how to hack forgiveness

For over 10 years I have worked with a lot of people sharing their life stories with me. A lot of times people say what they are sharing is things they’ve never shared before, to anyone, ever. A couple patterns I notice about forgiveness is people wanting to forgive and being unable to, or jumping to forgiveness without being ready, or punishing themselves for not being able to forgive. This is common, but it’s something we need to unpack.

As humans we feel a full spectrum of emotions from sadness and anger, and jealousy to joy, happiness and ecstasy. For our time here and now as humans, all of these emotions are valid, as I’ve written about before in Emotions are like Puppies. You are allowed to feel anyway you want. If someone did something to you that is beyond forgiveness (which I have heard many stories where this could be the case) - it is okay to be unable to forgive them.

I know that might sound weird at first - but hear me out for a second. Forgiveness is amazing, it’s releasing, it burns the ties that bind, it’s incredible!

But!

Sometimes it takes time to fully achieve forgiveness and sometimes it is impossible to get there. If you punish yourself your whole life for being unable to forgive, you are suffering twice - once with the trauma and again torturing yourself for not being able to forgive; this is, of course, even worse for your mental and emotional well-being.

To get to true forgiveness, you have to feel ALL THE THINGS: the hatred, resentment, disgust, shame etc. because! jumping too quickly to forgiveness could be spiritually bypassing (i.e. ‘I need to forgive because I’m spiritual, woke, etc…’) or gaslighting yourself (i.e. ‘It wasn’t that bad, other people have it worse, I’m overreacting, etc.’)

Your feelings are valid. You don’t need to do anything. You are the main character in your own life.

It’s also possible if you jump too quickly to false forgiveness, later in life these unprocessed emotions like the unfelt anger, hatred and/or resentment could bubble up again when their effects are more intense. In my opinion, the reasons these emotions can be more intense than the initial ones is because they’ve become infected and irritated from being shut down and compartmentalized. We’ve all heard the phrase ‘what we resist, persists!’ In this case, falsely-forgiving emotions that have not properly gone through their entire life cycle (from birth to resolution) can become exaggerated and more aggressive from not being witnessed. We see the ill effects of this process when we witness projection - when we ‘project’ or overlay past hurts from past events on to current people in our current life.

So!

Here’s my secret hack to forgiveness*:

Instead of trying to forgive the other person for what they did to you - what if you forgave yourself for not being able to forgive the other person?

Interesting right?

In my mind, forgiveness works both ways. You can try and forgive the other person, but if that doesn’t work, why not switch the direction of the forgiveness. Maybe try this on and practice some self compassion and self mercy?

What does it feel like to forgive yourself for not being able to forgive?

What if you chose yourself first?

*Disclaimer: you do not have to agree :) this blog is written with the same philosophy of trying on a T-shirt - if it fits, great; if it doesn’t, take it off and try a new one ;)

paradigm shifts

When clients write to me for a session some of them say 1. I have a lot of trauma to work through and I want to get better and others say 2. I don’t have a lot of trauma, but I still want to get better. My response is always - “trauma” is relative - what is traumatizing to me might not be for you and vice versa. So, there is no need to judge what you perceive as trauma. If something happened to you and it bothered you, but someone else ‘went through something much worse,’ it’s still okay to not be okay with what you went through!

Spiritual bypassing is a term used to define when one’s belief system allows them to ignore or avoid personal issues or facing certain things. For example, if something particularly traumatizing happened to them, instead of processing with friends, working it out, journaling, crying, getting therapy, getting angry (all healthy reactions) they ‘jump’ straight to forgiveness. Now, of course forgiveness is a great thing, HOWEVER, you are a human being with complex thoughts and emotions and it is only natural to go through an entire process to e v e n t u a l l y arrive at forgiveness. Remember it is okay to not be okay, don’t gaslight (lie to) yourself by pretending to be okay when you’re not. That only hurts you in the long run because it delays the healing process.

I try not to speak in absolutes, but I do believe in order to heal something, you must feel it. Feeling pain, talking about your pain, accepting your pain and your process helps the pain to be witnessed and seen. In that exchange of witnessing and surrendering to what you’re experiencing in the present can help it evolve and change. Like the book written by Paulo Coelho, we ARE the Alchemist, turning the things that have happened to us into gold for others. Sometimes I wonder if the ‘bad things’ that happened to me were actually FOR ME - transforming me into a talented tuner!

It is in dialogue with pain that many beautiful things acquire their value. ~ Alain de Bottom

In Biofield Tuning we have a term called “puddling.” Puddling is when we completely and unabashedly allow ourselves to break down, withholding judgement. I remember one time I was supposed to pick up Eileen at the San Diego airport but my boyfriend and I had just broken up and I was in the middle of a good puddle session; I told her what was going on and she excitedly said “Puddle Away!” and I did.

I allowed myself to fully feel the darkness and sadness of what I was experiencing, without shaming myself or my compartmentalizing my emotions and shoving my feelings down. Because of this I was able to go through my process faster, heal quicker and feel more grounded only after a couple weeks - rather than several months! People talk about rock bottom like it’s a bad thing - but I believe that falling without end is worse. Rock bottom is when you finally stop and have an opportunity to stand up again.

In reference to what I find in the field - I prefer to call these situations Paradigm Shifts. They’re not necessarily traumas and it seems incorrect to call them that. Sometimes in childhood I find the birth of a sibling, or in the teenage years perhaps there was a move of houses, schools or even a parent getting a new job. These are not traumas if you enjoyed all of these events! However! They are Paradigm Shifts - life was one way, linear, and now everything moving forward is completely different than it was the day before. Paradigm Shifts are neither good nor bad, they just are.

Because of the self-help work I’ve done on myself since my teenage years, my understanding of the biofield and emotions, and my perspective of the world, when something goes wrong I like to think it happened “in order to strengthen the plot,” of my story. This is to acknowledge what has happened and to also bring some sarcasm and levity to the situation. If you’ve had sessions with me you know I like to invite humor in! I agree that laughter is (one of) the best medicine(s)!

It’s dark because you are trying too hard.
Lightly child, lightly. Learn to do everything lightly.
Yes, feel lightly even though you’re feeling deeply.
Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them.

I was so preposterously serious in those days, such a humorless little prig.
Lightly, lightly – it’s the best advice ever given me.
When it comes to dying even. Nothing ponderous, or portentous, or emphatic.
No rhetoric, no tremolos, no self conscious persona putting on its celebrated imitation of christ or Little Nell.
And of course, no theology, no metaphysics.
Just the fact of dying and the fact of the clear light.

So throw away your baggage and go forward.
There are quicksands all about you, sucking at your feet, trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair.
That’s why you must walk so lightly.
Lightly my darling, on tiptoes and no luggage, not even a sponge bag, completely unencumbered.”
~ Aldous Huxley

Healing isn’t about fixing everything that is wrong with you, it’s about accepting and loving yourself anyways. Regardless of what you went through, regardless of how you handled it, what matters is …

have you grown through what you’ve gone through.