Quote:
Originally Posted by Anne2.0
So this thing he said really knocked me out: T: "But I do have a vision for you: that you'll be able to become more at peace with your emotions and with yourself."
I think the word "forgiveness" has some stereotyped cultural baggage attached to it, probably steeped in religious tropes. Like the idea that it means you go up to someone an announce "I forgive you" when I think T is talking about an internal process that may have forgiveness as a piece of it, or not. Not necessarily forgiveness of her, but even if it seems like this is something to explore, it doesn't involve the other person at all, if you want it to. I think it's just a big umbrella under which peace might be found, but it's not the only umbrella around. But working towards peace seems like the right way to go about it, no matter what that includes.
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I feel fairly certain this is exactly what he is talking about.
I have had some real monsters in my life, and it was only when I reached that place of forgiveness that I was able to find some internal peace.
Forgiveness, for me, is not dependent on that other person at all. It is not an "acceptance" of their behavior nor of the situation at all. It does not require them apologizing; I could wait for hell to freeze over and that would never happen. It has nothing to do with forgetting; the healthy mind doesn't work that way. But if I waited for me to "accept" what happened to me or what they did, if I waited for them to apologize, if I waited to forget, I was going to live in anger and anxiety and bitterness and depression for the rest of my life. And I was tired of living that way; I had done that for far too long and it was eating my soul.
Forgiveness was me choosing to put aside that history once I had looked at it enough and realized it wasn't going to change; it wasn't going to go anywhere. I had looked at it enough; why keep looking at it if it wasn't going to change and looking at it continuously caused me pain?
It's kind of like when a horrible disaster happens and you get stuck watching all the news coverage of it. You can't turn off the television for some reason. You hunt for more and more information, and it's all the same and all bad and all horrible to look at. At some point, you have to stop looking or it consumes you; it becomes traumatizing in itself.
My history with my monsters had become that for me. It was a deliberate act to decide to put it aside and look in another direction. For me, that was my moment of forgiveness. It was a letting go and an allowing my life to move on without that baggage.
My therapist talked about putting my history in a box on a high shelf way in the back of my closet. I know it's there. I can choose to pull it out again if for some reason I need to, but it's in a box behind other stuff. I don't see it every day. I forget about it for long periods of time. Where did I put that box anyway? Oh well, I don't need it right now. I'll look for it later.
It's so much more peaceful with that history put away. I can breathe again. That's what forgiveness has turned out to be for me.