What is forgiveness therapy

Does the client spend a significant amount of mental and emotional energy rehashing the offense? Is the client in enough pain that he or she no longer wants to feel that way? Lemon, an ACA member who frequently works on forgiveness with her clients, also looks for signs. In terms of needing to be forgiven, clients will typically show remorse, a desire to make it right or a desire to move on, she says. Counselors can assess client readiness by looking at how their behaviors match those stages of change e.

But, ultimately, the decision to forgive lies with the client. Balkin stresses the importance of forgiveness being initiated by the client. Clients need to say that they are struggling with a situation and that they want to change it. People often assume that forgiveness is something that just naturally happens in the counseling process, Stuntzner says. However, forgiveness is not necessarily an intrinsic process. Forgiveness scholars, including Frederic Luskin, director of the Stanford University Forgiveness Project, and Robert Enright, co-founder of the International Forgiveness Institute, argue that forgiveness is a teachable skill that requires practice.

Hagedorn, an addictions counselor in Orlando, Florida, points out that one-third of the steps in step recovery programs deal with forgiveness. In Step 8 and Step 9, individuals make a list of everyone they have harmed and seek forgiveness from them.

Hagedorn has found that practicing forgiveness is also a good therapeutic technique for clients who need to learn how to be forgiven by others. Stuntzner agrees that practicing forgiveness is a helpful technique. If a client cannot forgive a hurt because it is too painful, she advises counselors to restructure the session and ask the client if there is someone else he or she can forgive.

Forgiving someone else can help clients experience the benefits of forgiveness and build confidence in the process, Stuntzner says, which might encourage them to readdress the previous hurt they were initially resistant to or at least apply forgiveness to other situations in their lives.

Clients must continue to develop the skill of forgiving because, as with any skill, it can get rusty without practice. Therefore, Stuntzner suggests that it might be beneficial for counselors to check in or have booster sessions with clients to see how they are doing with applying forgiveness in their daily lives. Another common misconception is that forgiveness is relational.

In fact, sometimes, reconciliation is not possible. Balkin offers an example from his own practice: A client is processing pain from the emotional neglect she experienced from her father growing up. He becomes terminally ill after she is an adult. While taking care of him, she tells him that she loves him, but he dies without ever returning the gesture. In this case, reconciliation is not possible, and the client must come to terms with the fact that she will never get what she wanted.

In situations such as these, intrapersonal forgiveness is key, Balkin says. The Jewish conceptualization of mechila , which means to wipe away debt, can serve as a helpful tool for teaching intrapersonal forgiveness, says Balkin, who finds this concept of forgiveness particularly empowering.

Because intrapersonal forgiveness does not require reconciliation and can be done on a personal level, people may assume incorrectly that it is easier, Balkin says. Admittedly, interpersonal forgiveness is difficult because a client must set aside the hurt and work on trusting the other person again, but intrapersonal forgiveness comes with its own set of challenges. When Stuntzner initially started out, she viewed forgiveness work as atheoretical, but she quickly realized that counseling journals often wanted it tied to a specific approach.

Even though she still believes forgiveness is a process in and of itself, she finds that it also works well with other counseling approaches. Lemon believes that forgiveness work can be integrated into any type of therapy. After all, she points out, clients typically do not come to counseling just to work on forgiveness, so adjunct therapies are required. For example, she thinks there is a cognitive behavioral aspect to forgiveness. She adds that Adlerian therapy and solution-focused brief therapy because it is goal-oriented also work well with forgiveness.

In addition, forgiveness meshes well with acceptance and commitment therapy ACT because of the aspects of self-acceptance and commitment to change, Lemon says.

Even so, Hagedorn cautions counselors against using ACT initially unless they are already familiar with it. ACT is not a stage-based or linear theory, so it requires counselors to possess a significant amount of experience with clients and the change process, he explains. Instead, he suggests that counselors begin with mindfulness-based interventions, which are an easy entryway to forgiveness work because they focus on getting people grounded and in the moment.

Clients often resist cognitive approaches to forgiveness, she adds, which is why mindful forgiveness is so important. Approaching forgiveness from an energetic standpoint, Lemon aims to help clients rid themselves of toxic emotions such as anger and resentment by using forgiveness meditation. This method combines mindful breathing, affirmations e.

We get ourselves sick about it, we have flashbacks, and we waste our time thinking of memories of the past that hurt us in the present. A lot of people hold on to hurtful memories for years. Therapists can help their clients move past their anger and pain that is tied to events of the past. Looking into the helpful role that forgiveness can play in the process of healing. Forgiveness is all about knowing that you have been hurt, accepting that pain as your own, then allowing yourself to continue with your day to day life.

It does not mean that you forget, it means that you have resolved the conflict, seen it as part of your life and are able to move forward without allowing it to interfere with your current relationships. So why does forgiveness matter? It might be time to try to forgive, even what seems unforgivable. Some people can forgive easily while others take a lot longer. Sometimes people will hang onto the anger that they feel inside for far too long.

These negative emotions do not do you any good, though. If you go through your life feeling angry about what has happened to you, then you will wind up losing out on many positive opportunities.

Instead of focusing on the good things in life, you will stay stuck in the past, fixated on a bad moment in time that you just cannot get over. Several therapy techniques can help a person to get over these negative emotions. One of the most popular types of therapy that people have been using is forgiveness therapy. This is a type of therapy that is all about letting go of the past and starting to move forward in life again.

It is a very helpful therapy that will work in many different situations. Forgiveness therapy works by allowing you to address the problems that are holding you back. You are feeling many emotions due to certain events in the past. For some people, this may involve a traumatic event such as someone that they trusted cheating on them. Others may be experiencing significant emotional trauma due to sexual abuse, physical abuse, or any number of other terrible things.

It is easy to see how these events can stymie people, but it is also possible to move past these issues over time. Those who are practicing forgiveness therapy will help patients to discuss the problems that are giving them pause. These past events that they remain fixated on will not go away unless they are addressed properly. Depending on the severity of the trauma that the patient was exposed to, discussing it may wind up feeling difficult at first.

Regardless, it is important to open up about your emotions to start moving forward. A forgiveness therapist is going to want to discuss what happened to you. You will need to talk about how these events made you feel back then and how they make you feel now. This is about expressing your emotions an coming to terms with them. You will be able to talk with your therapist about why you feel the way that you do.

Throughout this process, your therapist will be there for you. They will endeavor to provide you with a safe environment where you can feel as comfortable as possible to discuss these issues.

It may be a very emotional process, but it will be cathartic for you to get your feelings out into the open. Sometimes the therapist will simply listen to what you have to say, and other times they will ask you questions to help lead the conversation down a healthy path.

Next, you will be able to come to understand that what happened to you was not your fault. Sometimes patients hang onto the traumatic event and think about ways they could have prevented it. To move forward in life, you have to be able to accept that you cannot change the past.

This negative event in your life happened, and all you can do is move forward from it. Once you have decided to start going forward, you will be able to rebuild your feelings of safety.