{"id":8178,"date":"2019-11-13T23:55:59","date_gmt":"2019-11-14T04:55:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/practicing-forgiveness\/"},"modified":"2019-11-13T23:55:59","modified_gmt":"2019-11-14T04:55:59","slug":"practicing-forgiveness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/practicing-forgiveness\/","title":{"rendered":"Practicing Forgiveness"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When you hold on to past hurt, you\u2019re actually trying to relieve your pain by putting other people down and building yourself up. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span id=\"more-3852\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You may imagine that nursing old wounds is the way to be in control and prevent the humiliating exposure of your imperfections. You may even entertain vengeful fantasies of finally achieving fair- ness by hurting the people who hurt you. But instead of trying to control or redeem a hurtful situation, you can focus on managing your reaction to it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">One of the best ways to heal from anger is to forgive the people who hurt you. The act of forgiveness gives you new options for living your life on a much more realistic basis. Besides, if you don\u2019t forgive old wounds, they\u2019ll stay deep down inside you forever. Is that what you want?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Forgiveness has nothing to do with condoning or excusing the wrongs that were done to you. It means letting go of those old wounds so you can move on with your life. And forgiveness has nothing to do with assessing the degree of other people\u2019s guilt, or the relative evil of their intentions. That\u2019s because forgiveness is not about other people at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You forgive others for your own benefit, not theirs. The people who hurt you don\u2019t even have to know that you\u2019ve forgiven their hurtful behavior. Your act of forgiveness is between you and yourself\u2014it\u2019s no one else\u2019s business. In chapter 4, we\u2019ll look at some ways to foster forgiveness by not taking others\u2019 wounding behavior personally.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When you\u2019re angry or facing antagonism from someone else, your most important resource is your self-respect. To respect yourself is to know that you are a worth- while human being in spite of your mistakes. You may be at fault in a situation, but you\u2019re a human being. Human beings are not perfect, and perfection should never be expected of a human being.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You can respect yourself regardless of what\u2019s going on in your life. That\u2019s because self-respect doesn\u2019t depend on getting what you want\u2014a promotion at work, the ideal mate, a higher income\u2014or on your ability to be perfect. Respecting your- self means accepting that you are unconditionally lovable, no matter what anyone else says.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">All people make mistakes. Self-respecting people learn from theirs. You should learn from yours, too, because you can\u2019t prevent them. You can take reasonable precau- tions, but past that point, your efforts at prevention become counterproductive\u2014you exercise no control over things that have yet to happen, and trying to read others\u2019 minds so you can know what they want from you is not going to keep you from disappointing them at times.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When you separate other people from their behavior, you\u2019re practicing detachment. Learning to detach yourself emotionally from a situation often starts with learning to take a moment before reacting to someone else\u2019s provocations. In that moment, you can ask yourself whether the provocative behavior is directed at you personally, or whether it might be coming from the other person\u2019s fear, anger, or pain. If you can make this kind of distinction, you can create more emotional distance between yourself and others\u2019 behavior. But it\u2019s important to remember that practicing detachment is not the same as building a wall. Your goal is to heal yourself and your relationships with other human beings, not to coldly distance yourself from others, and especially not to set up barriers between yourself and the people who matter most to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<div class=\"likebtn_container\" style=\"\"><!-- LikeBtn.com BEGIN --><span class=\"likebtn-wrapper\"  data-identifier=\"post_8178\"  data-site_id=\"63347fe36fd08b6c05de3d9e\"  data-dislike_enabled=\"false\"  data-icon_dislike_show=\"false\"  data-white_label=\"true\"  data-style=\"\"  data-unlike_allowed=\"\"  data-show_copyright=\"\"  data-item_url=\"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/practicing-forgiveness\/\"  data-item_title=\"Practicing Forgiveness\"  data-item_image=\"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/files\/2019\/02\/anger-300x94.gif\"  data-item_date=\"2019-11-13T23:55:59-05:00\"  data-engine=\"WordPress\"  data-plugin_v=\"2.6.59\"  data-prx=\"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-admin\/admin-ajax.php?action=likebtn_prx\"  data-event_handler=\"likebtn_eh\" ><\/span><!-- LikeBtn.com END --><\/div><p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.psychcentral.com\/anger\/2019\/11\/practicing-forgiveness\/\" target=\"_blank\">Visit Original Source<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you hold on to past hurt, you\u2019re actually trying to relieve your pain by putting other people down and building yourself up. You may imagine that nursing old wounds is the way to be in control and prevent the humiliating exposure of your imperfections. You may even entertain vengeful <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/practicing-forgiveness\/\">Read More<\/a><br \/><img alt='' src='\/\/www.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5fdb6db55f063f5e986443bb42db6b14?s=32&#038;r=g&#038;d=https%3A%2F%2Funitedresourceconnection.org%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F1%2Ffiles%2F2011%2F08%2Fcandlesburning.jpeg' srcset='\/\/www.gravatar.com\/avatar\/5fdb6db55f063f5e986443bb42db6b14?s=32&#038;r=g&#038;d=https%3A%2F%2Funitedresourceconnection.org%2Fwp-content%2Fblogs.dir%2F1%2Ffiles%2F2011%2F08%2Fcandlesburning.jpeg 2x' class='avatar avatar-32 photo' height='32' width='32' loading='lazy' decoding='async'\/>  Shared by <a href=\"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/membership-directory\/aaronkarmin\/profile\">Aaron Karmin, LCPC, Contributing Blogger<\/a>  November 13, 2019<\/p>\n<div class=\"likebtn_container\" style=\"\"><!-- LikeBtn.com BEGIN --><span class=\"likebtn-wrapper\"  data-identifier=\"post_8178\"  data-site_id=\"63347fe36fd08b6c05de3d9e\"  data-dislike_enabled=\"false\"  data-icon_dislike_show=\"false\"  data-white_label=\"true\"  data-style=\"\"  data-unlike_allowed=\"\"  data-show_copyright=\"\"  data-item_url=\"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/practicing-forgiveness\/\"  data-item_title=\"Practicing Forgiveness\"  data-item_image=\"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/files\/2019\/02\/anger-300x94.gif\"  data-item_date=\"2019-11-13T23:55:59-05:00\"  data-engine=\"WordPress\"  data-plugin_v=\"2.6.59\"  data-prx=\"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-admin\/admin-ajax.php?action=likebtn_prx\"  data-event_handler=\"likebtn_eh\" ><\/span><!-- LikeBtn.com END --><\/div>","protected":false},"author":1109,"featured_media":7890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5630],"tags":[4140,10105],"class_list":["post-8178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-clinicians-blog","tag-anger-management","tag-archive"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8178","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1109"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8178"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8178\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7890"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/unitedresourceconnection.org\/goodyear-village-az-cdp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}