Tag: Fred Luskin

Forgiveness: Forgiving Others and Ourselves

Forgiveness is hard to do, whether we are trying to forgive others or ourself.  It’s not a one-off event but is an evolving process which is why experts in the area suggest that we start off small – with a minor incident or hurt.  Forgiveness engages our feelings as well as our mind and body.  It is something that we have to work at consciously if we are to achieve our goal of “letting go”.

Forgiving others

Frank Ostaseski, author of The Five Invitations: Discover What Death Can Teach Us About Living Fully, suggests that one of the lessons from the dying is, “Don’t Wait to Forgive”.  In his extensive hospice experience he found that too many people were consumed by anger and rage on their death bed because they were unable to forgive others.  He argues that we should not wait until we are dying to forgive others and ourself.  Frank maintains that there is a natural resistance to forgiveness because we have a need to maintain our self-image (of goodness/perfection) and find it difficult to acknowledge that we are carrying challenging emotions such as anger, resentment and regret.   However, there is a real cost to ourselves and our relationships when we hold onto these emotions.

Danette May in her memoir, The Rise: An Unforgettable Journey of Self-Love, Forgiveness and Transformation, argues that we need to “cut the rope”, or as Frank puts it, “letting go”.  These difficult emotions can hold us back, causing self-absorption and “emotional stunting”.  There is a real challenge involved in acknowledging our part in an interaction (or multiple interactions) that was hurtful.  We need to be able to see things from the other person’s perspective and understand what was driving their behaviour.   Frank suggests that in the final analysis, we need to be able to honestly face up to “what we don’t like in ourselves”.

Fred Luskin contends that there are three elements of a grievance that contribute to our “maintaining the rage” and sustaining the hurt:

  1. Preoccupation with the ”offence” and exaggerating its negative impact on us
  2. Insisting that others are to blame for our negative/difficult feelings
  3. Developing and perpetuating a “grievance story”.

Fred argues that the real costs of not letting go are extensive.  Not only do we lose our personal power because we are “controlled by emotions”, but also we lose the ability to focus and achieve peace and wellness.  If we are consumed by anger, hatred, resentment or envy we can’t see past our hurt and we use all our energy in sharing our story and maintaining our sense of hurt.

Forgiving ourselves

The starting point for self-forgiveness is acknowledging our part in the hurtful interaction. It is incredibly difficult to forgive ourselves for the hurt we cause to others – it can be a lifelong process.   Part of the challenge is dealing with strong feelings of guilt and shame – feelings that go against the grain and undermine our sense of who we are.  We can blind ourselves to our negative impact on others because it is too hurtful to ourselves to own up to our part in hurtful interactions.

Jack Kornfield in the Power of Awareness Course argues that there are three myths that underpin our reluctance to engage in self-forgiveness:

  1. Self-forgiveness is a sign of weakness – the reality is that it takes a lot of strength and courage to face up to our hurtful words and actions
  2. We can forgive ourselves through a “quick fix”, e.g., a short meditation or exercise
  3. Forgiving ourselves is condoning our hurtful behaviour.

Elisha Goldstein cites Lily Tomlin when discussing forgiveness of others, Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past.  This insight can as readily apply to self-forgiveness as to forgiving others.  In self-forgiveness, we have to give up our “grievance story”, let go of wishing that we had behaved better and dismantle our defenses that prevent us from acknowledging our part in a hurtful interaction.

Mindfulness – a path to forgiveness

When we develop a mindful disposition by observing our inner landscape – our thoughts, emotions and bodily sensations – we can reduce our negative thoughts and increase our ability to forgive.  Mindfulness can develop our “disposition to forgive” – it can unearth grievance stories, clarify our part in any interaction, help us to take the other person’s perspective, increase our awareness of negative emotions and related bodily sensations and cultivate compassion.  Ultimately mindfulness can help us to develop self-awareness and emotional regulation so that we are not captive to our strong, challenging emotions and can live in the present rather than the hurtful past.

Forgiveness meditation

There are multiple forms of forgiveness meditation.  Loving kindness meditation, for example, has been shown to cultivate compassion towards others as well as self-compassion.   Sharon Salzberg, experienced mindfulness trainer, offers a three-part forgiveness meditation encompassing:

  1. Seeking forgiveness from someone you have hurt or harmed
  2. Offer forgiveness to those who have hurt or harmed you
  3. Self-forgiveness for the times you have harmed yourself through being judgmental.

Sharon includes an affirmation related to the last point, For all the ways I have hurt or harmed myself, knowingly or unknowingly, I offer forgiveness.  Other meditation trainers, such as Mitra Manesh, focus the self-forgiveness on the harm that we have caused to others, rather than to ourself.  Mitra, in her forgiveness meditation podcast, places a lot of emphasis on becoming aware of our bodily sensations as we deal with the “heavy energies” involved in holding onto grudges, anger or rage.  She also suggests a mantra for seeking forgiveness from others, For all the ways that I have caused you pain and suffering, I ask your forgiveness.

In reflecting on a number of forgiveness meditations, I identified four common principles underpinning the meditation process:

  1. Stay grounded, relaxed and focused
  2. Manage distractions through an anchor such as your breath or sounds
  3. Start small with something that is manageable and recent (limited history or replaying)
  4. Adopt a healing perspective – show loving kindness to others and yourself.

We can develop a mindful disposition in multiple ways , not just through meditation.  As we grow in mindfulness we can more readily adopt the perspective of others and understand their hurt.  We can own up to and name our own feelings, however negative or challenging. Over time, our disposition to forgive and our capacity to offer forgiveness to others and ourself will grow almost invisibly.

Reflection

Forgiving ourself can be a lifetime pursuit as I have found in trying to forgive myself for my part in my marriage breakup which occurred more than 40 years ago.  This is something I am working towards.  I find that forgiving others and forgiving ourself are interwoven activities – not discrete, independent steps.

I have also been reflecting on my long-standing anger towards my Father for his alcoholism and its major impact on my childhood and my family.  I recently started crafting a poem called Paternal Forgiveness which I will publish soon in this blog.  In the poem, I offer forgiveness to my father, seek to forgive myself for my harsh judgments and express my sorrow for the hurt that I had caused him when he was alive.  In writing the poem, I have drawn inspiration from Kim Rosen’s book, Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words.  In the book, Kim describes how poetry has helped people to deal with challenging situations, including the need to forgive others and themselves, and provides insight into the transformative elements of a poem.

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Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site and the resources to support the blog.

Mindfulness and the Art of Forgiveness

In a previous post, I highlighted the need for compassion and forgiveness to sustain a second marriage.  However, forgiveness is a need in all facets of our relationships because we can experience a grievance or hurt wherever we are – at work, at home or in our daily activity outside these spheres.  Dr. Fred Luskin, an international expert in forgiveness, explains that there are three main aspects of a grievance, wherever or whenever it is experienced:

  • Exaggerating the personal offense we experience
  • Blaming someone else for our negative feelings
  • Developing a grievance story.

In his book, Forgive for Love: The Missing Ingredient for Healthy and Lasting Relationships, Fred draws on research to demonstrate that forgiveness leads to a sense of peace as well as physical and emotional welfare.  In contrast, maintaining a grudge, grievance or anger results in illness, a loss of personal power (you become controlled by your emotions) and an inability to focus on the task at hand.  The very words we use – such as “consumed by envy” – evoke the destructive power of grievances and sustained anger.

Developing the art of forgiveness through mindfulness

Fred points out that, contrary to popular belief, forgiveness is not about the other person by whom you feel aggrieved, it is about yourself – your thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and consequent behaviour.  He contends that the focus in forgiveness is self-awareness and self-regulation, not reconciliation.  Some of the mindfulness practices that can help you develop the art of forgiveness include:

  • Mindful breathing: Fred offers a specific, brief practice here.  He suggests that you take three deep breaths.  When inhaling, you focus on the movement of your stomach as it fills with air.  As you exhale, you concentrate on your stomach softening (and the sense of release).  On your third deep breath, Fred suggests that you bring your focus to something or someone you love or a thing of beauty – filling your mind with something positive which can serve to displace negative thoughts and emotions.
  • Naming your feelings:  Fred suggests that through reflection you seek to identify the catalyst for your grievance and name the feelings that you experienced.  He argues that your past experiences may have influenced your feelings, but you experience them in the present and you are responsible for them (not the person you blame for those feelings).  Once you name your feelings, you can take ownership of them and effectively tame them (you control them, they don’t control you).  You can also identify how you have exaggerated the personal offense that you have experienced and what expectations or assumptions underlie that sense of being offended.  Fred maintains that we each carry around in our head what he calls “unenforceable rules”.
  • Choosing your channel: Fred proposes that we learn to replace the “grievance channel” (where we repeat our “grievance story” to ourselves and others) with more positive channels such as those focused on gratitude, love and beauty (especially the beauty of nature).  In his book, he offers multiple suggestions on how to switch “channels” throughout the day.  If we achieve this switch on a regular basis, we naturally develop our “forgiveness channel” because appreciation, a sense of beauty and feelings of love displace negative feelings of hurt, anger and resentment.  The art of forgiveness can be further developed by reading about, or listening to, stories of courageous acts of forgiveness by others.

Fred suggests that we need to become aware of the space in our minds that we are allocating to our grievance – how much of our time and energy are being consumed by accommodating and entertaining our grievances.

Reflection

To develop the art of forgiveness, we need to be conscious of the thoughts and emotions we are cultivating through the stories in our head – we become what we focus on, the choice is ours to be bitter or appreciative.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can become more self-aware of our “unenforceable rules” in the form of unrealistic expectations or unfounded assumptions, more readily name our feelings and learn to achieve self-regulation by consciously choosing to entertain positive thoughts and feelings of love and appreciation.

In reflecting on what unenforceable rules we carry in our head, I am reminded of an observation by Michelle De Kretser in her book, The Life to Come, when talking about Pippa’s reflections about her family friend Rashida (a Muslim born in India):

There was a whisper in Pippa’s brain, like a subdued, left-hand accompaniment to her thoughts, and this whisper was of the opinion that Rashida should be grateful that white people overlooked the double handicap of her religion and race.  [p. 221, emphasis added]

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Image by Pixource from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.

How Could Mindfulness Help to Sustain and Nurture Relationships in a Second Marriage?

Tami Simon recently conducted a podcast interview with Terry Gaspard on navigating the challenges of a second marriage.  Terry is a college professor, author and very successful couples therapist.  In the interview, Terry drew on her book, The Remarriage Manual: How to Make Everything Work Better the Second Time Around.  Both Tami and Terry pointed to the divorce static that highlighted the difficulty of a second marriage – while 50% of first marriages end in divorce, this figure rises to 60% for second marriages.

Second marriages entail the added complexity of increased financial expenses, the challenge of blending families (where there are children involved) and the intellectual and emotional baggage from the previous intimate relationships.  As the two insightful women discussed the topic of sustaining a second marriage from ideas and perspectives developed through their own research and personal experience, it occurred to me that mindfulness could help partners develop the insights and skills required to effectively and happily navigate the many challenges involved in a second marriage.

Mindfulness for accepting “what is” in terms of partner differences

In a previous post, I explained that Diana Winston, Director of Mindfulness Education at MARC, incorporates “accepting what is” as an integral part of mindfulness.  Neither speaker in the podcast interview mentioned above thought that this entailed a totally passive position in relation to differences in partners in an intimate relationship.  While they recognised from research that 70% of differences in a relationship cannot be changed, they did identify ways to negotiate some differences.  Terry suggested, however, that some differences can involve what she calls “deal breakers” and these may need to be resolved with the help of a couples therapist if the second marriage relationship is to be sustained.

Terry drew on hundreds of interviews of couples and her own relationships to develop her book.  She maintained that trying to change the other person in a second marriage to be like yourself or some ideal image very often leads to divorce in a second marriage.  She points out that you will not change a person’s basic personality in a relationship – “morning people” do not automatically become “night people”, for instance, or introverts change readily into extroverts.  These are deep differences that cannot be changed, but if partners in a second marriage accept what is in terms of these more profound differences, it is possible to work towards various accommodations over time that make the relationship workable and rewarding.  Terry offers some suggestions in the podcast and in her book to address these differences.

Mindfulness for self-awareness

Research has consistently demonstrated that mindfulness develops self-awareness and the associated skill of self-regulation.  Self-awareness is critical to negotiate several significant hurdles in a second marriage:

  • Intellectual and emotional baggage – whether we like it or not, our past is in our present.  Each person in a second marriage brings their own baggage, both in terms of thoughts and feelings, to the new relationship.  We can act these out unconsciously and damage our relationship(s).  It may be that we bring to the second relationship a lack of trust, unresolved hurt, resentment or fears. Terry suggests that often rebound second relationships do not work because individuals have not taken the time and space required to heal from the damages of the prior relationship.  Mindfulness can help us to see what our personal “baggage” is and how it plays out in the conflicts we have in our second marriage, the points of irritation or the frustration and resentment that we experience towards our partner. 
  • Unrealistic expectations – we all develop expectations of ourselves and others that at times prove to be unrealistic.  Terry particularly mentions the challenge of blending two families in a second marriage and the unrealistic expectations that arise around this difficult endeavour. She contends that it takes at least four years for a partner in a second marriage to negotiate and achieve a balanced relationship with a stepchild (even longer for “stepchildren”).  Through meditation and reflection, we can become aware of our expectations and the influence they are having on our intimate relationship.  We can create the freedom of possibility by gaining release from the tyranny of unrealistic expectations of our self and our partner.

Compassion and forgiveness

Compassion and forgiveness are required in an intimate relationship because grievances will occur on the part of either or both parties.  Terry draws on the work of Fred Luskin, an expert in forgiveness, who talks about the “grievance story” or narrative that we develop when we are hurt in a relationship.  Grievance stories are effectively negative self-stories focused on our hurt that result from unresolved grievances we carry towards our partner over one or more incidents occurring in our second marriage.  They Invariably involve an unbalanced perspective, blaming the other person and some form of “punishment”, e.g. through personal attack (e.g. nagging) or withdrawal.

Acknowledging these harmful narratives and dealing with them through meditation and reflection can heal our wounds and enable us to participate more fully and constructively in our intimate relationship.  Fred’s book, Forgive for Love: The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship, offers processes to overcome grievance stories.  It also provides an understanding of the nature of forgiveness, the underpinning science, the benefits of forgiveness and how to develop forgiveness (especially through the “gratitude channel”).

Reflection

After almost 35 years in a second marriage, I can readily relate to the issues described by Tami and Terry and the need for the perspectives and skills that they discuss to sustain a second marriage.  Their insights and strategies are particularly relevant, practical and workable.  As we grow in mindfulness, we can develop the acceptance, self-awareness and forgiveness necessary to deepen, enrich and sustain a second intimate relationship.  A key ingredient for success seems to be to develop a “growth mindset” along with tolerance.

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Image by Arek Socha from Pixabay

By Ron Passfield – Copyright (Creative Commons license, Attribution–Non Commercial–No Derivatives)

Disclosure: If you purchase a product through this site, I may earn a commission which will help to pay for the site, the associated Meetup group and the resources to support the blog.