failures, and checkered histories.

You need not condone the wrong someone did, but you should try to understand it, and them. Okay, your dad was a dick, but why was that? Probably because his dad was a dick to him and that’s all he knows about being a father.

Did your friend do something completely out of character? What was going on at the time? Was he acting out of the hurt of his recent break-up?

Sometimes people do wrong us randomly. And perhaps these offenses are the most difficult to deal with. But even then the person typically has a screw loose; something is just not right upstairs.

Forgiveness can change your whole perspective on life and people. We come to see others as fellow travelers in this world; everyone’s walking around with various wounds and various capabilities for dealing with those hurts and angers. They’re not evil villains who are out to get you, but people stumbling around, trying to do the right thing, and sometimes failing miserably. Kind of like….you.

Involves Taking Personal Responsibility and Shunning Victimhood

Being a man means taking personal responsibility for your life. But we often hold onto our grudges because they make for handy excuses, excuses that keep us from finally growing up. We can’t forgive our dad for what he did to us because when we do we will no longer be able to use that as an excuse for our personal failures. We’ll have to move forward and accept full responsibility for our lives. And that can be scary.

When we hold onto a grudge, we hold onto our identity as victims. We let someone else’s actions define us. When we forgive, we decide that we define who we are.

Puts You in Control

By withholding forgiveness you feel like you’ve got the upper hand on someone. You can dangle reconciliation on a string, make them continually grovel with contrition. Grudges thus offer the illusion of power and control. Yet they can’t fulfill that promise.

Because ironically, the offender is still the one holding your puppet strings. Your mental state is dependent on them. You’ve made your happiness contingent on another person: you need to show me X and treat me like X for me to be happy. If we wait until the other person is sorry, we’re giving them control over us-we’re waiting on them. Don’t give them that power. When you choose to forgive you embrace your free choice and agency-no one can make you feel like shiz without your permission.

Grants You Freedom

When we hold grudges and plot our revenge, we limit our freedom. Yes, we get to keep the other person in prison and wield that power. But what we don’t realize is that we’re stuck in jail with them, having to play the role of the ever vigilant warden. You can put someone in the doghouse, but you better make room for two. Or as a Chinese proverb says, “He who seeks revenge should remember to dig two graves.”

Revenge eats us up from the inside. It’s a pile of coals that we hold in our hands, giving off heat while it burns our body. Once you let the other person go, you’re not just releasing them, but you’re releasing yourself, breaking free from the rotting prison and moving forward.

Allows You to Grow

What people usually won’t say out loud is that resentment and anger make us feel good-powerful, tough, untouchable. And having an enemy and plotting revenge gives our life purpose, a tent pole for our thoughts to revolve around. Where would superheroes be and what would they spend their time doing without an archnemesis?

But this kind of purpose is a dead end and a waste of our valuable energy, consuming us and retarding our progress.

When you come to a place of forgiveness, you can start to find meaning in your suffering. You figure out what you’ll do differently next time and come to an understanding of how the pain helped you grow and become a better man. Forgiveness can become a platform for leaping forward in life.

Requires Bravery and Confronting Pain

Blame and bitterness might make you feel powerful and tough, but they’re often a cover for the inability to face pain head on. Holding a grudge against your ex-wife, thinking about how much of a she-devil she is every time she crosses your mind is a coping mechanism. Continually drinking from the well of anger keeps the pain from the dissolution of your marriage at bay.

We use bitterness as a way to keep ourselves from having to mourn a loss. Once we let go of the anger, we’re forced to confront the pain directly. Forgiveness involves taking a risk; we have to open ourselves up to the past hurt and the potential of being hurt again. And that takes courage.

Creates a Manly Legacy

Perhaps the manliest benefit of forgiveness is the way it enables you to not only free yourself from being locked inside bitterness, but how it creates a powerful legacy for those who come after you. You may come from a family where generation after generation has been hurting each other and keeping those feelings locked up, sickening the men from the inside.

Instead of making the same mistakes with your kids as your parents did with you, forgiveness says, “The buck stops here with me.” You have the courage to acknowledge and feel the pain and then to let it go instead of passing it on. You have the power to weld a new link in the chain of generations, and manliness.

What do you think? Is forgiveness manly? Or is revenge the manlier way to go? Leave a comment and share your thoughts.

Tags: The Art of Manliness, What Does It Mean to Forgive?, Is Forgiveness Manly, justified anger, maturity, personal responsibility, victimhood, freedom, personal growth, bravery, facing pain

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. - Forgiveness Means Giving Up All Hope for a Better Past

My father never wanted kids. He was 36 when he married my mother (who was 32) and was nearly 40 when I was born. My mother really wanted to try again as a mother (she had a son at 19 in her first marriage, then had to give him up for adoption when she divorced her abusive husband - her twin brother adopted the boy), but she was a smoker.

My father said he would only have kids if she quit smoking, probably thinking she could not do it. But she did, and never smoked again.

Growing up, it was pretty clear that my father did not really enjoy kids and didn't really have time for us (my mother insisted on adopting a little girl after I was born - she really wanted a daughter). He worked six days a week as a mail carrier, with an hour-long drive each way to and from work. On Sundays, his literal "day of rest," that's exactly what he wanted to do - rest. And who could blame him, he was up at 5 am everyday and didn't get home at night until 5:30.

Due to a series of heart attacks, he was forced to retire at age 50, so he moved the family to Southern Oregon. For the first time in my life, he had time for me - and seemed to actually want to get to know me. We never played ball, and he never went to my soccer games, but we played horseshoes almost daily, and we worked together in the garden and taking care of the animals.

Then, when I was 13, he had another heart attack - he was taken to the hospital late that night. By the next morning, he seemed stable, but they held him just in case. Then another heart attack, in the hospital, and he died. I was notified by a family friend on my way home from school.

Let's just say, to put it plainly, I was pissed off at the world, and at him. How dare he die when I finally felt like I had a father. So I acted out, got high, crawled into a bottle, and raged for the next five or so years.

* * * * *

Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. recently posted an article at Huffington Post called, Forgiveness Means Giving Up All Hope for a Better Past. The title alone is one of the truest things ever said. Too bad no one said that to me when I was young. It took another decade to figure that out - in therapy and on the cushion. Oh, yeah, he got that quote from Lily Tomlin.

When we refuse to forgive, it's as if we're holding onto the past and saying "see past, I'm not going to let you have the pleasure of me letting go of you." Meanwhile, the past is the past, it's not happening right now in the present moment -- or is it?

We keep the past alive by holding tightly to it, so perhaps it is occurring in this present moment. Now, I'm not suggesting we forget the past for the past is our teacher, however, I am suggesting that we loosen our grip on it a bit.

In a past post I asked you to consider this experiment:

"Think of someone in your life right now (maybe not the most extreme person) who you are absolutely holding a grudge against right now. There is no way you are willing to forgive this person right now for their actions. Picture that person, and hold onto that unwillingness to forgive. Now, just observe what emotions are there. Anger, resentment, sadness? Also notice how you are holding your body right now, is it tense anywhere or feeling heavy? Now bring awareness to your thoughts; are they hateful and spiteful thoughts?"

This is what lives inside of you by holding so tightly, so the question is always: who is suffering?*** ~ Adapted from a publication on Mindfulness and Psychotherapy at Psychcentral.com. Elisha Goldstein, Ph.D. is Co-author of A Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Workbook. You may also find him at www.drsgoldstein.com.

There's more at Huffington Post or at PsychCentral.

A lot of men I know I have not yet been able to forgive their fathers (or others) for things that happened to them in their childhood. Certainly, this is not just a men's issue, and I don't mean to imply that it is - this is simply a blog for men (and the people who love them), so I am addressing this topic to men.

One buddy has a father who is bi-polar and was not yet on meds for it. He was erratic and sometimes gone for days at a time before his mother divorced him. They have a relationship now, but there is still a lack of forgiveness. I understand how he feels, but I also think he might find some peace if he were able to forgive.

Another guy I knew came out to his parents as a teenager and was kicked out of the house - a common story in the GLBT community. He has no contact with his family, but he also does not hold the anger and hurt anymore. As long as he held onto the pain and did not forgive them, he was tied to them psychologically in a way that he felt as unhealthy. He no longer wishes for different parents, although he misses and mourns the loss of his family.

Dr. Goldstein goes on to say:

There is an understanding at some point that we are all human beings capable of all kinds of atrocities, depending on our genetic makeup, the environment we grew up in and the events that have surrounded and influenced our lives.

This is not a statement meant to excuse or condone an aggressive or violent action committed, however, it is a statement meant to help cultivate understanding and compassion in order for the ones who are suffering to come to terms with the way things are, and slowly let go of allowing the atrocity of the past to still be occurring in this present moment.

We can begin to forgive, even though we will never forget.

This is the crux of it - developing compassion both for the person we have not forgiven and for ourselves is so important. In realizing and accepting that the past can never be any other way than it was (as obvious as that sounds), we can begin to feel compassion for our loss, for our pain, for the past we wanted but never had.

As much as we can know intellectually that the past is done and immutable, accepting that at an emotional level can be challenging. Some part of us was wounded and is living in that past as though it is still happening - part of us is stuck and the only to get unstuck is to release the past.

One last quote:

“Sincere forgiveness isn't colored with expectations that the other person apologize or change. Don't worry whether or not they finally understand you. Love them and release them. Life feeds back truth to people in its own way and time.”~ Sara Paddison

Tags: psychology, forgiveness, acceptance, childhood, compassion, Elisha Goldstein Ph.D., Forgiveness Means Giving Up All Hope for a Better Past, forgiving, the past, Huffington Post, death, fathers, men