People can do really awful things to us. They can lie, they can steal, they can take advantage of us. They can cheat, misunderstand us, break promises, fail to live up to our expectations. They can hurt us physically, emotionally or hurt the people we love.
And we carry these things with us. For what? As a badge of honour? Because it makes us feel tough? Because if we don’t it will be as though what happened was okay? Or is it just too hard? Maybe we just don’t know how to.
But holding a grudge can impact our lives in more ways than you may have realised. When we don’t forgive, we often put up barriers. These barriers are there to protect ourselves, but they end up preventing us from connecting with others, from forming deeper relationships with people who haven’t or won’t hurt us. These barriers can prevent us from seeing and taking advantage of opportunities that otherwise we might have. When we hold grudges, it exhausts us. We go over and over in our heads what should have happened differently, thereby exhausting our mental energy. This leads to physical exhaustion. We also leave ourselves open to being triggered emotionally by other similar experiences. For example, if we feel anger and resentment about something bad that was done to us, the next time our anger is triggered by something unrelated, all the anger from this incident comes up. We then overreact to the present challenge, making it much more difficult to deal with than it needs to be.
How is a lack of forgiveness affecting your life? What are you missing out on by holding this grudge?
So now that you’ve brought your honest awareness to what you need to let go of and why, how do you go about making the shift?
Although it’s different for everyone, here’s some ideas.
1. Look at the big picture. Have a look at what you’re missing in order to hold this grudge. You might be missing a deeper connection with your loved ones or missing participation in a particular community.
2. Have you considered the other person’s point of view? If you stand in their shoes for a moment you may gain a deeper understanding of their motivation for what they did. This may help you to understand their intension. And who knows, you might just find that they meant well, despite it being a little misguided. Perhaps you could try having compassion for them for their ignorance.
3. For some people, in order to forgive, they need the other person to make an actual apology. If you have this need, I encourage you to pursue it if possible.
4. Perhaps you need to verbalise your forgiveness to the other person to make it real.
5. Maybe you just need to talk the situation through with the other person, not necessarily demanding an apology or making a verbal forgiveness.
6. Consider that they didn’t actually know any better or didn’t hurt you on purpose.
7. Maybe you need them to make a promise that they won’t hurt you again. Or, if things were really bad, you may require evidence that they won’t through demonstration over a period of time in order to regain your trust.
Once you’ve made your forgiveness, how do you demolish the wall, to make sure it doesn’t continue to impact negatively on your life? How can you feel safe again without a wall?
I would encourage you to build an internal strength. Instead of an outer wall, protecting your soft insides from damage, how about strengthening those insides. You can do this by having a strong system of values and beliefs in place to prevent you from getting hurt again, manage your expectations of others more effectively and develop strong boundaries. The better we know ourselves, the more trust we have in ourselves. And the more we realise that those good, honest, kind juicy bits of ourselves are unbreakable, unshakable.
Here’s a few things to think about.
- What grudges do I need to let go of? Who do I need to forgive and for what?
- How has holding onto this affected my life?
- What do I need in order to enable forgiveness?
- How can I build up my internal strength to protect from getting hurt again in a more sustainable way?
If you’re wanting guidance in negotiating these questions, go to the BOOK NOW page of my website and book yourself a session. I’m always here, happy to assist and support.