FORGIVENESS THERAPY

You may have heard the expression that - “Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting the other person to die.”

When we have not been able to forgive people in our lives for their unjust and harmful actions towards us we may unfortunately live with the corrosive consequences of anger, resentment and bitterness.
It may negatively affect our worldview, our relationships with others, our energy levels, sense of hope for the future, ability to trust and our mental and even physical health.
But forgiving can be hard. We may feel if we forgive, we will be letting the offender “get away” with what that have done to us, or we may fear that if we don’t hold on to the anger as a reminder, we may allow ourselves to be mistreated again.
Even if we want to forgive and “let go” sometimes we still can’t.

The Enright Forgiveness Therapy Model is a clinically and empirically proven approach to work through this process of forgiveness while maintaining healthy boundaries and validating that genuine injustice has occurred.
The model acknowledges that forgiveness is a process. There is no expectation to forgive in a set timeframe. It only requires a willingness to do the work to move in the direction of forgiveness.  

What forgiveness is:

·       The decision to overcome pain that was inflicted by another person.

·       Letting go of anger, resentment, shame, and other emotions associated with an injustice, even though they are reasonable feelings.

·       Treating the offender with compassion, even though they are not entitled to it.

What forgiveness is NOT:

·       Reconciliation (repairing or returning to a relationship).

·       Forgetting the injustice.

·       Condoning or excusing the offender’s behaviour.

·       Granting legal mercy to the offender.

·        “Letting go” but wishing for revenge.

Benefits of Forgiveness:

Through the research conducted by The Forgiveness Institute they have found that participants of Forgiveness Therapy show statistically significant reductions in symptoms of:
Anxiety
Depression
Anger
Grief
And statistically significant improvements in:

Reported sense of Hope for the future
Self-Esteem
Overall healthier relationships with others.

In the study on cardiac patients the 4 month follow up tests showed participants in the forgiveness group had more efficiently functioning hearts then those in the control group.

For more details on their studies head to https://internationalforgiveness.com/research/