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"To err is human, to forgive divine." said Alexander Pope.
On the other hand, several scientific evidence and studies corroborate the same proving a connection between health, both physical and mental, with forgiveness. Karen Swartz, Director, Mood Disorders, The Johns Hopkins Hospital says “Chronic anger puts you into a fight-or-flight mode, which results in numerous changes in heart rate, blood pressure and immune response. Those changes, then, increase the risk of depression, heart disease and diabetes, among other conditions. Forgiveness, however, calms stress levels, leading to improved health”.
When science and religion agree on something, is there even an iota of doubt left?
I don't think there are doubts about the benefits of forgiveness. Vengeance is instant while forgiveness takes a while to be developed. In fact, researchers have found direct link between age and forgiveness. Older and mature people tend to forgive more easily.
We have been sold forgiveness as an act of divinity. Many are made to feel guilty about having resentment or disappointments. You are a thankless child if you feel disappointed in your parents. You are over-expecting from your partners if your expectation are not met.
Every disappointment isn’t over-expectation or entitlement. The lack of empathy for our disappointments adds to the resentment. You cannot forgive until you heal from the negative impacts of the hurtful incidents. The stronger the resentment, the longer it takes to forgive the transgressor. Self-forgiveness precedes forgiveness to others in such situations.
There are many dimensions and factors to forgiveness. Also, forgiveness as “forgive and forget” is an oversimplification of the process. It is not the only way to forgive.
In this blog, we shall discuss the practical guide to practice forgiveness and it's use cases in different scenarios. We'll also explore how the use of alter egos as a tool and Alter Ego Community as a platform can help you with instant response to hurt, something that revenge offers.
"Sure! Forgiveness improves stress levels but what about the one who gave that stress in the first place?"
If you forgive, you are seen as the weaker one and be sure that the other person will not stop at one incident even if you forgive.
This is where forgiveness is misunderstood.
Dr. Stephen Marmer of UCLA Medical School defines three types of forgiveness: exoneration, forbearance and release.
Exoneration is starting afresh with a clean slate when the offense is small, the offender has expressed remorse, or when you children or someone unaware commits a mistake. It is forgive and forget indeed and applies to certain situations discussed in the next section. Forbearance is forgive but do not forget kind of forgiveness you practice to keep the relationship alive despite there being only a partial apology and the offender blames you for provoking their offense. It is more complicated to deal with and involves empathy and conflict resolution techniques to find common grounds to coexist. Release is the letting of resentment when there is no apology at all. You release negative emotions to bring yourself out of the past memories that haunt your present so that you can free your future self.
Let's discuss them one by one.
Exoneration
Exoneration is starting fresh and restoring a relationship to the full state of innocence it had before the hurt took place. It is indeed forgive and forget. But this applies in 3 common situations:
In case of genuine accidents with no one to be blamed.
When the offender is a child or someone, for whatever reason didn’t understand the hurt they were inflicting.
Someone who is truly sorry regrets their actions, takes full responsibility without excuses, and seeks forgiveness with the assurance of never repeating their actions in the future.
In these situations, you can accept the apology and offer them complete forgiveness of exoneration. You will also feel good about the act and also to get back the person you love. Rather, not offering forgiveness in these circumstances would be harmful to your own well-being. It might even suggest that there is something more wrong with you than with the person who caused you pain.
Some strategies to practice exoneration are:
REACH: REACH stands for Recall, Empathize, Altruistic gift, Commit, and Hold. This technique has been there for a few decades and can be used in other forms of forgiveness as well. Recall stands for objectively recalling the wrongdoing to have a clear understanding of the incident. Then empathize to understand other party’s points of view. Altruistic gift is about addressing your shortcomings and recognizes how forgiveness is an altruistic gift that you can give to others. Commit yourself to forgive and decide to forgive. Once you decide to let it go, try not to bring back the old memories, and hold on to your forgiveness. Change your reactions to those memories.
Small acts of love: Decide to be kind and forgiving intentionally. Dr. Tyler VanderWeele, co-director of the Initiative on Health, Religion, and Spirituality at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health explains, “one way to get more comfortable with forgiveness is to practice small acts in everyday life. For example, if someone is rude or cuts you off in traffic, use that moment to recognize the wrong, realize it wasn't directed at you personally, and forgive him or her on the spot. This way you also can learn to immediately stop the negative reaction and the feelings that come with it.” If you struggle with anger issues, crafting an alter ego whose superpower is forgiveness can help you do these small acts instantaneously. All it needs is a big heart and strong intent.
Charity and Volunteering Participating in volunteering and charity experiences help you broaden your view of world, sensitize you to the difficulties of others, and cultivate gratitude for the privilege you have. Is there a social cause you are passionate about? Think of ways to contribute to those social impact projects. You can look for NGOs and nonprofits around your area where you could get involved and make a positive impact by practicing kindness as a habit.
Alter Ego Community is an initiative by A Little Love (ALL) that stands for building empathetic communities for sustainable coexistence. We bring various social initiatives, organizations, and businesses together to help you own your dream social projects and solve your personal problems our problems with the positivity drawn from helping others. A Little Love currently runs programs for Education and Nutrition, Women's Skilling and Empowerment, Autism Awareness and Empowerment, and Elderly Companionship.
Alter Ego's Purpose with a Plan personalizes your volunteering experience keeping your personal goals, skills, and causes you most care about in mind making your transformation journey even more meaningful and empowering.
Gratitude Journaling can be a powerful tool for practicing forgiveness. Regularly note the positive aspects of your life, and express thankfulness for them to cultivate a mindset of gratitude and compassion. It helps you shift focus from past grievances to present blessings, fostering inner peace and emotional resilience.
There are different digital journaling and gratitude journal mobile apps that you may use. Check resources for templates of gratitude journals and daily productivity and planning journals with gratitude journaling. Download the template pdf for free.
Forbearance
Forbearance is a little complicated and applies to relationships extremely important to you, something which you don’t want to let go of. It applies when the offender makes a partial apology and expresses regret but also indicates that somehow you caused them to behave in that way. While you should always reflect on whether there was a provocation on your part, even when you bear no responsibility you should exercise forbearance if the relationship matters to you. But unlike exoneration, you don’t forgive and forget. This is more like “forgive but not forget” or “trust but verify”. Be watchful but forgive for your own choice of keeping up with the relationship. Cease dwelling on the particular offence, do away with grudges and forget revenge if the relationship matters. It entails strong willpower to keep and maintain ties with people who, while far from perfect, are still important to you.
Techniques that may help you in forbearance:
Psychological Distancing or Self-distancing allows you to analyze the situation as though you were observing someone else. The objective perspective may help you step out of your own grief empathize more with the other person and forgive yourself when you are overly loathing your mistakes and be compassionate to yourself. Again, alter ego can be used for self distancing and thinking objectively.
Empty Chair Technique It is a psychological distancing with a physical experience. Keep an empty chair in front of you. Imagine your offender sitting on it. Express all your complaints, hurt, and anger. Now, move to the empty chair and address your complaints from the offender’s point of view. You can also move back and forth on the empty chair and have a “conversation” with your offender. This may help you empathize with your offender and eventually let go of negative emotions.
5Ps of Perspectives Taking: You can understand the perspective of the other person using the five Ps—pressures, past, personality, provocations, and plans. This helps you empathize with the transgressor and eventually helps you forgive them.
Pressure: What are/were the situational pressures that made or might have made the person do what they did?
Past: What factors from the past might have affected their behaviour?
Personality: What kind of personality do they have? What events or experiences of them might have resulted in making them who they now are?
Provocation: Could you have behaved any differently? Perhaps unintentionally, did any of your actions provoke them?
Plans: What were their good intentions? Did the other person want to help you or do good to you, but somehow the actions didn’t translate to good behaviour?
Conflict Resolution Diagram. It is a negotiation and resolution technique that helps you find a shared common goal to align with the other person and let go of the differences. You can download the worksheet here.
In some cases after a sufficient period of good times, forbearance can rise to exoneration and full forgiveness.
Release
Release is what you do when the transgressor doesn’t even acknowledge the hurt and their hurtful actions. Examples of adult survivors of child abuse, business people cheated by their partners, or friends and family who have betrayed each other. Even then there seems to be a solution. Unlike forbearance, this solution doesn’t require you to mend relationships with your offender. It is letting go for your own peace. It asks that instead of continuing to suffer for the hurt that was done, you release the negative emotions.
"Pain in life is inevitable. Suffering, on the other hand, is optional” says Dr. Shauna Shapiro, a compassion and mindfulness expert.
Life is a journey. If you continue to pay the silent tax and do not release the pain and angst, your offenders will keep living rent-free in your minds and continue to hurt in future also by reliving the original incident again and again. The release will help you take control of your life and free your future from your past.
There are several strategies that you can help you release all the angst, like:
Mindfulness and Meditation practices offer profound methods of release and forgiveness. There are several mindfulness and meditation methods and systems in different geographies and cultures, such as
Yoga incorporates physical postures, breath control, and meditation to promote overall well-being. Practices such as Heart-Opening Asanas (like Camel Pose and Bridge Pose) are believed to release stored emotional tension and foster a sense of openness and compassion, essential for forgiveness. Pranayama (breath control) techniques like Nadi Shodhana (alternate nostril breathing) balance the mind and calm the nervous system, facilitating emotional release.
Mindfulness Meditation (Vipassana) helps individuals become aware of their thoughts and emotions without judgment, allowing them to process and let go of past grievances.
Loving-Kindness Meditation (Metta) is a Buddhist practice that involves directing goodwill and positive thoughts toward oneself and others, including those who have caused harm. This practice fosters compassion and empathy, crucial for forgiveness.
Naikan Therapy, a Japanese introspective practice, involves reflecting on three questions: What have I received? What have I given? What troubles and difficulties have I caused? This structured reflection encourages gratitude and accountability, paving the way for forgiveness.
Zen Meditation (Zazen), focusing on sitting and breathing, helps clear the mind and develop inner peace, making it easier to forgive and release negative emotions.
EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques), or tapping, combines elements of cognitive therapy and exposure therapy with acupressure to release negative emotions.
Spiritualism Prayer and Affirmations involve invoking higher powers or inner strength to seek and grant forgiveness. Visualization exercises, where individuals imagine releasing anger and embracing forgiveness, are also commonly used.
Ho’oponopono, a Hawaiian practice, involves repeating phrases like "I'm sorry, please forgive me, thank you, I love you," to foster forgiveness and reconciliation.
Art Therapy uses creative expression to process and release emotional trauma, aiding in forgiveness.
Alter Ego Community organizes Meditation and Mindfulness workshops regularly. Checkout the upcoming meetups here.
Psychotherapy: You may consider seeking a professional psychotherapy to help you heal and release.
Self Reflection We offer self-help prompted journaling programs that you can take anytime at your convenience. These programs include set of short exercises, related tools and techniques offering a structure to your thinking yet enabling freedom of expression.
Self-Compassion Exercises: These exercises helps you reflect and be kind and understanding towards yourself, which can extend to others, aiding in the forgiveness process.
Journaling: Journaling regularly helps you have clarity in your thoughts. Include gratitude and forgiveness in your journaling routine to consciously choose gratitude over grief.
Letter of Forgiveness Write a letter to someone you need to forgive, even if you don’t send it. This can be a cathartic process to release.
Narrative Re-authoring encourages you to rewrite their personal stories in a way that emphasizes growth and understanding rather than victimhood and resentment. Alter Ego Community is based on strategic storytelling to overcome all kinds of resentment and limiting mindsets. Our 10-step process involves understanding past influences to make sense of present situation, backed by purpose and intent , writing your narrative for the future, and living it using alter ego till it merges with your reality. It is like writing the script of a superhero movie with you as the protagonist. Your past is the origin story of the super hero, and your end goal is the goal of the protagonist. With goal setting techniques and behavioral experiments, we develop new mindset and habits of change.
Support Groups and Peer Support:
Support Groups: Sharing experiences with others who have faced similar issues can provide support and encourage the forgiveness process.
Workshops: Structured group activities and discussions focused on learning and practicing forgiveness skills.
Alter Ego Community's group meetups offer the perfect balance of independence and togetherness. We carry forward our journeys from where we last left in the meetup. The moderator helps each individual choose tools and techniques relevant to take them forward to the next goal. We perform the activities silently on our own but also share our experiences, indulge in group activities and games to suport and cheer each other's growth. We ensure a small group of maximum 12 people to help you get enough exposure of different ways of thinking yet make meaning bonds with small group.
Self-forgiveness
Forgiveness is a conscious process of letting go of negative feelings, irrespective of the other person’s act to give way to empathy, compassion, and gratitude. You practice forgiveness for yourself, not for others. Thus, as important as it is to let go of negativity from others, you must practice self-forgiveness as well.
Forgiving others is one thing, but what about our own mistakes? Also, when our inner critic blamed us for situations which weren’t our fault?
There are two ways to Self-Forgiveness.
Self-Forgiveness for Forbearance:
It is important to accept responsibility for our own actions, including our mistakes. Accepting our own offences, understanding the core reasons, and rectifying them is a more productive approach than shifting blame, making excuses, and denying any wrongdoing. This can be done in 4 steps:
Showing Remorse
Accepting Responsibility
Rectifying Mistakes
Repair Relations
Show remorse. Understanding what’s at stake and realizing what you risk losing or never getting can be a great motivator for self-growth. Show compassion for yourself and avoid self-criticism or shame. Use the regret productively as a self-improvement opportunity to avoid repeating the mistakes in the future. Acknowledge your actions that have hurt others and also your sense of self-worth.
The next step is accepting responsibility, This is the most crucial part of the process. It requires self-reflection. Reflect on the core reasons behind your offence. Analyze how and why did you deviate from your moral grounds and values. Did you overreact? Did you miscommunicate? Do you have trust issues? Did you project your insecurities? Did you hurt someone who didn’t deserve it?
Address your insecurities. Do away from entitlements, excuses and ego. This is an incredible opportunity for change and personal growth. See it as a redemption of your better self, that is free from one insecurity from the past.
Rectifying Mistakes is the action time! Apologize to the other person, forgive your old self. There might still be resentment but don’t lose your heart. Making an apology is letting go of your ego and developing more humility. Even if it is not accepted, it is an important milestone in your self-growth journey.
Empowered by the intent to change through remorse, based on your self-reflection about the causes and taking responsibility of your actions, plan your actions to correct the mistakes.
How can you fix your core issues?
What are the new habits and behaviors to adopt?
How can you develop these new behaviors and beliefs?
After you have successfully managed to change and rectify your mistakes, focus on repairing relations. Release all negative emotions associated with the offence. Embrace the change and let go of the hurt and guilt. You can try to mend the relationship but also be open to accepting unforgiveness from the other person. Remember, this process was for you. Acceptance of apology is a possible reward, not the goal. Whether they forgive you or not, you release the guilt for the incredible journey of self-improvement that you took. Convey to your heart that you did your best. Release your negative views of self, and embrace the self-growth achieved. An important part here is to also address the memories of the incident that will keep coming back. Address the change of response to old memories and triggers.
Even when both parties decide to work towards making the relationship work, the timelines of completion of the change process may still differ. Observe their commitment to progress and appreciate them.
If you are the only one trying, decide whether you want to forbear or release.
Reflect and reassess your goals and the other party’s progress from time to time.
You may also consider seeking help from trusted common friends, relationship counsellors, or Alter Ego Community and Personal Buddies.
There are cases when it wasn’t your fault, nobody apologized, and you live with the ghosts from the past, such as childhood trauma, and physical and emotional abuse. A common guilt of childhood abusive survivors is the inability to fight back against their offenders. Some blame their unawareness. Many victims of narcissistic abuse blame themselves for “falling” for the manipulation. Self-forgiveness in such situations is about releasing the guilt and self-doubt that you carry about yourself.
Self-forgiveness for liberation involves an abundance of self-compassion and self-empathy.
Everything you are aware of after the incident and after playing every what-could-I-have-done-differently scenario in your mind, do understand that you did not have this knowledge earlier. You might do things differently today. You must. But don’t compare your present wiser version with the unaware self before the incident of offence.
There are several dimensions to consider, like:
Generation: What generation do you belong to? Was it common in your era to be aware of the fightback options that you now know of?
Mental health awareness has risen in the past couple of decades. Feminism and awareness about stereotypes and inequality has alos taken place. It’s okay if in the 1980s you were not aware of what a “good touch” is or that you do not have to live through domestic violence silently. The era and overall evolution of society is an integral dimension to our response mechanism.
Age: There is a correlation between forgiveness and age. More mature people, older people seem to forgive easily as through their experiences they can empathize better. Childhood traumas make a permanent dent in our minds and hearts because for the lack of experience and maturity, you don’t know how to deal with a certain situation. It makes you stronger and mature quicker. So you regret not fighting back or blame your naivety. Or say you are married early in your late teens or early twenties and had to take responsibility of an entire family. Forgive yourself if you made mistakes in parenting when you were young yourself.
Generally speaking, consider your age when you had to deal with the offensive situation. Distance yourself for a moment and ask if a regular child of your age is supposed to know the ideal response.
Influence of family: What is your family like? How has your upbringing influenced your behaviour at the time of the incident and after that? How does socioeconomics affect your family bonds? What are your parents like? What are their past experiences and insecurities?
Each family is different and have unique sets of values. Parents and family shape your mindset. Most cases of violence are committed by someone you know. But you can’t keep doubting everyone. Family is also supposed to be your safe space. So it’s okay if you trusted a family member and they betrayed you. It’s also if you couldn’t seek help from them and stayed silent because you didn’t know how to communicate or trust them enough to expect a suitable support. Most Indian families tend to put things under the carpet or never discuss mental health and violence related issues openly.
Familiarity with the Offender: You never fall in love with a problematic person. You fall for love and later discover their selfish behaviors. Sometimes you might have noticed the red flags earlier but thought everyone is flawed. The positives outnumbered them and you continued with the relationship. That’s fair, right? Later it may seem like you were blinded and manipulated. You take it upon your self-esteem and sense of judgement. You regret for trying all the while and believe in the other person despite the signs. You start fearing love and find it difficult to trust again.
You release the hurt when you realize that you didn’t fall in for toxicity, you fell out because of it. You didn’t ignore the red flags; you forbore and tried to keep the relation alive compensating for their flaws.
You were not unsmart and manipulatable; you simply loved.
Forgive yourself for feeling, loving, and just being human.
Closing Notes:
I hope, through this blog, I could make a point that forgiveness is for everyone. Not only for the old and the monks! It is perfectly natural on our part to resent something/someone who hurt us: toxic bosses, abusive parents, selfish friends, or narcissistic partners. Often ourselves too. But forgiveness is a self-care habit, and like all habits, it can be developed and practiced.
Forgiveness and Gratitude is thus the most pivotal step (step 3) in the Alter Ego Community Framework. We find our objective and understand what’s not working in our lives (Step 1:Developing Intent). Then we understand ourselves and our evolution from various viewpoints (Step 2: Understanding our Evolution)leading to practicing forgiveness and developing a gratitude mindset in Step 3. Here we let go of all the blames and excuses, and release the negative emotions from hurt and betrayal to take control of our lives.
Forgiveness and taking control pave the way for developing self-belief in step 4, which then leads to identifying priorities and long-term and short-term goal setting in step 5 and through steps 6 to 10, crafting an alter ego to try different behaviors and mindsets, find what fits you the best, and finally integrate the alter ego with your current self to BECOME the person you always wanted to be.
It’s a long journey ahead. Release your extra baggage from the past to protect yourself from paying the penalty in future. Travelling light makes you more agile and reach your goal faster.
And always remember, forgive for yourself!
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