Your Nervous System Thanks You for Forgiving
As we know, forgiveness is all about us and releasing the pain and baggage of what another did. The releasing of internal burdens is how you find true peace and good health.
They did the unthinkable. They mistreated you. The hurt person hurt you; maybe once, maybe a thousand times. You are angry with them. You are angry with yourself for allowing it again and again. There is deep regret. There is disappointment, disillusionment, disdain—lots of the “dis’s.” There might even be hatred. How could someone who claimed to love you do this to you and so often? And how on earth could anyone forgive such evil, cold, and heartless behavior? Surely, anyone who would forgive this would be a fool, an idiot. This is certainly condoning and encouraging the bad behavior. They will most assuredly think they can do this again and again to you, right?
I don’t have the answers to some of these questions and, also, I do recognize the fear, the confusion, and the struggle with this concept. Yes, I do think that if you allow people to treat you a certain way, they have learned that you are okay with the treatment. That is basic human behavior. If you don’t create a boundary and say and mean your “No,” people will think it’s okay to keep on keeping on. Religions and spiritual communities, psychologists, and other gurus have said it before: Forgiving someone is about YOU, not about the other person. And while this is a hard concept to swallow because we want to stay angry in order to never let them hurt us again, this is very much true. You CAN forgive and still protect yourself. You can forgive the person for being who and what they are and then emotionally or physically distance yourself from their painful behaviors and actions. The more we hold onto the hate and anger in order to make sure we are never hurt by them again, the more we hurt ourselves. The energy of anger is one of stress and stress is what does us in. Boundaries help you stay strong while also letting go of the anger and stress.
Once you know where you end and the other begins, there is a line that is energetically created so that you can stay safe within your own perimeter.
Forgiving ourselves is also so important because, frankly, it always takes two people to create any kind of problem. Although it is never anyone’s fault when they are abused, it’s the sticking around for more that creates the toxic patterning and the never-ending dance. Once the line has been crossed and the abuse starts, the contract with that person is over with—or could be, it depends on how long it will take you to truly learn the lesson. The problem is that when we stay, we are reinforcing to the abuser that they can continue doing it. And I know that we all want to believe that this time will be the last time that the abuser hits us, gaslights, manipulates, calls us names, or ghosts us. We know deep down that they will continue to hurt us, but our minds take over and then we rationalize, blame ourselves for the abuse, and hope against all hope that it will somehow get better. I understand this very well. So, we stick around for a long time until one day, after staying anyway, they completely discard us or we finally decide to choose ourselves and walk away. Either way, there is room for forgiving ourselves and them for the dance we did for so long with them. This is because it was a dance that taught us something important for our evolution. By doing this dance, we also come to realize that next time we will be wiser and know sooner how to have the boundaries in place that we desperately needed with this person. So, while painful, the learning helps us grow and love ourselves more.
As sad as this may be, sometimes we choose to partake in this drama and pain many, many times until we become strong enough to have boundaries, detach, and say absolutely, unequivocally “NO MORE!” And that’s just fine. It’s all a learning PROCESS. It takes time and a full awareness of what is happening to see that we don’t need this anymore. It could take you one time or one thousand times to learn how to stand up for yourself and walk away from mistreatment. Don’t beat yourself up for not getting it right away. When we love someone, we always hope for the best. We want things to get better. We invest a lot of time, energy, patience, and love into a relationship and it seems like such a big waste when we have to toss it out because it’s hurting us. We end up staying and making peace time and again with the person who hurts us. The problem is that the “peace” we are making is not real peace. It’s us stuffing it to avoid conflict. And that always ends up hurting us on every level of our beings later.
There is much power in knowing that you helped to create a situation because then there is a way to change it. We are very powerful beings and to think that we can’t change our lives in wonderous ways is an insult to our deepest selves. It’s all about being conscious about our subconscious beliefs because once we are, we are no longer in hiding from ourselves and then the true manifestations we want can happen in a conscious way. Once we see that loving ourselves really protects us from ever allowing in the disrespect and poor treatment, we are set free from these kinds of dynamics.
When people believe that they cannot change their life situations, it hurts everyone involved.
Can you forgive and learn to love them unconditionally? Should you need to or even want to? I will argue that, yes, loving people no matter what they do is an elevated state of being that allows you to take space away from those who are living in their lower selves and in their pain while also seeing them as their best selves. Everyone would be acting lovingly toward one another if we all remembered who we truly are. Moving past our trauma and recovering helps us remember exactly that. And once there is a critical mass of the collective living in that space, everyone eventually will come home to who they truly are. When we can see that people are operating from their wounding, it can become easier to move away from them and allow them the space and time to heal. Also, they might choose never to heal this lifetime. So, the best thing you can do is move away and heal, forgive yourself and the other for the things that neither of you knew better about, and keep moving forward in your life. Make your life wonderful.
The key here is to love yourself first. Have the come from of self-love so that you can more clearly see that hurt people hurt people. Protect yourself from hurt people, and then forgive them for not being more conscious and aware of the pain they are inflicting. As mentioned earlier, the stress of carrying the burden of hatred and anger toward people who simply don’t have enough self-awareness is problematic for you. This is exactly the reason people suggest forgiving for yourself. It’s your mental, emotional, and physical health that are impacted by wasting your energy and increasing your stress level being upset with someone who is more or less asleep. Would you be angry at someone who was in a coma and didn’t show up at a dinner party? Would you think they were insensitive and cruel for not attending? No. You’d realize they are sick and in a coma and could not make it to the dinner party. It’s not their fault that they were not awake to know better.
I know, I know, someone in a coma is not going to abuse you, so the analogy falls short a bit. But even abusive people don’t often realize that they are abusing. It could be that they simply misunderstand or misread the cues about how to be better. They might have a world of trauma covering up their ability to be emotionally intelligent. Perhaps they unconsciously learned to abuse from someone who abused them and they are just doing what they learned is the most effective way to control someone so they can have a sense of safety and not be abandoned. They can be operating from shame and an inner critic that tells them constantly that they suck. They might feel awful and angry about themselves for messing something up, so they lash out and project their self-hatred onto as though you caused it. There can be many reasons a person abuses. People who have parts of them that beat them down with limiting beliefs and have people in their lives echoing the same sentiments are not always capable of being emotionally available and present enough to treat you or anyone else better. They are too busy abusing themselves and others to be able to get straight about it.
However, they are not purposefully trying to hurt you or anyone else. They are unconscious about who they really are as a wonderful, whole soul who is beautiful, wise, and has everything they ever need already. They are walking through a dark tunnel and can’t see the light. One day they will. Until then, leave them to it. Remove yourself from the pain they are inflicting so you can protect your beautiful self, but also, do yourself the added favor of forgiving them for not knowing better. This will help you release the stress you feel about carrying this unnecessary burden in your own life and will lighten your load. Then, learn your personal lessons from the pain they caused you and move along on your merry way.
My goal in trauma recovery work is to help you move past the pain of your past and onto a newer, happier life pathway. It is absolutely possible and inevitable when you do your recovery work and come home to the truth of who you really are. Let me help you!
