Chapter Eleven/Forgiveness

               It is incredibly funny how things work out. Normally I read the Chapter on Tuesday and or Wednesday nights but because of a bunch of things I didn’t read it until Thursday. Had I read it when I normally did the Forgiveness article would have been useless to me. However, on Thursday I definitely came across a situation in my life that requires – or doesn’t – forgiveness and therefore the article certainly became incredibly relevant to my life. I had planned on talking about Chapter 11 as I tend to prefer the book over the articles but this post will be solely about the article...

                To make a long story short while I found out that somebody I had put my trust into had wronged me by violating it. As my groups knows as I said in the first couple of weeks I DO NOT trust people because I’ve been burned several times in the past but the counseling program kind of let me shed that belief. However, like I said I was burned by this person and I can see no forseeable reason to ever forgive them. I agree with the article that forgiveness leads to reconciliation but I firmly believe in not forgiving people because of my past and definitely what recently happened. I am aware of my vengeful – or passive aggressive in my case - responses and that might result from this but I’m fine with it. I did think it was interesting though, in the article, how they related it to overall emotional management because I do have issues being in touch with my emotions at times.

                One major thing I disagreed with was the empirical research saying that if you don’t forgive you’re not undertaking perspective taking. I actually think that it’s vice-versa. When I won’t forgive someone the SOLE reason is for violating my trust. I can’t fathom other reasons in which I haven’t forgiven someone over the past 7 years of my life. So when someone violates my trust I don’t think that they have undergone perspective taking because otherwise they would have realized violating my trust would have done before going through with it.

                Another interesting concept presented in the article was self-forgiveness. I DO think that I lack self-forgiveness especially this event because in some cases I was wrong as well. But I think that lacking self-forgiveness is good thing unlike the authors because it creates a sense of guilt that forces you to change this formerly negative behavior to avoid this feeling and/or result from occurring again. If you easily forgive yourself you’ll repeat the behavior and never learn from it. I guess I hold others in this same regard since once they’ve burned me I am done with them. It will be interesting to see if I can separate this aspect of my life from my practice when I work with clients because I can’t logically be off put by a kid for 1 instance.

Corey, G. & Corey, M.S. (2008). I never knew I had a choice: Exploration in personal growth (9th

                   Edition). Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole

Hodgson, L.K., & Wertheim, E.L. (2007). Does good emotion management aid forgiving? Multiple 

dimensions of empathy, emotion management and forgiveness of self and others. Journal of 

Social and Personal Relationships 2007; 24; 931. DOI: 10.1177/0265407507084191