How Decision-Based Forgiveness Can Set You Free.

The journey to inner healing requires a multi-faceted approach. Each arm of your healing serves a different purpose but for some, it can start with one thing, the desire to forgive.

Forgiveness is not a feeling, it is an act, but for many getting to that point feels impossible. When I started my journey, I knew I would have to learn to forgive all of the people who had harmed me and it felt like an insurmountable task. I was well aware that for me to heal, I would need to first, forgive.

The desire to forgive is the springboard for healing. It is an understanding that we must let go of the negative feelings that we have towards those who have wronged us. But how?

In my search for forgiveness, I came up against many walls. I was told to journal my feelings, to work through my resentments one by one until I didn’t feel them anymore. The more I worked through my resentments, the more appeared and soon, overwhelm took hold. I could not look at them anymore, as much as I knew I had to if I wanted to heal.

It was at this point that I came across a radical idea around forgiveness that changed the course of my healing and is something I now go to daily for inspiration, decision-based forgiveness.

Forgiveness And Your Healing Journey

Healing means identifying all the ways in which you’ve been harmed and deciding to release the feelings born from that pain, from your body and mind. To do so we have to make a conscious choice to not suffer the wounds of our past any longer. This is the first step in forgiveness but it’s usually what comes next, that most people find the hardest.

We most often believe that forgiveness is for religious people or those moments where small conflict arises. We often hear people say “I could never forgive that” or “I’ll never forgive them for what they did” when talking about significant and life-changing, traumatic experiences. But what we fail to understand is that forgiveness isn’t for the person who caused the harm, it is at its core, for us.

Unforgiveness can result in a plethora of difficult feelings, bitterness, resentment, retaliation, anger, rage and in some cases can lead towards extreme behaviours in search of justice. Studies suggest that a feeling of unforgiveness can manifest itself in the body as chronic illness. The toll of unforgiveness is high and often the sense of betrayal we feel from the pain inflicted on us can take us down a path of darkness.

When we consider having to forgive a person whose actions we cannot control and have seemingly torn our lives apart we can often go to places of “why should I? They don’t deserve it” but when we go to those places, we directly block our healing. By allowing ourselves to believe that another person, no matter how deeply they’ve hurt us doesn’t deserve forgiveness, we immediately deny our own forgiveness and it is the need to forgive ourselves that truly sets us free.

Our refusal to see others as just like us means we shut down our ability to understand why we ourselves may deserve forgiveness for the harmful things that we have done. So, the question we must ask ourselves at the beginning of our journey is “If I did what they did would I want to be forgiven?” but we must connect to this question on a heart level.

When we view ourselves as separate from others, we cause a disconnect at the heart level that forces us to believe that somehow, we should all be treated differently and given a different amount of grace depending on how many harmful things we have done in our world. This view dehumanises others and we build an us vs them dynamic in our minds that stops us from seeing the truth of our interconnectedness.

Pain inflicted upon us is pain being expressed by a being who had pain inflicted on them. Their outward expression of pain, while hard to understand, is them seeking safety and/or connection within their world. This understanding does not condone their behaviour but it helps us to see that the wrongs we have faced are a product of years of trauma passed from person to person and its spread knows no bounds, the person who hurt us is also hurt. When we can see that we are all the same our view of ourselves expands, opening us up to understanding that if we deserve forgiveness for our wrongs, so do they.

Decision-based Forgiveness

We’ve been led to believe that forgiveness is a place that we slowly arrive at when we start to heal but many believe, it is the opposite. We must make a deep-seated decision to forgive first and then the healing can begin, solidifying our forgiveness in the process. When we make the conscious choice to forgive, the journey we must take to heal becomes clearer. It sets an intention, a goal and an outcome.

The premise behind decision-based forgiveness is an intentional and deliberate process of letting go of resentment and a desire for vengeance by allowing yourself to recognise that the person who harmed you is entirely flawed and longing to be seen, just like you.

The decision you make to forgive helps you confront the burden of the weight of unforgiveness. It shows you where feelings of bitterness and resentment have set up home in your body leaving you living in a constant state of fight, flight, freeze or fawn and that freeing yourself from that negative cycle is your pathway forward.

Holding on to feelings of resentment and vengeance towards someone who has harmed you does not change or affect them, it does not take away the pain caused by the act that harmed you, it in fact makes it bigger. Recognising this helps you to see that by not forgiving you are only harming yourself. This is how you arrive at your decision to forgive.

Once you’ve decided to forgive and recognise the impact that unforgiveness has on you, you must then go about building healing strategies into your daily routine. The route you choose to move forward will help you to cement your decision to forgive.

Being Accountable

To see the importance of forgiving someone we must fully understand the significance of receiving forgiveness. In seeing ourselves as deserving of forgiveness we see why others are also deserving. To do this we must recognise ourselves as truly flawed and imperfect. We must notice our negative patterns and where our childhood wounds have led us towards unwanted behaviours, even if they are behaviours that we may be completely unaware of.

We must be prepared to shine a light on all of our flaws. This is a painful but freeing process that allows us to see how we may have impacted someone’s life in a way that we didn’t intend to, even if our actions were seemingly innocent, reasonable or justified to us. Our negative behaviours are an expression of our internal pain, the worse the pain the worse the behaviour.

If we allow ourselves to fully see the way our behaviours may have hurt someone, we can fully acknowledge our own desire to be forgiven and that in the moments when we’ve caused harm, we were just longing to be seen. When we fully take stock of this and become accountable for our behaviour, we can see why the decision to forgive is important. But the decision is a two-way street, you cannot just forgive them, you must also forgive yourself and that is how you truly set yourself free.

The Importance Of Self-forgiveness

To forgive ourselves we must follow the same decision-making process as we make to forgive others. We must decide to forgive ourselves and let go of the resentment we hold towards ourselves, but the act of self-forgiveness is often harder than forgiving someone else. Sometimes bringing awareness to our wrongdoings can trigger childhood wounds of feeling unworthy or not good enough. This is where the use of self-love comes in. We must talk to those parts of us as if they were our dearest loved ones and offer the wounded child within us the validation, they so deeply desired but did not get.

If we have spent a lifetime believing that we are unworthy or not good enough this can be a daunting task. Emotions may rise that are difficult to feel. These difficult feelings are where you need the kindest and most tender loving words to ourselves. Soothe your pain the way you would soothe the pain of a small child. Sit with it, do not push it away. Encourage yourself with words of love and compassion and gently but softly tell yourself “I forgive you” and add your name. This will feel hard at the beginning but doing this repeatedly will bring ease to the process and eventually, you will believe it as truth.

Slowly this act transforms the beliefs you have formed about yourself, you start to see yourself as worthy and human. You recognise your flaws as being changeable and growth starts to occur. A sense of ease around your own mistakes starts to build, gently setting you free. Self-forgiveness is a radical act of self-love, transforming the heart and mind.

Self-forgiveness and the healing pathways that we take to get there allow us to truly process our wrongdoings healthily by offering validation to the most wounded parts of us. This validation brings an awareness of others that provides us with the knock-on effect of being able to forgive those who have harmed us, easier.

Forgiveness Is Not Tolerance

Forgiveness is not a one-time event; it is a decision that we must make within ourselves time and time again. Our pain is not resolved by saying it once and we may be required to forgive someone or ourselves for many hurtful things.  

Forgiveness isn’t an act that we should be pressured into by others. It is not a requirement and it is not something you owe to someone. It is a deeply personal decision that requires processing before it can be given.

Forgiveness doesn’t relieve a person of their responsibilities and the decision to forgive is not the decision to trust. Trust bonds that are broken can be rebuilt in most circumstances but this is an entirely separate process and requires both parties to be involved. Forgiveness doesn’t require the input of both parties.

It’s sometimes hard to face those we want or need to forgive. Forgiveness doesn’t have to be expressed to the person who hurt us but deciding to forgive them is an important part of the healing process. Take the time to visualise the person who hurt you and say it out loud to them as if they were right in front of you, your heart and mind don’t know that you aren’t speaking to them in person.

Forgiveness does not condone or deny the actions a person takes towards us, it simply provides us the ability to move beyond the pain. It frees us and them, bringing a newfound clarity to the situation, providing a sense of calmness and acceptance. In slowly letting go of resentment, anger and bitterness we gently free ourselves from the cage of rumination that binds us to the past. By forgiving we are not forgetting, we are simply choosing to lay it to rest.

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Forgiveness is a gift that you can give to someone, acknowledgement of their mistake can heal a part of them, especially if their harm was unintended and/or accidental. However, the true gift is in the releasing of our own resentment, anger and bitterness. Forgiveness is a radical act of self-love, releasing us from the ties that bind us to painful experiences. Reaching the point where forgiveness feels real within your heart can take time and requires a lot of internal processing. Deciding to forgive is the very first step, the steps you take once your decision is made are the ones that help to truly set you free.