The Therapeutic Process of Forgiveness

All of us come across conflicts of some sort with people in our lives, both family and friends. Some people find it easy to forgive but for others, forgiveness is a mission. Forgiveness is a great step towards emancipating yourself from grudges you hold against other people. I believe that forgiveness is a process, and if you are one of those people who don’t find it easy to forgive you just have to master the process. The first thing you can do is understanding that you cannot change other people’s feelings; you can only change yours so even if someone hasn’t forgiven you, you need to forgive them, do it for your own well-being. Writing a letter or letters to the person who wronged you is helpful, you don’t have to send them, remember you are doing this for yourself, you can simply burn them. Trust me; it’s very therapeutic I’ve tried it more than once. I believe that letting go is just too simple, you have to make sense of it all. If you can learn from mistakes, I believe you can also learn from conflict. When someone close to me betrayed me recently, I changed my perspective about them, instead of feeling annoyed and irritated whenever I thought about them I thought about all the good things about them. But most importantly I said within my heart and soul: “I am setting you free because I’m setting myself free”. You must choose to be alive and happy no matter how hurt you’ve been. Whatever trauma you’ve been through, you just have to make sense out of it and then let go. Ever heard of learned behaviour? If you don’t make peace with your past, you are likely to replicate it.