The Importance of Forgiveness

One of my favorite quotes by Víctor Frankl says “When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.” Frankl and his whole family including his wife, mother and father were sent to the concentration camps, during the Nazi regime. Out of his family he was the only survivor of the holocaust left.

My patients often harbor a lot of pain that others have inflicted emotionally; I step into their shoes as they take me on their journey of abandonment, rejection, anger, resentment, sadness….I truly feel their pain, often feeling it in my body and knowing that they feel it in theirs.

Carrying and harboring pain and anger throughout your life is exhausting. You think you have it contained, but really it seeps into areas and relationships in your life. You protect your heart with all measures, so you push people away, run from love, cut people with your words, pick people you know you’re going to get nowhere with….the pain and anger control you.

Forgiveness isn’t about being the bigger person. Often my patients are tired of being the bigger person, rightfully so. Forgiveness is about being better for yourself. It’s about breaking out of the prison you live in because someone else put you there.

Forgiveness is a process, much like grief, you have moments of acceptance, anger, depression which flow through you at any given time. You don’t forget but you start to feel lighter.

You can’t continue to live your life angry and in pain, it only hurts you. Holding on to resentment is like taking small amounts of poison every day; you’re slowly killing yourself, your soul.

Do you love yourself enough to challenge yourself to change?