Advice for Slow Forgivers

This is aimed at people who have trouble forgiving past offences from people — church members, leaders, family — anyone. This is a different facet to the Helping the Slow Forgiver Thread I just posted, which is aimed at people who want to help Slow Forgivers.

I’ve been doing a lot of reading and have the following comments:

1. Accept that you are a slow forgiver. And don’t beat yourself up over it. Some people are genetically disposed to it. People whose mother died before they were 11 have tendencies toward negative thinking, which can promote slow forgiveness. Children who developed serious illnesses while young can be predisposed to it. Other life experiences can contribute to it. Some of us are just born this way. This was a huge relief to me when I read the research on this subject. I no longer feel that I have this chronic inability to overcome my thinking tendencies. I’m partly just this way.

2. Read Healing Church Hurt by Stephen Mansfield. He goes well beyond the Biblical teachings and offers many new perspectives.

3. Realize that your goal is to do good and help others. If lack of forgiveness is preventing you from doing good to others (not necessarily the person who hurt you), then find ways of doing good in spite of your hurt. Tame your hurt by not letting it get in the way of your productivity.

4. Let time wear away the hurt. Sometimes that’s the only solution if you’ve tried over and over again to forgive and haven’t been successful.

5. Be honest with yourself about the sources of unhealthy satisfaction you get from your hurt. Does being hurt make you feel entitled to certain treatment, compensation or treatment from others? To be excused from “duties” or other unpleasant tasks that you would otherwise be asked to do? Does it provide others sources of unhealthy personal satisfaction? Be honest with yourself about these payoffs from nuturing hurt, and work to neutralize the hurt through your personal honesty with yourself.

6. The hardest part of getting over hurt is the message entwined with the arrow that hurt you…not the hurt of the moment. Look really hard at the assumed message you are wrapping around the hurt. Dispute it. I believed the message I got from a hurtful experience was that I was a terrible leader, and this really hurt even more than what the person did to me.

These things have helped me recently. Feel free to add your own ideas. Some of these are items that really hit me from positive psychology and Stephen Mansfield’s book Healing Church Hurt as well as my own introspection.