Radical Forgiveness: A Revolutionary Five-Stage Process to Heal Relationships, Let Go of Anger and Blame, Find Peace in Any Situation

Product Information

Overall, findings suggested that learning to forgive improves psychological and physiological wellness and offers protection against future upsets. Forgiveness training also leads individuals to become emotionally stronger, experience greater confidence, and be increasingly optimistic (Luskin, 2003). The road to self-forgiveness is winding and bumpy. Some people will naturally find it more difficult to forgive themselves than others, but we are all capable and worthy of self-forgiveness. One of the first stories she collected was from the mother of a boy who had died in what later became the Alder Hey scandal, in which the organs of dead children were retained by Alder Hey hospital in Liverpool: “As she was telling me her story – and this had never happened to me before and hasn’t happened since – I couldn’t stop myself from crying. I wouldn’t call it sobbing – it wasn’t that loud – but it definitely wasn’t discreet. I apologised to her afterwards. And she was very sweet; she said actually it was so nice to see a journalist cares. Because she’d been asked about it by so many people and never felt any connection.”

Financial reparations always seem unequal to meaningful crimes, such as slavery, but if there is a deep hurt or harm on a huge scale, “someone needs to be shirtless. Shame is part of the dialogue. In other words, atonement needs to cost something real, because forgiveness costs something real. You might be holding hostility or hatred as a way of honouring the hostility your parents or ancestors felt, and that’s a lot to let go.”Learn from the experience, and continue to make choices that are in line with your values. By recommitting to your values, you reaffirm that your principles are important to you, which can lead to personal growth. On arrival, the women averaged a hurt score of 8.5 out of 10. By the time they left, their self-reported hurt had reduced to 3.5. Also, longer term, the women reported fewer feelings of depression and increased optimism. Another good thing that can come out of forgiving your wrongdoers is that it can help you ease your relationships with others. For example, one of your closest friends betrayed you by sharing your secret, Forgiveness provides us with “ a powerful path to reduce our suffering and bring greater dignity and harmony to our life,” writes Shapiro (2020).

Worthington writes that by realizing how valuable and cherished we are and embracing God’s acceptance, we can free ourselves from shame, guilt, and self-blame. Here are five fantastic reads that are bountiful in exercises, tips, and techniques you can share with your clients or apply in your own practice. 1. Moving Forward: Six Steps to Forgiving Yourself and Breaking Free From the Past – Everett Worthington Jr. The book also offers the latest findings on the value of compassion and developing kindness and compassion for ourselves and others. Regardless, all the negative things you feel are valid. You can choose to give yourself a pause. You need to process everything. If you need to, go through the so-called five stages of grief as you try to grapple with everything that transpired.Wise Sayings. (n.d.). Forgiving yourself sayings and quotes. Retrieved June 16, 2021, from https://www.wisesayings.com/forgiving-yourself-quotes/ Everyone agrees that forgiveness is a good thing to do. Besides the fact that it holding onto anger and resentment makes you feel horrible and robs you of your life force energy, the link between high blood pressure and other health issues is well proven. Moreover, the research shows that there is a direct link between having a resistance to forgiveness and the formation of cancer. So, people are now realizing that forgiveness is very essential to one’s health and well being. Shapiro, S. L. (2020). Rewire your mind: Discover the science + practice of mindfulness. London, UK: Aster. The book further states that everything is working out perfectly according to those secret, pre-birth plans - including child abuse, rape, murder, racism, etc. These are all just events for us to use to work out forgiveness. What fun. How about we make pre-birth agreements not to have child abuse, rape, murder or racism in the first place? Why wouldn't we make secret pre-birth agreements for peace and harmony?

Radical forgiveness truly is unconventional. Unlike common forgiveness advice that goes along the lines of “forgive and forget” or “revenge is a dish best served cold,” it calls to the offended party to focus on themselves. This second letter represents Stage #3 in that it helps to begin the process of collapsing the victim story and retrieving the energy invested in it. It is where we begin to realize that while the pain is in what actually happened, the suffering is in what we have made up as our story. Try to remember that pain is an integral part of life and that you can still appreciate the good while hurting. One of the strongest reinforcers to my faith was finally grasping what it actually meant when other Christians would say, “Jesus loved us so much he died for our sins.” As a child, if I’m being honest, I struggled with what that meant. How could someone die for my sins through an act of forgiveness, and more so, how could this happen if the event was in the past, ancient even. It wasn’t until I explored the inner nature of myself, that I learned what this meant. Working with survivors of trauma, Joseph explores how growth can rise out of the most challenging situations.Woodyatt, L., Worthington, E. L., Wenzel, M., & Griffin, B. J. (2017). Orientation to the psychology of self-forgiveness. In L. Woodyatt, E. L. Worthington, Jr., M. Wenzel, & B. J. Griffin (Eds.). Handbook of the psychology of self-forgiveness (pp. 3–16). Springer, Cham. When we do something bad, wrong, or against our values, we may be greeted with painful, negative emotions such as shame, guilt, resentment, or anger. We may also have negative thoughts about ourselves, such as, “It’s all my fault” or “I’m a terrible person.” If you were to only absolve yourself of negative emotions and shower yourself with positive emotions, this would be “pseudo-self-forgiveness” (Hall & Fincham, 2005). True self-forgiveness involves recognizing the “wrongness” of your actions (Woodyatt et al., 2017).