#67: Why Is It So Freaking Hard To Forgive?

00:00Why is it so freaking hard to forgive? What's up, you guys? Welcome to the Therapy Brothers Podcast. I'm Brannon. I'm Tyler. We're brothers. We're therapists. We're not afraid of your questions, so bring it. What's going on, you guys? I'm Tyler, wandering therapist here today.00:29I'm on my own. Brandon is out of town on a retreat in Peru, and I hope he's having a good time. He's gotten to go and see Machu Picchu and some other things, and I hope he's traveling safe. And I'll miss him today because this topic is such a good topic. Before we jump into our question today, there's a couple of things I want to cover. The first one is that we just want to get a shout out for our review for the day.00:57This one comes from Arturo and it says, the best therapists in the industry. I've heard a lot of podcasts and work with a lot of therapists, and the Patrick brothers are the best by a mile. Tyler's podcast on Surrender is the best I've ever heard on the topic and the most helpful and instructional advice for someone trying to learn how to live a new life of surrender. Some need their morning cup of coffee to start each day. I just need a cup of Therapy Brothers podcast to start each day.01:28Well, Jeez, archeryl. Thank you. That's an awesome review. I wish Brandon was here to hear this one, but thank you. I appreciate you guys'reviews. The way that you guys can help us if you enjoy the content that we're putting out is to continue to review, rate and share these episodes because that's how we reach other people and are able to make a bigger difference for those who could benefit from the information that we have. So thank you. I appreciate that. Arturo. The other thing that I wanted to mention before we get started today is that we are now official.01:58We've got a live website here for the upcoming men's conference that we're going to be having. It is scheduled for August 19 through the 21st. It's a three day event. It's going to be in Cache Valley, Utah. And this is for Christian men who are looking to reclaim their heart, to get back in touch with the things that are inside of them that God designed them to be in terms of their masculinity and their masculine heart. This is an event that Brandon and I have spent a lot of time and energy and effort in.02:29Both of us have a passion in this area and feel as if it's almost a calling for us to be doing these things. So we have limited availability. We also have early bird pricing, so you can get it for half price right now until the end of May. So go to Risingsunconference.com Sun, spelled as in MyChild Sun Risingunconference.com. Give it a look. And we have limited spots available, so grab yours and get it at a really good price before the price goes up at the end of May.03:03All right, let's jump into our question today. This is a really good question. It's something that I think every one of us in some way has to deal withfrom time to time in our life. It's a difficult thing to try to navigate, and it's definitely something that can really tear your heartstrings. So let's jump into the question. I'll read it, and we'll get into a few thoughts that I'm having on this subject of forgiveness. It says I am not healing from the betrayal trauma of my spouse.03:34How did Christ do it? How did he love someone even when he knew what they were going to do to him? This is pretty powerful and pretty hard. So first, I just want to say to you who submitted the question that I know how difficult it is to be in the spot of betrayal, trauma, or other forms of trauma and to know and in some ways that there are things that we have no control over and what our partner may end up doing or choosing to do, and that those choices have a very significant effect on our lives and on the lives of other people around them.04:11This is one of those things that we really struggle with in our world. And I know I struggle with this on my own, in my own life is to it makes me cringe at the thought of some of the choices that I've made in the past and the pain that I've caused others knowing that I might have been ignorant or maybe when I wasn't ignorant, still choosing to do certain things and hurt other people. So let's talk a little bit about this idea of forgiveness, because I think sometimes there's a couple of things that get us tripped up on this idea of forgiveness and why it's so difficult to forgive.04:42One of the first things that I think happens for us with the process of forgiveness is that we don't acknowledge the reasons for our lack of forgiveness. And I believe that there's some power in acknowledging those things, understanding why it is so difficult and why we don't want to forgive people because some of those things are valid. And if we understand those things, we can address them when we are hurt by somebody. One of the things that we do to self protect is we slant everything to a negative scale.05:13We look for reasons to continue to confirm why we wouldn't want to lean ourselves back into the relationship and or forgive in order to protect ourselves from being hurt again. So in a sense, when we're in an unforgiving place, it might just be the very beginning stage of trying to figure out boundaries. We're trying to figure out how to not get hurt again. And so it makes sense that it's hard to let it go because until we can understand how to actually protect ourselves, how to actually take care of ourselves without continuing to be hurt.05:47One of the natural responses for us is to stay angry and resentful and bitter, because those things allow us to be justified in not being vulnerable. And in doing so, they feel like a form of self protection. So it makes sense that we wouldn't want to be forgiving simply for the fact of self protection. The other thing that I think happens with forgiveness and why it's so difficult is that we live, most of us in our own minds, from a place of what's called just world theory.06:17And what just world theory means is that we all get what we deserve. So this can be a really damaging thing for us in some ways. When we see something on the news and say, well, that must have been something that they deserve, because this or this or this must be going on in their life or in the past. I've heard things with people who have been sexually assaulted. And the just world theorists will say, well, they shouldn't have been dressing that way, or they should have been going to that certain partywhere that thing happened. They got what was coming to them, which obviously, when you hear those things, it makes your stomach turn inside, right?06:49But somehow we all live from that place. We all feel like justice must be served, especially when we are the ones who have had the injustice served to us, or when our loved ones were close to us have had the injustice served to us. So we hold on to our resentments and our bitterness and our anger and our frustration sometimes because we feel like that's the only way that we're going to be able to continue to exact justice.07:22And we'll have to hold on to it until justice has been served. This is a dangerous game, because even though it's natural for us to be in that place in many situations, there is no way that true justice can actually be served. Several years ago, my wife and I had our D day with my wife being betrayed by me.07:52And there are certain things that I did, certain deceptions that I had going on in my life, mostly for my own self protection. I wasn't really thinking about how it would affect her, but it did. And when she found out about it, it rocked her world. It caused everything to be thrown into question. It caused her to wonder if I was really the person that I said I was. It caused her to wonder if she was safe enough to stay in the same house as me. It caused her to wonder if I was not telling other things in my life, if I was being dishonest in other areas of my life.08:21It caused her to have all sorts of shaky ground. And the simple truth is that in the things that I did, ultimately the best that I could do was try to get myself into recovery, become a better man, become an honest man. But the truth is that I was never going to be able to fix the damage that I had done.08:46And so if my wife is staying stuck in a place of non forgiveness, waiting for justice to be served, or if she's the one who has to exactly the justice, there's a potential that she could stay stuck in that ultimately for the rest of our lives. And she could hate me and I could never quite fill the gap and she could be justified and I could continue to work at it. And ultimately both of us could continue to stay in our misery until we died.09:12But when my wife would stay stuck in that place of needing to play God, where does the emotional check get cashed? It gets cashed on her. She's stuck with that bitterness. She's stuck with the resentment. She's stuck with all of the pain. She in essence has to carry that pain continually until justice gets served. Unless there's another way, then that's going to be a continual thing.09:41And that's a natural thing for us, right? So if we can pause and admit those two things that I am in some ways self protecting and in other ways, maybe I'm the one who feels like I've got an exact justice, because if I don't, nobody will. None of us like seeing somebody get away with something. My wife calls me the moral justice police because I'm the kind of guy who like even in a parking lot, if someone steals a parking spot from a little old Lady, I'll get out of my car and I'll walk over and I'll tell the person that they were in considerate and they should probably move.10:13And it causes some tension once in a while. Those types of things. I'm as guilty of this as anybody else that none of us like to see injustice and feellike somebody gets away with it. All of us like to see justice. Think about the movies you watch. Think about the media you watch. Think about the things that you're looking at on your social media feeds. And all of us are constantly looking for justice to be served.10:38If you want to see this thing in action, go to your child's, go to like your twelve year old child's soccer game, and watch how both of the parents think the referee is on the other team's side. And then every time a call gets made or any time one of their players take some other player out, it's justice being served. And so everyone can stay justified in their own bitterness and their own frustration and ultimately stay in their place of being their own victim. Right? There's got to be a different way.11:07There has to be some way to release those feelings because otherwise we are hosed into having to hold on to those emotions simply for the sake of doing our part towards justice. The beautiful thing about this is that if we can understand those things, we can meet ourselves with those things with compassion first. Is it okay that I have these feelings? Yes. Is it okay that I want justice served?11:38Yes. Can I have some compassion for myself in that situation first? And that's part of the answer to the question I think today is to get in the act of meeting yourself with compassion and giving yourself permission to be a work in progress with this process of forgiveness. Now how did Christ do it? That's the question. Well, Christ had some information that I think sometimes we forget.12:07Christ understood the principle that there needed to be a third party involved in order for things to be set right and to be made just. Christ understood that in order for there to be mercy for the sinner and justice for the victim, there had to be a third party. And he happened to understand his true nature as that third party.12:30He understood that he had to be in that spot where he could hold simultaneously the mercy for the person who does the damage, even the people who are doing damage to him at the same time that he could fill the gap for justice, which is exactly what his atonement was for. It's in essence, what makes God God. And one of the things that I think that we can do is that we can continually bring ourselves to the place of meeting ourselves, where we're at understanding that forgiveness is actually in some ways, in many ways, it's the process of grieving.13:04It's coming to a place of understanding and realizing that things have been done that we shouldn't wish or shouldn't have been done, and yet they have been done. And we can go through the sadness and the anger and the bargaining and the depression around the fact that those things have happened to us. And we get a chance to cycle through those things as many times as we want to or as we need to, until our hearts are ready to ultimately give the outcome over to something or somebody bigger than ourselves.13:34And that can be an ongoing process. And maybe I come to a place where I'm able to let go for a time, and then something happens and I get hurt again or somebody else hurts me or it reminds me of old things and I pick it back up. And the beautiful thing is that I get a chance to go back through that process again until I'm able to fully give it over and surrender it againto something or somebody bigger than myself. That's the process. It's not a linear thing.14:03It's something that is more of an ongoing work in progress than it is a step by step thing to get there. And I think if we understand that and give ourselves permission to be in that space, we can immediately alleviate some of our own suffering in the circumstances that we're in. So how can you love somebody even when you know that they might hurt you? Again, this is a really challenging thing. I think sometimes we associate forgiveness with.14:36They say forgive and forget. Well, we also think forgive means trust. Those things are not connected to each other. Forgiveness is simply the act of letting go. And ultimately the only thing that it's doing is setting the prisoner free. And the prisoner is actually the victim. The person who has the Unforgiven heart is the victim because they're the ones who have to carry the burden of justice. They're the ones who have to carry the burden of the pain that they felt.15:04And so forgiveness is not even about the perpetrator. Forgiveness is for the person who needs to forgive so that they can set their heart free. Again, looking at it from those terms, we are now looking for a way to set ourselves free and be able to liberate ourselves from the heavy pack that we're carrying. I love this quote by CS Lewis.15:33He says, to be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. It kind of goes back into that principle of I often hear in my office, I'll often hear somebody say there's nothing that I could do that could make up for the thing that my partner has done to me. In essence, what they're saying is that they've done something so terrible and so wrong that there's nothing that I could do that's as bad as they've done.16:05And they use that as like justification for holding on to the bitterness and the anger. And I think what CS Lewis is saying here in this quote is he saying that really all of us fall short in some way. Maybe mine are a lot bigger than other people's. Maybe other people's are a lot bigger than mine. If we're stuck in a game of comparing ourselves to the other person, in essence, it's like we're both diving into the dumpster and getting dirty, and then we're comparing who's more dirty.16:39At the end of the day, that's not the right solution. The right solution is to climb out of the dumpster, to clean ourselves off, and to acknowledge that we're both dirty. And really the only thing that I can control is to try to clean myself off. So here's a tool that I sometimes teach the people that I counsel with. It's like a mental tool that you can kind of use sometimes to try to help this thing move a little bit. When you find yourself in resentment or anger or non forgiveness, practice the art of trying to see a bigger picture and realizing that it's not a comparison between how bad you are and how bad the other person is that's done something to hurt you.17:15The ultimate thing is that we both need forgiveness. There are many things in my life that I've done. Some of them that I feel are pretty big that are in desperate need of forgiveness. And if I need forgiveness for my own peace of mind, for my own progress, how much more important is it for me to offer that forgiveness to the next person?17:42How would I feel justified in accepting the forgiveness that I so desperately need if I'm unwilling to do that for somebody else? And if I can get in that headspace, sometimes it's easier to start letting things go. So I have a little story here, something that happened in my own past. I think I've shared this in a past episode or something before, but when I was in graduate school, I was in a group of six students, and in that six students, we pretty much did everything together in terms of school work.18:16And there was one particular faculty member that for some reason didn't necessarily like me. I think I know the reasons. But ultimately what ended up happening is that I ended up getting a C minus in my ethics course, and a C minus in our program was the equivalent of getting an F. And if you got an F and they could cancel you out of the program. And so I got called into her office, and she sat me down and she said, hey, you haven't turned in any of your assignments, even though I had turned in all of my assignments.18:49And she said, Due to that, we're thinking about canceling you out of the program unless you can go and get all of your assignments done in the next three or four days before the semester ends. And I was a little frustrated by that and upset by it, but I got up and I went out to my car, and I brought in my assignments, and I turned them into her and showed her that I had already done them. And the issue was that there was something that was unfair and what was happening there.19:19And so I took it to some other places. I took it to some higher ups in the Department. And we ended up having a meeting. And the meeting, I think, was intended to go well, but it didn't go so well. And what ended up happening is it caused more anger and resentment on her side of things. She ended up calling my boss and telling my boss that she thought I was unethical and that I was going to lose my license at some point, for whatever reasons. And so then I had to be called in and talk with my boss.19:45And in essence, what happened is that this woman really just tried to make my life a living hell for the rest of my education while I was at that school. And I felt an insane amount of bitterness and anger and frustration because I didn't understand where it was coming from. I didn't understand why I was being the target of these things. And things from my lens seemed so totally unfair. And I remember just having this bitterness settle into my heart.20:15I felt angry and upset. I felt my jaw clench every time I went to school. Every time I go to class or past her in the hallway, I feel my whole body stiffen up. And it was just causing a lot of havoc in my life to hold onto those things. And I remember talking to my supervisor one day and kind of expressing some of my frustrations over this. And he brought up the same principle that we're talking about here, which is that I don't really know what's going on in her life.20:46What she's doing is not okay. What I was doing to protect myself was fine in doing what I did to go have the other meetings and things. But at the end of the day, it was on me to let go, regardless of whether or not she was going to continue to act the way that she was going to continue. I had to let go to give myself some freedom. And one of the ways that I could do that was to recognize that I have multiple things in my life that I still hold on to that I wish I could obtain forgiveness for.21:17I'll tell you another story. I remember this is a little bit of a personal story for me, but I remember as a child, we lived in a really cool place where there were like 20 or 30 kids that kind of lived on the street or the streets next to us. And the congregating space was over across the street from my house where there was a Church building. We grew up next to a Church building that had a big field that we could play in and play games in a big parking lot that we could ride our roller blades and play street hockey and things on.21:48And so the kids would all congregate over there. And I remember at one point a new boy moved into our neighborhood. And he was different than all the other kids. He didn't quite fit in. He was a new kid, and he kind of became the subject of teasing and getting picked on a little bit here and there. And I remember one particular day I was frustrated over some things that had gone on at school and in my own house. And I went out to go play.22:11And this kid was over there and really through no fault of his own and really through all of my immaturity, I picked a fight with him and basically ran him off. And I never saw him again. He never came back to play at the Church building. He actually never came back to school. I still to this day, don't know what happened to him.22:43And in my own process of attempting to find peace and healing. I've tried to find him online, I've tried to find him on social media, and I have not been able to this day to find him. And I so desperately hope that at some point I get a chance to meet him face to face and express my apologies to him. But to this day, I haven't really been able to have a chance to be forgiven, at least from him. The only place that I can be forgiven from is from a higher power.23:12Now, the only way that I can try to make rectification here is to try to be a better man each day, to try to look for ways to stand up for the underdog which I do. But at the end of the day, I'm in desperate need of forgiveness. And if I need that forgiveness so much for being an ignorant, stupid kid who did something mean, how can I think that I'd be allowed to hold on to my own bitterness towards this teacher that I had?23:46The truth is that the only real answer here is to let go. And if we can remember that we can move ourselves more systematically towards that place of peace and letting go. I know that this is really difficult. Something that can also be helpful here with one other kind of idea and tool is that our ability to forgive can hinge upon a couple of other things.24:12One is that we can find compassion, and if not compassion, at least understanding for the person who has hurt us without being okay with their behavior. It's possible for me to see that this teacher who wounded me has probably got wounds of her own in some ways that she in her own good mind and her own good faith is probably doing the best she could. And somehow I got in the way of her best.24:42Sometimes, if I can understand that, I can at least let my heart let go of needing to have justice because there's also room for mercy. I can still be okay with saying what happened to me was not okay. But there's a need for mercy, and I need to be able to learn to be able to let those things go in order for mercy to have a part. And if I can understand that when I find compassion for the person who's wounded me, I have a much harder timestaying bitter and angry.25:14The second piece here that helps with forgiveness is that I systematically grow myself into healing as I pick myself back up, as I get my feet planted, as I take whatever wounds came as a result of the hurt that came. And I address those wounds and I become more fully able to step into who I actually am. I can set boundaries in my relationships with confidence in knowing who I am, so I can actually love somebody.25:45And because I love them, and because I love myself. I can hold boundaries in my relationships. The best boundaries are actually set informed with love. So if I'm getting continually lied to and deceived in my relationships I'm probably going to eventually set some boundaries in that relationship if I keep the relationship and at that point I can love the person at the level that the relationship can tolerate while at the same time holding the boundaries that I need to to protect myself from continually being used.26:21If I have someone who's coming into my house to steal something and maybe it's a family member I want to love them. I know that if I let them into my house and they're going to steal something and I'm going to resent them. So I set the boundary by saying I'll go out to lunch with you somewhere we can have a conversation with each other and I can love you at that level but you're not coming into my house to take my property. In essence that's what boundaries do is they allow us to love somebody by keeping the relationship in the space that the relationship needs to be in order to keep our values intact.26:56So hopefully this is helpful for you guys. Something to think about. Think about your own relationships. Maybe both directions. Today is the challenge. Is there somebody that I'm holding a resentment towards that I could possibly begin the process of letting go and emulating Christ and understanding that there can both be justice and mercy but that I'm not the one who distributes justice and is there something that I need in my life to be forgiven of?27:25If you're listening right now that something comes to mind is there somebody that you need to approach to ask forgiveness? My challenge to you would be that you don't let it wait. Seek that person out before it's too late. Express your sorrow. Commit to being a better person. Do what you can to repair the relationship. Understanding that you probably can't totally fix it. And I'm convinced that in doing so you'll feel a burden come off your shoulders.27:55You'll feel lighter, you'll have a deeper understanding of who you are and you'll have a deep level of confidence. So hopefully this is helpful. You guys if you like this episode please share it like subscribe and you guys have an awesome week.