Apologies and Forgiveness
SHOW NOTES SUMMARY:
Do you have a difficult time apologizing? Is there someone you wish you could forgive?
Apologies and forgiveness are two of the pillars and cornerstones of grief recovery. And, the beautiful thing about both, is they don’t require us to confront anyone, in person. And, even if the person is deceased, we are still able to process the feelings around apologies and forgiveness.In this episode, you will learn:
- What an apology is.
- How “forgiveness” and “condoning” differ.
- What to do if you’re a victim of abuse.
- What to do if the “offender” is living?
and more…
Mentioned in the episode:
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We’re not taught how to effectively process what it is we’re feeling. And a huge component of the work that I do in grief recovery is about apologies and forgiveness. And initially, this week was going to be about intangible losses, which are the kind of loss that it’s not the death of a loved one or divorce or it’s like the secondary losses; it’s those things that not specific to a person. However, it can be a ripple loss due to the loss of a loved one.
So, for example, let’s say you get a divorce. Well, it’s the loss of maybe the life that you had, the home that you had, the support the financial support that you had, there’s a lot of other loss that happens in divorce and death of a spouse or death of a loved one, things like that. In the case of being a victim or being victimized, we can have a loss of trust, a loss of self-worth, loss of faith. That’s a big one. So that’s initially what I was going to talk about. But there was a conversation with some girlfriends recently and it kind of sparked this. I got a little revved up about it, actually; in talking about, we often talk about the story of what it is that happened to us. And which is easy to do, right? Someone asks you to tell the story, but rarely do people ask how it made you feel. And if someone were to ask you well, how did that make you feel? That’s probably when you would get the emotions coming up for you. That’s when you might realize, maybe I haven’t processed everything fully. Maybe there’s more to dig into here. Maybe there’s something residual that is still lying dormant. Things can provoke us. That might happen and provoke us and cause us to reflect on a certain time in the past or when we were victimized or experienced trauma. And that’s an indicator if especially if you have a physical response to that, it’s that muscle memory.
When We Apologize
But there’s emotion tied to that. There’s going to be an emotional residual residue that makes sense, emotional residue. I’ll say that emotional residue from that experience unless we’ve learned how to effectively process it and take actual action with the apologies and forgiveness that I’m going to talk about today. So when we apologize, we’re actually apologizing for anything that we did or did not do that may have hurt someone else. So let’s say when we steal something from someone else, we apologize. That was for something that we did. When it comes to apologies, the focus is on ourselves and how we perceive our own actions or inactions. Grief recovery helps you work through the apologies like these for a relationship in which you are incomplete. And the beautiful thing about it is that you don’t have to apologize in person. In fact, some should remain private and indirect. For example, if you cause someone physical harm or emotional damage, what if they don’t accept your apology? You haven’t helped the relationship; there aren’t any mended fences, and what more likely, the person may not accept it. And that’s where forgiveness is often intertwined with apologies in this manner. The other person hasn’t worked through forgiveness, and they likely wouldn’t accept an apology.
Forgive Yourself
That’s why it’s so important that we work through and process apologies and forgiveness, for the most part, privately. Now, I’m not saying never apologize when you know you’re in the wrong, don’t hang your hat on it being accepted, and acknowledged that it’s not their responsibility to absolve you of your feelings. And this is where we must forgive ourselves, which is also an inside job. So what if, though you are a victim, whether you survived a physical assault or emotional, psychological abuse, many people develop lifelong relationships with their pain and act like victims. I personally experienced this. And that’s why I have a whole chapter devoted to victim mindset in my book; this became one of the biggest veils of my potential in my life. And what do I mean by that the biggest veil? Because I like to think of grief as a veil, a veil that covers our eyes to ourselves and how we see ourselves and how we see the world. So when things didn’t go right in my life, or someone let me down or took advantage of me in various ways. Yet again, I didn’t see that my default and automatic response to my life circumstances were to slip into being the victim.
Being a child that is physically and emotionally taken advantage of lays the foundation of learned behavior, to be in survival mode, fearful of the future, an inability to live in the present, and a skewed sense of what nurturing love and compassion really look like. Therefore, victims have a really hard time apologizing. How and Why would I need to apologize to the person who molested me as a child? How and Why would I need to apologize to the person who sexually assaulted me? These are big questions and not easy ones to process. However, I have learned that even the slightest transgression should be given a voice. We, humans, have a desire to be right. And it’s this need to be right rather than happy that causes us additional suffering. We can be right, or we can be happy. And often, the hardest apology to give is the one that needs to be given. If I apologize, you may be wondering, isn’t that absolving someone of their responsibility, and what happened? No, it is merely owning your role in the relationship, not necessarily the incident. But no matter how slight it is, it’s important to give it a voice.
Forgiveness Becomes our Friend
To really move beyond the emotional suffering of being a victim. Forgiveness becomes our friend. Forgiveness is giving up the hope of a different or better yesterday. And being a victim, forgiveness does not equal condoning. These two terms are misunderstood in our society, and that the belief is that if we forgive, we are condoning the behavior. Webster’s dictionary, though, defines forgive as to cease to feel resentment against an offender. Whereas condone means to treat as trivial, harmless, or of no importance. If these two words meant the same thing, we would never be able to forgive. This implies we’re trivializing horrible events. And as a victim, you would never do that. However, if we talk about forgiveness, now that’s on the path to healing. When we get stuck on the story of past traumatic or victimizing events, it limits us and restricts our ability to participate fully in our life. And I can personally attest to this, especially once I had my three kids for sure. Forgiveness is the completion of the pain. The opposite is the retention of resentment. When we forgive, we are acquiring our own sense of well-being. Forgiveness is an action; it’s not a feeling. And you cannot feel forgiveness until you do it. Action first, feeling follows. Forgiveness is giving up the resentment you hold against another person.
So what if the other person you need to forgive is living? That’s another beautiful thing about grief recovery. You do this privately without ever saying one word to the other person. We never want to forgive someone directly to their face. Because again, what if the person on the receiving end didn’t realize or believe that they did anything wrong? You’re your back in emotional jail, and the other person’s defenses go way up. Finally, what about asking for forgiveness? When you do this, it’s manipulating. You are asking someone to do something you need to do for yourself. If you are asking for forgiveness, what you’re really needing and trying to do is apologize.
Through Grief Recovery
Don’t ask for forgiveness; instead, make an apology. And through grief recovery, you can address apologies and forgiveness and so much more for any relationship to someone living or deceased through taking empowering action for your well-being. Well, there you have the information I needed to share today on apologies and forgiveness. And I really feel like I’ve kind of flew through it. But take your time, listen through it again if you need to, and reflect on your life on where you need to apologize or forgive where you’re waiting for an apology that you may never get and forgive that person for the apology you will never receive. Resentment is a poison that we take hoping the other person dies. And the apologies and the forgiveness components were probably the most significant portions of the grief recovery method for me personally because I was a victim of sexual assault sexual abuse. And there was a lot that I needed to process through too many relationships with people living in my life that required me to wrap my head around and fully embrace forgiveness and apologies and not for the other person, but rather for myself for my well-being.
P.S. So, this is very empowering work. And if you want to learn more, I encourage you to reach out if you have a question about apologies or forgiveness, don’t hesitate to email me [email protected], or you can DM me, I’m on Facebook, and Instagram messaged me there, wherever you feel comfortable to reach out. If this was helpful to you, if you found this informative, if it resonated with you, I would love for you to share it with someone who needs to hear this message today.