“Always forgive your enemies – nothing annoys them so much.”Oscar Wilde
Hands up anyone who has had a violation against them, something worthy of great condemnation?
*Hand goes up*
Nearly everyone people fit into this category by the time they reach adulthood, some worse than others. If you answered ‘no’ to this question you are either incredibly blessed or maybe you’re not being honest with yourself.
I am pretty convinced that unresolved anger, repressed or otherwise, is bad for our mental and physical health. Last entry I discussed outcome-based anger, this time I’m going to explore a more conventional way of dealing with hurt and anger in situations where we have clearly been violated. Through forgiveness. I believe true forgiveness is the best way (maybe the only way) to effectively deal with anger and hurt so it follows that forgiveness is good for our health.
Recently I completed the book Molecules Of Emotion: The Science Behind Mind-Body Medicine by Candace B. Pert PH D, a neuroscientist who has for years been investigating the science behind the body-mind connection. It is a great book for many reasons, but for the purpose of this discussion she mentions the idea of forgiveness being beneficial for our bodies and minds on a molecular level.
But the way to forgive is not necessarily straight forward or well understood.
Having been brought up in a Judaeo-Christian environment, which teaches “forgiveness” at all costs, the concept has been hammered home to me since I was about 5 years old. However I often found the words “to forgive” thrown around without actually exploring what it actually means and as a result the idea of forgiving someone is either unacceptable or not really done properly, resulting in continuing anger expressed in rage or repression.
So what is forgiveness?
I think the best way is to first look at what it is not:
Here are a few tips in how to forgive:
Forgiveness is definitely not an easy to thing to do, but I really think it is the key to managing the pain from anger and hurt and is extremely beneficial to your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual health.
And don’t forget to forgive yourself!
Through personal and professional experience I am very interested in mental and physical health and the correlation between the two. My goal is to document my ideas and experiences and hopefully get others thinking about their own health and wellbeing and perhaps help the odd person along the way…
Lucy Rigby – www.mentalhealthphysicalhealth.com