I’ve just begun reading Wounds Not Healed by Time, by Solomon Schimmel, in which he explores the psychic rewards and also the hard work of forgiveness.

Unlike physical injuries, the wounds of betrayal don’t just fade away over time. If anything, the emotional injuries that happen between people tend to become worse when left unaddressed.

This is because people ruminate; we replay negative events over and over and over in our heads, entrenching them ever more deeply in our neurons.

And as we rehearse these negative experiences, we also distort them little by little with each rehearsal, so that we wind up creating memories that are worse than what really happened. These memories are emotionally charged and feel vivid and REAL to us.

We struggle to make sense of what happened, and “make sense” is indeed the perfect phrase, because we manufacture explanations, which we then adopt as if they were facts. They wind up feeling like The Truth to us, because, like lines in a play that we’ve rehearsed over and over, we know them so very well.

These explanations, which we’ve repeated to ourselves countless times until they are burned into our mental circuitry, invariably revolve around two themes:

1. The other person is fundamentally flawed or defective (He is selfish, she is cold, he is sick, she is weak, etc), or
2. The other person is malevolent (She was purposely trying to hurt me, He enjoys rejecting me, She was just using me, He knew what he was doing the whole time, etc).

I’ve found myself carrying around these kinds of cognitive distortions, and I can feel how they get in the way of me trusting, relaxing, enjoying, and loving fully. I am fearful, cautious and witholding, and I don’t want to be that way!

The cognitive behavior folks call this kind of mental baggage stinkin thinkin, and I agree!

Cognitive distortions are learned. Which implies they might be unlearned, or at least layered over with other, better lessons.

It’s a good project for a teacher like me. Here’s where I’m at so far:

• __________ is a human being.

Pretty basic, eh?

But I’m finding that Step One is to kill off that monster I’ve created in my head and turn him/her back into a person.

This, by the way, is painful!…because for every bit of humanity I give back to _______, I unearth equivalent measures of:

1. Tenderness
2. Regret
3. Understanding of my own role
4. Perspective on myself (and not particularly flattering!)

I like to sit quietly and burn a stick of incense, and breathe slowly, and think over and over:

_______ is a human being.

______ is human, just like me.

Walking on the beach is also good for this kind of thinking.

And falling asleep repeating these thoughts seems to help a great deal. I wake up feeling freer and more generous, less fearful, more loving.

What about you?

Do you have any experiences to share about cultivating forgiveness and relearning generosity?

[photos taken at LisSurMer this morning]

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    Last reviewed: 29 Jul 2011