Experiential Exercises for Working through Forgiveness

Tian Dayton’s best-selling book, Forgiving and Moving On, is now an app, courtesy of Health Communications. Learn more here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/daily-affirmations-for-forgiving/id439405037?mt=8

Forgiveness is a process not an event.

Rather than an endgame, forgiveness is important and beneficial because it motivates us to work through the powerful feeling and thought patterns that block it. Hanging onto unresolved emotions throws us out of balance emotionally; it affects our emotional sobriety. Forgiveness involves willingness to work through the feelings that keep us reverberating in unresolved, painful emotions that make forgiveness seem impossible, as well as a willingness to view, as Marcel Proust said, “the same landscape through different eyes”.

Forgiving others who have hurt us can seem insurmountable. Emotions such as anger, resentment and unresolved hurt come to the surface and cloud our willingness or ability to see past them. But it is in addressing these feelings openly and honestly that we can move through them toward healing.

Forgiveness also allows us to bring our emotional worlds back into balance: When we process our emotions rather than block them or stay stuck in them, we can draw meaning and insight from them. We can grow, we have choices. The process is challenging, but the freedom, sense of purpose and inner strength that comes from facing painful emotions and working them through actually grows self. We become deeper, wiser and bigger people.

Self-Forgiveness

People sometimes struggle the hardest with self-forgiveness. Self-recrimination and shame can make us retreat into rigid positions that make intimacy and connection feel fraught with discomfort. Becoming willing to forgive the self implies a recognition that hanging onto anger toward ourselves not only hurts us, but everyone around us.

Is self-forgiveness self-indulgence? Or is self-forgiveness the best healing strategy for both those we love and ourselves? Many who have tried, come to the uncomfortable realization that self-forgiveness can be as, or sometimes even more, challenging than forgiving another person. When we contemplate self-forgiveness, we can get snagged up on all sorts of warring emotions that block our ability to release ourselves from the grip of our own self-loathing. Why do I deserve self-forgiveness? Shouldn’t I be punished for what I have done? Am I just letting myself off the hook if I forgive myself? Am I condoning my own lousy behavior? Will I just go out and do this bad thing again and again if I embrace an attitude of self-forgiveness too easily or quickly? Will others think I am not holding myself accountable if I act as if I deserve self-forgiveness even if I have done things to be ashamed of and should be held accountable for?

Hair shirts and whips didn’t come out of nowhere; they were man’s way of punishing the self in order to deserve forgiveness. But in the absence of concrete rituals of self-punishment, are we just driving our contempt further into our unconscious with all of this punishing self-talk? After all, it’s probably true that sincere penance is what underlies any form of self-forgiveness that really works. Without it, true forgiveness hasn’t really taken place. So we have to ask ourselves, is it wisdom to forgive our selves, understanding that restoring inner peace will do more to keep us from acting in harmful ways than holding onto guilt and shame? Or are we denying of the impact that our behavior is having on others?

When are we acting out of wisdom, and when are we acting out of our own need to minimize our negative behavior when it comes to self-forgiveness? These are the kinds of questions that those who enter the recovery process sincerely ask themselves and even agonize over. But it’s in that very agony that the release sometimes comes. This grappling with our own behavior in a deep and real way is messy and painful, but may well be what eventually leads us to the realization that we cannot really hate another person without hating ourselves…and that we cannot really love another person with our loving ourselves, and that if we forgive ourselves, we will be less likely to pass on the secondary pain of self-loathing to those we love.

Self-forgiveness then, if accompanied by meaningful changes in thinking, feeling and behavior, can be liberating for both ourselves and those we’re close to. If our self-forgiveness is undertaken with wisdom and commitment to improvements in our own behavior, it can be an important step toward positive and long-lasting change in our lives and relationships.

Making Amends (Working the Ninth Step)

Addictive behaviors are often attempts at running from our own inner turbulence, misguided attempts at quieting an inner storm. The storm is often about feeling hurt by others or hurting others through our own behavior. The two are intertwined, feeding and fueling off each other. Asking for or granting forgiveness offers a way out, a way to make an attempt at restitution, to restore peace and serenity. We’ve done our part to right a wrong from both sides.

Dr. Ken Hart of the Leeds Forgiveness for Addiction Treatment Study (FATS) says, “Controversy often arises because people fail to understand that forgiveness is always desirable, but attempts at reconciliation may sometimes be ill-advised.” Dr. Hart’s study is testing two different approaches to forgiveness: secular and spiritual.

The secular approach aims to speed up the growth of empathy and compassion so that addicts can better understand the imperfections and flaws of those who have hurt them. In psychodrama, we do this through role reversal by giving clients the opportunity to stand in the shoes of another person. Usually, they come to realize that the sense of “badness” they carry around from having interpreted their abuse to mean “something must be wrong with me or I wouldn’t be treated this way,” isn’t and probably was never true. They were in the wrong place at the wrong time; they got hurt because another person was projecting his own unhealed pain on them. This awareness can be a great burden lifted and allows the hurt person to see her hurt differently and to take it less personally. It can also develop some empathy since the next question is, “Well, if it wasn’t about me in the first place, then what was it about? What was inside the person who hurt me?” This is a step toward real understanding.

The second type of forgiveness tested is spiritually based, Twelve-Step-oriented forgiveness used by Project MATCH  in    in the United States. In this approach, addicts who have harmed others are encouraged to apologize for their wrongdoing, thereby making attempts at restitution. According to Hart, “Seeking forgiveness through the amends process requires incredible humility; the assistance of a Higher Power (God) helps people to transcend their ego, which normally balks when asked to admit mistakes.” He goes on to say, “We think the two treatments can help people in addiction recovery drop the burden of carrying around pain from the past.”

These two approaches to forgiveness – gaining empathy if we’re the hurt party, and making amends if we’re the offending party – are useful cornerstones in our own practical approach to forgiveness. Twelve-Step work has long recognized the need for addicts or those who have perpetrated wrongs to do the Ninth Step: step Eight : “Made amends to those we had hurt except when to do so would harm them or others.”

This is of the Twelve Steps that form the cornerstone of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). The Twelve Steps are also the foundation of other programs such as Al-Anon, the program for the family members of addicts; Overeaters Anonymous (OA); Narcotics Anonymous (NA); Gamblers Anonymous (GA); and Debtors Anonymous (DA).

But forgiveness cannot and should not be pushed, rushed or arrived at prematurely. Clients who have been deeply wounded need to take ample time to process all of their feelings of anger, resentment and sadness, to mourn the losses they have experienced and come to terms with them.

Generally, this process itself will bring them closer to letting go, but it can often take many years. People develop PTSD symptoms because something has terrified them, whether they are a prisoner of war, a rape victim or a child who has been sexually, physically or emotionally abused by a parent. Someone in a position of power has forced the victim to submit to his or her will. That makes them vulnerable and when they share their stories that vulnerability surfaces, along with fear, mistrust and other feelings such as anger and sadness. It can be re-traumatizing if they feel coerced into forgiving either before they are ready or by sharing material they would rather not share. They need to feel safe and supported and go at their own pace with gentle encouragement. Generally speaking, forgiveness isn’t an idea introduced by the facilitator; it arises spontaneously from someone in a group and then we talk about it or work with what might be in its way.

The following exercises are designed to point out that forgiveness is, in fact, a process. Clients seem to pass through a predictable set of stages before forgiveness occurs, much as in the grief process. I have attempted to name those stages and created exercises to address the process of forgiveness. I would remind the reader that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to anything, including forgiveness. These stages are meant only to suggest a process and make it a workable one, to provide a framework. They may be experienced in a different order, leapfrogged or some skipped entirely, depending upon the severity of the issue and the person involved. In addiction, the goal is not to get rid of feelings like anger or sadness but to experience them and integrate them into the self-system with greater understanding and insight.

The Stages of Forgiveness

1. Waking up. We realize we’re holding onto something that’s hurting us (maybe even more than the other person) or that we need to forgive ourselves for something and stop beating ourselves up on the inside.
2. Anger and Resentment. We’re hurt and angry. We resent the other person because we see them as being the cause of our pain.
3. Sadness and Hurt. We’re in pain. We feel wronged or wounded and we’re probably also worrying that we did something wrong that we don’t quite understand.
4. Integration, Reorganization. We feel and experience split-off emotions associated with internal blocks and place them into a new context. We reintegrate them into ourselves with new awareness and insight.
5. Reinvestment. The process of forgiving and working through blocked emotion frees up energy that can be reinvested into building new relationships with self, others and life, or improving those we already have.

Examining Myths about Forgiveness

Goals:

1. To provide an action format for working with issues of forgiveness or letting go.
2. To provide a way of bringing forgiveness into the recovery process that isn’t overly prescriptive.

Steps:

1. Write each myth on a separate sheet of paper and scatter them on the floor:
   • If I forgive, my relationship with the person I’m forgiving will definitely improve.
   • If I forgive, I’ll no longer feel angry at that person for what happened.
   • If I forgive, I forgo my right to hurt feelings.
   • If I forgive, it means I want to continue to have a relationship with the person I’m forgiving.
   • If I forgive, it means I’m condoning the behavior of the person I’m forgiving.
   • If I haven’t forgotten, I haven’t really forgiven.
   • I only need to forgive once.
   • I forgive for the sake of the other person
   • Other
2. Invite group members to stand near the myth they most identify with.
3. Ask group members to share about why they choose that particular myth.
4. Repeat this process for a few of the myths that people most identify with.
5. Next, invite group members to walk over to someone who said something that they particularly identify with and place their hand on that person’s shoulder.
6. Invite group members to share with the person they chose why they chose them. Allow time for the sharing of the sub-groupings that will have naturally formed.
7. Move into letter writing or return to seats for sharing.

Writing a Letter of Forgiveness

Goals:

1. To provide a contained way in which to use letter-writing as an experiential process.
2. To illustrate how to move a letter into a variety of forms or experiential work.

Steps:

1. Ask participants to decide which type of letter to write (see Variations below).
2. Ask them to begin with “Dear So and So” and end with an appropriate closing, signing their names.
3. Encourage them to write anything that comes to mind. This letter is not meant to be sent, but to release their feelings. It works best to write quickly, not thinking about how it sounds or imagining that anyone will read it. Writing letters can be a useful closure activity to finish expressing feelings that have been stirred up through psychodrama.

Variations:

The following are some examples of letters that can be written:

• A letter of forgiveness to the self
• Granting forgiveness to someone who has hurt you
• Forgiving your self
• Asking for another person’s forgiveness
• A letter you would have liked to receive from another person asking for your forgiveness
• A letter asking forgiveness from someone else
• A letter expressing anger toward someone
• A letter from someone expressing sentiments he wishes that person had expressed
• A letter to an aspect of self or the self at a particular time in life
• A letter to a substance or behavior to which a person in recovery is saying good-bye

Letter-writing can be useful as a closure technique. If a lot of feelings come up for group members during a session, they can choose people to whom they feel they have something to say and take a few minutes to write letters to them — not to send, but to use as a psychodramatic release. After they have finished, they can proceed with any of the following:

• Share the letters with the group
• Read their letter to an empty chair representing the recipient of the letter
• Choose a group member to play the person to whom the letter is written and read it to him or her.
• Form pairs or subgroups and share the letters
• Share the letters with a therapist in one-to-one work

Clients may also write letters that they wish they would receive from someone. They may then:

• Choose a group member to play that person and experience the letter being read to them
• Share the letter with the group
• Share the letter in pairs or subgroups
• Share the letter with a therapist in one-to-one work

Experiential Reading of Letters

Steps:

1. Set up two chairs facing each other and invite whoever wishes to choose one of the following options:
   • Read their letter to an empty chair representing themselves
   • Read their letter to an empty chair representing another person
   • Choose someone to represent the person or self to whom the letter is written and read their letter to that role-player
   • Ask someone else to take on the role representing themselves and read their letter to that role-player
   • Ask someone to play the role of a person from whom they wish to receive a letter and have that role-player read the letter back to them (the client) as the client listens
2. Invite group members to take turns reading, using any of the above options. Feel free to allow the protagonist to reverse roles and answer back if they feel moved to do so, though this, too, should not be forced in any way.
3. Allow all those who wish to read their letters to do so.
4. Sit in the group and share and process how that experience felt.

Forgiving another Person or Forgiving the Self through Role-Play Vignettes

Goals:

1. To concretize the relationship that involves forgiveness issues.
2. To work through issues that may be blocking forgiveness.

Steps:

1. Ask group members to think of and share about someone whom they are having trouble forgiving, including themselves if that is what is most present.
2. Invite whoever feels warmed up to self-select and choose someone to play that person or themselves, or use an empty chair to represent one or the other.
3. Allow the scene to unfold and work with it using any and all techniques that might be appropriate, including role reversal.
4. Bring the scene to closure whenever it seems to be coming toward resolution by saying, “Say the last things you need to say for now.”
5. Return to seats for sharing.

Variations:

Several vignettes or monodramas can be done one right after the other, and the sharing can happen after several are finished. In this case, group members can share with whomever they identified and role-players can de-role.

Asking for another Person’s Forgiveness

Goals:

1. To get square with the self so that clients can stop carrying unspoken shame and guilt.
2. To concretize a forgiveness issue and work through the blocks within the self that may be keeping a client from making amends.

Steps:

1. Ask group members to think of someone from whom they want forgiveness or someone they feel a need to make an amends to.
2. Ask them to share about this person.
3. Invite whoever feels warmed up to self-select and choose someone to represent this person or use an empty chair.
4. Allow the protagonist to begin the scene in which they are asking for someone’s forgiveness. Let the scene progress and use role reversal and whatever other techniques feel appropriate.
5. When the scene seems to be coming to natural closure say, “Say the last things you’d like to say for now.”
6. Allow others to follow with more vignettes and then share after several, or return to seats for sharing.

Variation:

This scene can be done asking forgiveness from more than one person, if necessary.

Excerpted from Relationship Trauma Repair: An Experiential Model for Healing PTSD and The Living Stage: A Step by Step Guide to Psychodrama, Sociometry and Experiential Group Therapy, Dayton, HCI