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Forgiveness Therapy: The Healing of Wrongs.

LearnWell Forgiveness Institute: www.forgiver.net

Welcome to this  3-contact-hour Continuing Education  course with instant online processing and certification 24/7.  Study the course below, take the 12-question multiple-choice TEST, register and pay online. If you score 75% or above, you may print your CE certificate on your printer as soon as you finish. If you have difficulty printing your certificate, click here. You may retake the test once.

Click here for a one-minute audio introduction

 1. Therapeutic Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the dealing with another person's offense in a helpful manner. One definition of therapeutic forgiveness is then the handling of another person's inappropriate and harmful deeds in such a way so that it helps the forgiver (the person who forgives, the injured party)  find healing and wellness.  Explore The International Forgiveness Institute definition. What is your definition?

Paul Coleman defines forgiveness as the decision to offer love to someone who has betrayed that love. Robert D.  Enright and Joanna North define forgiveness as giving up resentment and vengeance and fostering compassion on the inflictor of pain. Claire Frazier-Yzaguirre wrote:  "When we forgive, we free ourselves from the bitter ties that bind us to the one who hurt us."

"Forgiveness is the key that can unshackle us from a past that will not rest in the grave of things over and done with. As long as our minds are captive to the memory of having been wronged, they are not free to wish for reconciliation with the one who wronged us." Lewis B. Smedes

Forgiveness  is something nearly all Americans want -- 94% surveyed in a nationwide Gallup poll said it was important to forgive -- but only 48% said they usually tried to forgive others. Check out some personal stories of forgiveness.   

 2. Forgiveness and Reconciliation

Forgiveness is best understood in the context of related activities. Sometimes forgiveness may be associated with one or more of the below activities, but it is a separate act.

• 1. Forgiveness is not necessarily reconciliation, it can be a gift that the other either accepts or rejects or does nor even know about. It is in the heart of the forgiver. For reconciliation, two people are needed and then the relationship between them needs to be restored. For reconciliation, forgiveness is needed.

• 2. Forgiveness is not pardoning, for pardoning is a transaction, often a legal one, that releases the injuring person from the consequences of his or her injurious actions. In pardoning, the pardoner takes on or blots out the loss caused by the damaging situation. In many publications, the term forgiveness is used when pardoning may be more accurate.

• 3. Forgiveness is not condoning, for it does not excuse harmful behavior. It just deals with it.

• 4. Forgiveness is not forgetting, for deep hurts usually cannot be wiped out of one's memory.

For many, forgiveness and reconciliation are fully interwoven. Michelle Nelson in Beverly Flanigan's Exploring Forgiveness suggests three degrees of forgiveness, namely 1. Detached Forgiveness (a reduction of negative feelings), 2. Limited Forgiveness (with a partial restoration of relationship), and 3. Full Forgiveness (with full reconciliation).

Another way to categorize forgiveness, suggested by Klimes is with the ABCs of Forgiveness as A) Attitude of Forgiveness, that deals mainly with the attitude of the forgiver (love without revenge), not the actions of the offender, B) Basic Forgiveness that includes reconciliation, and C) Consequential Forgiveness or pardoning that deals with the offender making restitution or the forgiver paying for or erasing the consequences of the damaging behavior (Not all forgiveness is consequential: a forgiven alcoholic may still die of cirrhosis of the liver). There cannot be Consequential Forgiveness without Basic Forgiveness. This website deals with Basic Forgiveness.

3. Five Steps in Forgiveness (A-E)

The five steps in granting the gift of forgiveness (according to R. Klimes, PhD) are:

• A. Acknowledge the anger and hurt caused by the clearly identified specific offenses.

• B. Bar revenge and any thought of inflicting harm as repayment or punishment to the offender.

• C. Consider the offender's perspective. Try to understand his/her attitude and behavior.

• D. Decide to accept the hurt without unloading it on the offender. Passing it back and forth magnifies it.

• E. Extend compassion and good will to the offender. That releases the offended from the offense.

For your own learning, apply these five steps to a case of forgiveness in your own experience. How would it work out?

The rejection of forgiveness: A. Anger, the deep displeasure caused by a sense of injury or wrong, if not checked, can lead to sickness, conflicts or violence. B. Revenge or a defensive attitude on the part of the wrong-doer makes forgiveness very difficult. Thus the process never goes beyond the 2nd step.  Some people who have been deeply hurt in life develop a negative addiction, a chronic negative attitude expressed in frequent anger, rejection and suspicion.  

4.Cognitive, Emotional and Spiritual Forgiveness

The following is based on a chapter by Richard Fitzgibbons, MD, in Exploring Forgiveness, (ISBN 0-299-15770-9), pp 65-67, Some individuals will go through all 3 levels, others only through some of them.

A. In cognitive forgiveness, victims study their pain and make a conscious decision to forgive. They may follow the 5 Steps of Forgiveness in order to continue a relationship.

B. In emotional forgiveness, the victims feels with the offender's struggle and develops some empathy for him or her. This often takes time. They may follow the 5 Steps of Forgiveness because they feel the offenders pain.

C. Spiritual forgiveness utilizes an approach similar to that used in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. Victims may follow the 5 Steps of Forgiveness because they cannot let go on their own. They may utilize phrases such as:
"I am powerless over my anger and cannot forgive, thus I want to turn it over to God."
"Justice and revenge belong to God."
"God forgive him or her, I can't."
"God free me from my anger and help me forgive."

The 5 Steps in Forgiveness according to Ephesians 4:31-32: 
Acknowledge anger and bar revenge:

• A. Let all bitterness, wrath and anger

• B. and clamor and slander (and thought of revenge) be put away from you, along with all malice.
  Consider the offender's perspective, accept the hurt, extend compassion:

• C. Be kind to one another, (while considering the other's perspective),

• D. gentle and tender-hearted (and accepting the hurt),
  E. forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you (with compassion).  

Thoughts from Nancy Miller: True forgiveness isn't me self-righteously looking down at you and saying "I forgive you" while I'm thinking "you can't help being the jerk or stupid idiot that you are."  It is letting God deal with the problem and the person.  It is saying "I forgive you and I will always forgive you for it is not for me to stress over.  I love you because God has given me this love and I will not let resentment damage my relationship with you or God."  Forgiveness is an outgrowth of unconditional love.  

Donald Barnhouse writes: "To see God in all things, both good and evil, enables us to forgive those who injure us. It does not incline us to condone their fault, for they act as freely as if God had no part at all. But we can forgive and pray for them, as slaves to their own passions, enemies to their own welfare and real, though unwitting, benefactors to our souls." Karl Menninger, the famed psychiatrist, once said that if he could convince the patients in psychiatric hospitals that their sins were forgiven, 75 percent of them could walk out the next day!

One of the best studies on spiritual forgiveness concerns the Prodigal Son, found in Luke 15:11-32. In accepting God's love humbly, the father in the story also took on God's forgiveness and then just naturally reflected that attitude of forgiveness to his prodigal son. 

5. Five Steps in Asking for Reconciliation

The offender, that is the person who has caused the hurt, has no direct part in the initial forgiveness that the forgiver experiences. His part comes in the next level which is reconciliation. Reconciliation is not always possible. The offender's five steps in asking for the gift of forgiveness (according to R. Klimes, PhD) are:

• A. Acknowledge your guilt in contributing to the clearly identified specific offenses.

• B. Bar repetition of the offense. Declare that you will not do it again.

• C. Consider the offended person's perspective. Try to understand his/her attitude and behavior.

• D. Declare your apology and sorrow for the hurt you caused. Say "I am sorry for..."

• E. Extend compassion and good acts to the offended person. Make it up, if you can.

Without these steps, there usually cannot be forgiveness and reconciliation. The results of a broken relationship that has not been healed are often bitterness, blaming, continuation of harm and vengeance, increasing insensitivity, estrangement, hating and acts of violence.  

A simple table may help in differentiating all the parties and processes involved.

Selected Research in Forgiveness

ERIC_NO: ED273893, A Model of Forgiveness: Theory Formulations and Research Implications. By  Johnson, Karen Alexandria, 1986
ABSTRACT: A literature review revealed little empirical research on forgiveness, suggesting the need for a model of forgiveness. The work of both E. M. Pattison and L. B. Smedes was used as a foundation upon which a model was developed involving a four-stage decision making process. 

The four stages of forgiveness are awareness, change, interaction, and reconciliation. Movement through the stages is made by four consecutive decisions and can be viewed from either the victim's or the offender's perspective. The four decisions relate to judgment, vulnerability, intimacy, and trust-building. The first stage of awareness requires a decision of judgment about the violation that occurred. In the second stage, the person who is aware of the violation and its effects on the relationship decides whether to take steps to change the relationship. If the decision is made to undo negative effects, the person can move on to stage three where internal processes become dyadic processes. The decision to be intimate is the basis of this interaction stage. After all three decisions have been made constructively for forgiveness, the decision of trust-building can be made and the fourth stage, reconciliation, can occur. If, at stage two, a decision is made not to acknowledge or deal with the violation, a course of false forgiveness is taken, involving the four stages of denial, superficial acceptance, continued hurt, and deterioration of the relationship.

ERIC_NO: ED408536, Receiving Forgiveness as an Exercise in Moral Education. By Gassin, Elizabeth A., 1997
ABSTRACT: Research on interpersonal forgiveness has blossomed in counseling and moral education. The impact of receiving interpersonal forgiveness from another--the foreswearing of revenge and resentment toward a person who has hurt us--is examined here. Most theory and research in developmental, counseling, and educational psychology suggest that the experience of receiving forgiveness should have positive benefits, while research in the related area of social psychology tempers such optimism. 

To test the effects of forgiveness, 205 college students from a small, church-affiliated four-year liberal arts college completed instruments that measured forgiveness, self-esteem, social desirability, and religious style. Results indicate that correlations between forgiveness outcomes and demographic variables were weak. The most interesting correlation between forgiveness outcomes and relationship variables involved the perceived quality of forgiveness offered, the nature of the relationship before the offense, and the degree of pain caused, suggesting that offering forgiveness in a manner that is loving and un-coercive is important if one wants to induce positive change in the offender and the relationship.

ERIC_NO: ED310333, Forgiveness as a Psychological Antecedent of Perceived Parental Nurturance. By Buri, John R; And Others, 1989
ABSTRACT: While forgiveness has long been a crucial concept in the churches' formulations for the establishment and the preservation of spiritual, social, and emotional health, consideration of forgiveness by psychology pales in comparison. Research is needed to identify the psychological factors in mothers and fathers which serve as antecedents of the nurturance which they provide their children. 

In this study, college students (N=111) were asked to assess the nurturance they had received from their mothers and their fathers using a Likert scale. Scale items included "I am an important person in my mother's eyes;" "My mother expresses her warmth and affection for me;" and "My mother is generally cold and removed when I am with her." The parents of the student participants responded to a forced-choice forgiveness scale with items such as "I am a very forgiving person, ready and willing to forgive anyone who has wronged me." The results suggest a strong relationship between self-reported forgiveness by parents and the degree of parental nurturance reported by their adolescent children. Mothers and fathers who reported the least level of forgiveness were appraised as having rendered significantly less nurturance than other parents. (Source for all abstracts: www.askeric.org )

Case 1: I believe with all my heart that I have forgiven certain family members for abusing me and those who allowed it to happen. I have a hard time forgetting it, however, because the verbal and mental abuse continues and serves as a reminder of the many years of pain. I have chosen to set boundaries between these siblings/a parent and I. I have tried to talk with them about my pain, but they just refuse to listen long enough to understand. I feel it is healthier for me to not be around them, but I struggle with the right and wrong of setting these boundaries because I am talking about my mother and my brothers. However, the very thought of spending any time in their presence causes me to hyperventilate and shake because I know how I will be treated.

Case 2: I carried so much hate and anger for my now former husband. When I took a business trip to Florida for 5 days last August, he took up with not one woman, but two. This took place in our home. There were two violations here; the betrayal of his faithfulness and the betrayal of the sanctity of our home. Both were equally difficult to swallow.
I was angry. I set out on a destructive path that would have ended up hurting me, not him. He blamed me for his behavior.
One day, I realized that I could no longer continue with my focus in life being "how to bring down this man". I asked God to provide me with the answers that I needed to overcome this and I knew that forgiveness was the only answer to be had. But how to find forgiveness for someone who has caused me such devastation.
I called up my husband and told him I had allot of hate and anger for him. He said he knew. I asked him if he could help me with it. He agreed. I met him in a neutral location. We talked. I cried. I began to leave feeling incomplete in my mission for forgiveness. Before I got into my car, he asked me if he could hug me. Reluctantly, I agreed. While he was hugging me, he said "I'm sorry". I said, "for what". He said "for hurting you". That was it for me. That was all i needed to hear. From that moment on, I was able to move on with my life. Granted, I cannot excuse what he did or ever trust him again. I will not have him in my life as I have no trust for him, but I was released. I know that we cannot all have this type of ending in our search for forgiveness, but it is the actual knowing that the search is necessary that can begin our healing. How would you handle these cases? What have you learned? (Source: Forgiveness Forum)

Further Resources: Forgiveness-Net  Campaign for Forgiveness Research  Worldwide Forgiveness Alliance   Centre for Study of Forgiveness and Reconciliation at Coventry University  The Forgiveness Forum 

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