Not being able to forgive

As you can read in the column about forgiveness, forgiving is a choice, a decision that you yourself make, regardless of the situation. Forgiveness is a thing you do for yourself, it is a gift to yourself. Forgiveness says: I choose to not believe the interpretation and labels that my personality has assigned to this situation. I no longer want to invest energy in upholding these personality ideas. I myself suffer the consequences, and I no longer want that. Now when you do nót want to forgive someone, it is likely that one or two aspects apply:

You fear that by forgiving, you approve of what happened. But forgiving does not mean transforming something from "wrong" into "right", forgiveness means stop investing energy in interpreting the situation, thus making it a neutral thing in itself. But that does not seem like a comfort to your personality, who believes that when you do not blame, show your disapproval, or punish the people involved (and you think that your forgiveness includes that), the other person is likely to make the same mistake again. Now when you come to think of it, that is a bit of a strange position that your personality takes here. It assumes that you are the one to judge the acts of other people and label them right or wrong, and that this labeling somehow includes a kind of knowledge that "wrong" means that the other person has to change. On top of that, your personality insists that you are the one who has to monitor that a change like that will take place (and put a bit of pressure in if necessary). And obviously the most successful way to do this, is to motivate the person involved by your rejection and disapproval to bring about the necessary changes, thus working his way back to your approval again. To put it briefly: your personality states that when in your world something does not go to your liking, the other person is to blame and he or she has to take care of correction. Now I have not even mentioned situations in which your blame involves people who are no longer directly assessable for you, either because they are dead, or because you do not know them (thieves, car drivers, anonymous persons, big companies etc.)

Although it may be a bit embarrassing to read it like this, it can still be very tempting to continue blaming the other person and label him guilty. So if you still are not ready to forgive this person, then write down very specific what should happen according to your personality in order for him to be able to forgive this person. Write it all down: what you should say or write, what you believe, how hurt you are, what you fear, everything. And then realize that it is your personality who proclaims that the error has to be made very real first, that you insist on labelling the other as terribly wrong, that he wants to prove that you have really done something terrible to him, before he is ready to forgive. Then make a choice to no longer strengthen the ideas of which this error is built, and that you do not want all the stuff that you wrote down to come true. Write at the bottom of your paper: I forgive you. I forgive myself. Because this does not bring me what I really want. Then tear up the paper and throw it away.

The second aspect is, that your not forgiving is used by your personality for escaping other feelings, or to establish a certain power. When for example you do not forgive the person who robbed your house, you can project your anger on that person, rather than on your own attachment to your stuff and to feelings of safety, which are the real cause of your unpleasant feelings. But now you do not have to face that. When you do not forgive your parents for the mistakes they made during your childhood, you do not have to take responsibility for your own behaviour in the present, and all the unpleasant feelings that accompany it. When you hold a grudge against your partner, you expect him or her to do something extra and special in order to make it up to you, thus re-establishing your power over him.

Now question yourself: what is it that I do not want to face or experience, what power do I want to keep. You can do this in the same way as was suggested for the first aspect: write it down, so that you become fully aware of all the things your personality has come up with. And then choose to not believe it as a truth in itself. Yes, you have thought those thoughts. But that does not automatically mean that they are true, or that they should have a meaning in themselves. You want some advice? Forgive the person involved and tear the paper you wrote all this on, into small pieces and throw these away.