Are you holding onto feeling wronged?

Rick Hanson talks about forgiveness. Hanson tells us what forgiveness is and is not and how to go about it.

An excerpt:

Fundamentally, forgiveness frees you from the tangles of anger and retribution, and from preoccupations with the past or with the running case in your mind about the person you're mad at. It shifts your sense of self from a passive one in which bad things happen to you, to one in which you are active in changing your own attitudes: you're a hammer now, no longer a nail. It widens your view to see the truth of the many, many things that make people act as they do, placing whatever happened in context, in a larger whole.

And most profoundly, as you forgive yourself (next week's JOT practice) - which can coincide with serious corrections in your own thoughts, words, and deeds - your own deep and natural goodness is increasingly revealed. http://archive.constantcontact.com/f...007544886.html

Many are reluctant to even consider forgiving. Forgiving is a process that takes work. Those who do the work are rewarded.

Thanks for this Elan,
I have found this process extremely confusing, this article gives some good pointers and even permission for things I have done.

One of the things I have truely struggled with is forgiveness. I have been told to do that constantly and it truely was confusing and challenging to me and presented a constant question of HOW do I acheive this act?

As I am trying to understand what I have PTSD I have been even further confused. When I was presented with flashbacks and triggers and depression and even a desire to give up on life due to anger at myself for somehow not knowing enough or doing enough or reacting correctly etc, I have been truely confused.

I did have many terrible things happen in my life that were caused by the issues of others. And throughout my life I have made many efforts to try to understand the different individuals and work around their incapicites and see their actions were truely due to their inabilities. I truely did have many extreme challenges and all of them were things that were somewhat sudden and very disturbing. I truely never saw it coming, could never have anticipated it and often I was left in being shocked and also wondering why I couldn't see it coming, was I just not smart enough to identify bad traits or thoughts in others?

For as long as I can remember I was observing behaviors that I truely could not understand, some of it in my own family enviornment, and also on the school bus, and in many social situations. I always had a strong desire to try to understand it, identify it, and become more consciously prepared for it in some way. And often someone would do something that would completely surprise me and there would be people that conveyed messages of didn't you recognize this or that, didn't you know it was coming? To my surprise I honestly didn't see or recognize many thought patterns or motivations of others. As a result I truely felt that I must be lacking in some intellectual capacity. For a long time, ,many years I tryed to learn or recognize bad behaviors or motivations, I didn't think of doing certain things myself so I felt I had to somehow learn how to think manipulative behavior patterns so I would not feel as though I was just stupid.

I have to say that it was constantly mind boggling to me to try to learn how to avoid certain types of bad behaviors in others and find ways to just function and be myself at the same time. As far as forgiving is concerned, the only way I could manage that is if I could look beyond the bad actions or behaviors of others to the reasons for those behavior patterns. I do have to say that one of the constants in my life has been trying to live through and understand the constant misbehaviors of others that never ceased to amaze me and I do have to admit that even though I was gaining in my abilities to identify many behavior patterns there was always something that would come that was even more challenging that anything else I had experienced or tried to overcome in my life. And the constant need for yet again identifying it and somehow forgiving it and yet making sure I somehow record it for the future for self protection and capacity to recognize it in the future.

I did find many ways of forgiving and accepting many and even helping others to learn to identify and do the same. However, unbeknownst to me I was also developing a sense of hypervigillance. As much as I gained more strength to venture out amongst humanity, it also exposed me to new areas of behaviors that I would again have to stop and try to understand and identify some very strange behavior patterns. I began to recognize that certain people were truely preditiors and one of the constants was to identify them and find ways to remove myself from interacting with them.

Learning how to forgive the actions of others is truely a difficult task, I had come to recognize that it was going to be a constant ongoing process in my life and as long as I was active in a social way with other human beings I was going to continue learning more and more behavior patterns that would truely take me by surprise. I had many people ask me how I could be so forgiving and yet others ask me why bother being forgiving or that I was too forgiving which truely added to my feelings of not only inadequacy and feeling of stupidity on some level but also confusion.

I do have to admit that for as much as I had learn and choose certain people to trust along the way, again I was often shocked and amazed at the actions and behaviors of even those I had chosen to trust. By experiencing that I had to dig even deeper on an even greater level of understanding and finding ways to forgive on totally new levels that proved to be extremely challenging.

I am now battling a very crippling disorder or damage either/or presented in my brain that has completely baffled me. I have been presented with a reality that somehow past events that I thought I had coped through actually created some kind of damage that I had no idea could happen and that it is extremely confusing and challenging. I have to say that there is a lot of anger that presents itself to me in ways I could have never imagined. I have to admitt that the feeling of some kind of shame or extreme confusion has been very challenging to comprehend and irradicate. While I thought that I had infact survived and found ways to understand and proceed forward even though some things were very challenging and extremely stressful and at times even down right frightening, I somehow didn't cope the way I had thought. I have to say it is truely profound and confusing.

Somehow, for some reason, I have to go back to a long drawing board and try to understand where I went wrong, how I went wrong and try to comprehend it, not an easy task. I appreciate this article because it is one area that I am truely trying to learn how to address in a way that will somehow bring a better understanding of perhaps something I missed unknowingly. Somehow I didn't forgive right, must have hung onto something I truely wasn't aware I hung on to.

In my time here at PC I have come to recognize that many people in general truely have a sense of confusion in this area and are also trying to overcome a sense of disenlightenment and confusion. If anything I am learning that in many ways I am not alone in my own issues and struggles. Anger and resentment is a constant with many and developing better skills and learning to recognize the signs and work at trying to change our own negetive reactions is a true challenge. And as I mentioned my time here at PC has shown me that I am amongst many that are trying to learn how to identify their own weaknesses and learn how to not only forgive themselves but also learn new coping methods on how to react when provoked. I have to say it can hard work to make a conscious choice to NOT react poorly when provoked.

I have to admitt that in my time here at PC I have struggled in many ways. I have been triggered, provoked, misunderstood, confused, and even had to address anger and the compultion to react.
I have, on several occasions wondered about wether to continue being a member at PC or to somehow walk away, wondered if I was gaining or adding to my confusion. The one thing that did help were those that somehow saw my struggle and made efforts to reach out, even though they themselves struggled.
Having a place to see a written ongoing record of how I react to different situations has given me a new way to observe my own perceptions and efforts to not only understand myself better, but to actually have the ability to revist my psychological footprints in a new way. And I have to say, in a new way I can also see the psycholgical footprints of others that are both good and bad. It sure is a challenge of a different nature. If anything it has taught me, I am human, humans make mistakes, live, learn, try, accept and HEAL, GIVE PERMISSION TO HEAL TO MYSELF AND OTHERS.

Open Eyes

Again, thank you for this article of advice.
Open Eyes