NURSES & PHARMACISTS | COUNSELORS | LVNs | DENTAL

all courses | accreditation | help | resources | about us | home

Forgiveness Skills: One Step at a Time

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.

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 offense(s).
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.

The 5 skills in forgiveness according to Ephesians 4:31-32: 
A. Let all bitterness, wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, 
B. along with all malice (and thought of revenge).
C. Be kind to one another, (while considering the other's perspective),
D. gentle and tender-hearted (and accepting the hurt),
D. lovingly forgiving each other just as God in Christ has forgiven you. 

When hurt, you can pretend that all is well, you can grow bitter, or you can let God make it better. A bitter man, after asking his wife to boil him two eggs, complained that she boiled the wrong one. Job's wife (Job 2:9) suggested that Job "curse God and die." Job praised God and was blessed. 

ERIC_NO: ED344131, Measuring Interpersonal Forgiveness, Subkoviak, Michael J.; And Others, 1992
ABSTRACT: The field of moral development has broadened recently from its traditional Kohlbergian emphasis on justice to include other constructs such as caring and forgiveness. The utility of forgiveness has been recognized recently by physicians working with cancer patients, and by therapists interested in anger reduction in clients. This study attempted to construct a measure of psychological forgiveness. Initial reliability and validity estimates are described for one of six cross-cultural samples. A total of 394 subjects provided data for the analysis. Half of the subjects were college students, and the other half were their same-gender parents. The following questionnaires were given to each subject: the Enright Forgiveness Inventory (EFI); a background information scale; Speilberger State-Trait Anxiety Scale; Beck Depression Inventory (BDI); and a one-item forgiveness question. The internal consistency reliability for the 60-item scale was exceptionally high. There appears to be no general relationship between the EFI and psychological depression. However, there is a moderate relation when focus is on the middle-aged and their severe problems, specifically with family members. This strongly suggests that models of forgiveness must be developed that take into account not only degree of forgiveness given to an offender, but also a person's age, who hurt him or her, and the severity of hurt experienced. The clinical consequences are different depending on these variables. www.askeric.org

A. Acknowledge Anger

Long-living anger, the deep displeasure caused by a sense of injury or wrong, if not checked, leads to bitterness, sickness, separation or violence.  Some people who have been deeply hurt in life develop a negative addiction, a chronic negative attitude expressed in frequent resentment, rejection and suspicion.  "An angry man stirs up strive. And a hot-tempered man abounds in transgression." (Proverbs 29:22)

Bitterness and malice are inward negative attitudes. They are evils of the mind that intend to bring harm to others. Anger and grudges are evil behaviors, usually sins of speech, that grow out of them. The cure for anger goes inward and is forgiveness.   

There is a place for righteous anger, but it is time-limited, as shown in Ephesians 4: 26, "Do not let the sun go down on your anger." Don't let anger go to bed with you. 

ERIC_NO: ED443607, TITLE: Unscrewing Yourself: One Approach to Anger Management Groupwork with Adolescents., AUTHOR: Greif, Andy, 1999
ABSTRACT: This paper describes an anger management group implemented with students in grades 7-12 enrolled in an alternative school. The majority of students at the school were identified as having difficulties managing their anger and handling conflict. The goal of the group was to have students understand their relationship with anger in order to contemplate changing their anger response behaviors. Anger management groups were implemented with two high school teams and one middle school team. Teams included 6-10 students and 2-3 teachers. Each team had a behavioral management plan, which was monitored by the teachers or the group facilitator. Groups typically met once a week for an hour and focused on themes related to students' relationship with anger. Several weeks prior to the start of each anger management group, students completed an anger record log that recorded the date and time of feeling angry, what happened, their feelings about what happened, the intensity of the anger, their actions in response to what happened, and a self-evaluation of how they handled their anger. Only one of the teams set aside time on a daily basis for their students to complete their logs and understand the data being requested. Through group work, students explored the purpose of anger, completed an anger assessment inventory, created an anger intensity thermometer, compiled a list of mind/body cues that signal anger, explored trigger thoughts, explored underlying feelings that contribute to anger, determined their own anger management style, and learned relaxation methods to reduce stress. The paper concludes that students must first develop an awareness of their anger management style, then develop the necessary skills to end their addictive cycles of anger and aggression. www.askeric.org 

ERIC_NO: ED414077, TITLE: Helping Young Children Deal with Anger. ERIC Digest., AUTHOR: Marion, Marian, 1997
ABSTRACT: Children's anger presents challenges to teachers committed to constructive, ethical, and effective child guidance. This Digest explores what is known about the components of children's anger, factors contributing to understanding and managing anger, and the ways teachers can guide children's expressions of anger. Anger is believed to have three components: (1) the emotional state; (2) the expression; and (3) an understanding of anger (interpreting and evaluating). The development of basic cognitive processes undergirds children's gradual development of the understanding of anger. These processes include memory, language, and self-referential and self-regulatory behaviors. Teachers can help children deal with anger by guiding their understanding and management of this emotion using the following practices: (1) create a safe emotional climate; (2) model responsible anger management; (3) help children develop self-regulatory skills; (4) encourage children to label feelings of anger; (5) encourage children to talk about anger-arousing interactions; (6) use books and stories about anger to help children understand and manage anger; and (7) communicate with parents to involve them in helping children learn to express emotion. Children guided toward responsible anger management are more likely than those who are not to understand and manage angry feelings directly and nonaggressively and to avoid the stress often accompanying poor anger management. www.askeric.org 

B. Renounce Revenge

When you seek revenge and try to get even, you often succeed. When you retaliate, you go down to the level of the offender. You perpetuate the unending cycle of evil. If all would live by an eye-for-an-eye justice, the whole world would soon be blind. "Justice and revenge belong to God." Jesus asks us not to seek revenge and "not to resist an evil person, but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also." (Matt 5:38-39)

The story of Joseph and his 11 brothers illustrates the ruling out of revenge (Genesis 50:19-20) Joseph could say "Fear not, for am I in the place of God?" and later that "you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good." 

C. Think with Kindness

Considering the offense from the perspective of the offender can make a big difference. Often we are too busy for people to be very important. Some do not fit into our plans. See others as God sees them. God loves bag-ladies,  prisoners, losers, even carpenters and doctors. You note their weaknesses, not to look down on them or take advantage of them, but to minister to them. By God's grace, you learn to be kind to difficult people, to those who oppose you, who ignore you, who cheat you, who are angry with you.

Kindness is not earned, it is your free gift that God extends to others through you. It is not obtained through hard work or penance, or feeling sorry for one's sins. Everybody feels sorry for their sins once they are caught.  Kindness is God's free gift to those who recognize His love. Therefore "be kind to one another" (Ephesians 4:30)

ERIC_NO: ED445782, TITLE: The Kindness of Children, AUTHOR: Paley, Vivian Gussin, 1999
ABSTRACT: This narrative details the responses of children and adults to a story about young children welcoming a boy with severe disabilities into their own story telling and re-enactment. Linking the act of story telling to the practice of the Hasidim, who would teach people to think about goodness by telling stories about holy men performing good works, the narrative explores how telling others about the young children's kindness to another child elicited further stories conveying children's need to do something nice for someone, to recognize someone as another person, and to make a connection to another person. The stories told by high school students illustrated how stories about positive events made people happy, elicited good deeds from them, and helped them gain a new perspective on their own struggles to overcome loneliness. Adults' stories were more negative in tone than children's or adolescents' stories and conveyed memories of injustices and stories of rejection and teasing. The narrative suggests that when children give each other roles in pretend play to re-enact their stories, they are experiencing how other people feel, which is the basis of moral development. Some of the children's stories illustrate children's use of a disguise to slowly gain acceptance by others and a place in the classroom. Other stories illustrate the isolation inherent in the schoolhouse as conveyed in themes of displacement and loneliness. The narrative concludes with a discussion by fifth graders of the rule "You can't say you can't play," the difficulty in changing habits of being unkind to others, and the children's realization that they used to be much kinder. www.askeric.org

D. Feel with Gentleness

In forgiveness, you are asked to be tender-hearted, to empathize, to accept the hurt of others and to offer it to God. He is asking you to walk 3 miles in someone else's shoes, to ride a wheel-chair, to take a bus, to be penny-less,  to be divorced, widowed, cancerous, depressed, unloved, Jewish or black. You have become so hard-hearted, cynical  and calloused by seeing TV, video-games, evil and killing (people, Bambi and chickens) that you can no longer respond gently to the hurt of others. You are aggravated by a slow old lady in the check-out line and think: "Grandma, get a move on." Anybody who drives lowly you call an idiot. 

"With gentleness show tolerance for one another" (Ephesians 4:2). One approach to accepting the hurt of others is similar to that used in the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous. You start with an admission of powerlessness. You heap a blessing on others, the gift of forgiveness at your own expense. Then God gives the young husband the grace to tell his disfigured wife: "I like your new face. It is kind of cute." 

E. Love with Compassion

Forgive, because some day you will need forgiveness. When a critical "religious Nazi" lady's unmarried daughter became pregnant, both had no place to go and thus committed suicide. Forgiveness is God's most brilliant therapy to heal broken lives. Until you forgive your father, your friends, your enemies, they control and limit your life.

Forgiveness takes time and is expensive. It cost Jesus His life. Forgiveness is love. Love listens, love encourages. It makes you vulnerable. It accepts you as you are. It is nice when others accept it, but you forgive and love even when nothing returns. Jesus offered it freely to his crucifiers: "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing" (Luke 23:34). You forgive, because God forgives. 

Jesus forgave the woman and then told her to sin no more. Forgiveness is not a substitute for confrontation and correction. Forgiveness demands a change, otherwise it becomes a ticket to sin. God does not white-wash, He cleans. Some say they cannot forgive when they mean that they will not forgive. Forgiveness gives you a 2nd, a 3rd or 490th chance. It gives you new beginnings. If you owed me $20 and I forgave the debt, I am still out $20. It does not repair the damage, it writes it off. It is the choice and promise to never bring up the wrong again. 

Forgiveness "unlocks the door of resentment, the handcuffs of hatred." Now insert the key of forgiveness into the door-lock of hurt and walk free. The past hurts cannot hold you back. You are free because God made that freedom possible on the cross. 

An excellent study 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. Studies in Spiritual Forgiveness, Romans 5:6-11, 14:1-13.  Matthew 5: 38-48, 6:9-15, 18:15-35, Luke 7:36-50, 23:34, John 8:1-11, Ephesians 1:7-8, Philemon 1-18, texts, forgiveness word study,  bitterness addiction, overcoming hurts, from malice to mercy, Joseph forgives, Spurgeon on forgiveness.  

ERIC_NO: ED154275, TITLE: Christian Counseling: A Synthesis of Psychological and Christian Concepts.
AUTHOR: Strong, Stanley R., 1977
ABSTRACT: This paper describes an approach to counseling that synthesizes psychological processes of change with theological concepts of the Christian faith. The approach assumes that persons can be self-directing and that persons are responsibile for their behavior, including the changes counseling is intended to facilitate. The counselor's job is to equip clients to enable them to change. Key objectives in Christian counseling are to help clients accept themselves as worthy and valuable because they are God's creatures, give up their standards of conditional self-worth, accept responsibility for their fallibilities and faults, and adopt an overriding goal of being responsibly loving in all their thoughts and actions. There are descriptions of significant stages of the counseling process: meeting the client, equipping the client for change, and facilitating change. Also included is a discussion of the roles of justification, responsibility, forgiveness, grace, sin, responsible loving, and prayer. www.askeric.org

5. Forgiveness Case Study

Analyze in some detail the linked case study in forgiveness. List your reasons for each given paragraph.

6. Forgiveness Skills Test 

Study this web-site for 3 hours for an approved (RN-CEP 11430, MFT- PCE 39) 3-hours Continuing Education Certificate (0.3 CEUs)  Click here for the self-correcting test & online payment, and 2) receive your certificate immediately online. All is online, nothing by post-mail.