Self Help

A very important reason why you should practice forgiveness.

Being the kind of person that does not like to forgive anybody may come across as an appealing option for at least two reasons.

The following are four sensible, healthy reasons why you may decide to accept, forgive, and reconcile with the person whom has offended you, even though he or she refuses to make amends.

When you think about someone who has hurt you deeply, your sympathetic nervous system springs into action.

You may ask, “Why should I forgive myself? I did nothing wrong. It was the offender who violated me.” But the issue here is not how you wronged him. It’s how you may have allowed him to hurt.

When somebody deliberately wrongs you, it’s not unusual to want to inflict on him the pain he inflicted on you. But you should remind yourself that what usually brings lasting satisfaction is not hurting someone but having your own hurt understood and validated.

When we feel hurt or angry, it’s easy to fault someone else. “You’re to blame,” we insist. “You made me feel this way.” But the fact that we feel upset at someone doesn’t necessarily mean he or she is guilty.

The true definition of forgiveness should center on the benefits of feeling peaceful. Finding peace does not need to be complicated.

Unfortunately, many of us suffer for years from grievances we have not released. And regardless of what you think about forgiving others, it has bee proven that there are positive effects of forgiveness and harmful effects of grievances, anger, and depression.

Your nervous system offers these responses when you perceive danger. What is unfortunate is that your nervous system cannot tell whether the danger you are seeing is occurring now or ten years ago.

Learn why blame causes you to feel worse than the people you are angry at.

Acknowledging how you feel is one step in the fight against the tendency to stay in abusive and painful relationships. In any case, you are not ready to forgive until you are clear about how you feel.

When you grant “genuine forgiveness”, you make room for anger and recognize it as normal and adaptive. You don’t replace it with compassion or love and simply wipe the slate clean.

One of the biggest mistakes most of us make in our minds about forgiveness is that it somehow lets the “bad guy” off the hook. It doesn’t. Forgiveness is simply the healing of your own mind and heart.

Take a brief look at one type of people who tend to be unforgiving: The Narcissist.

A recent study found that subjects who were instructed to rehearse unforgiving responses to a violation experienced elevated blood pressure and increased arousal of the sympathetic nervous system.

Forgiveness begins when we realize we are not alone in whatever we did wrong. While you may have done things that were unkind or unskillful, they are in the past, and through forgiveness we can learn and practice better ways to act.

When you say no to forgiving, what started as a self-protective solution to pain - a way of coping with your indignation - ultimately leaves you feeling cold and bitter.