Forgive for the Sake of Your Own Sanity

Let it go.  I mean it.  Let it go.  For the sake of your sanity.  For the sake of your blood pressure.  Boo--just let. it. go. 

Better yet—hand it over.  Don’t just let it go.  Hand it over.  Hand it over to God/your Higher Power if you believe there is a God or Higher Power available to help you.   

Let me present you with a definition: to forgive means to stop blaming or being mad at someone for something that person has done, or not punish them for something 

We’ve all been wronged or harmed in one way or another.  If you haven’t yet, keep living.  We inhabit a world where things aren’t always fair and where bad things happen to good people.  If life has done you dirty, you aren’t alone.  We’re all in this together. 

But let me tell you this--we all have a choice.  When we are wronged or harmed, we can choose to forgive the perpetrator or we can hang on to the hurt.  Sometimes it feels right to hang on to the hurt—you feel 100% justified.  Especially if the way you’ve been hurt is so terrible that it’s beyond words--if the hurt is unspeakable and the resultant pain is immeasurable. 

It’s your choice.  Right?  It is.  Indeed, it is your choice.  But can I tell you what I’ve seen as a psychiatrist—as a psychiatrist who’s listened to story after story after story of patients’ lives?  I’ve seen that unforgiveness leads to all kinds of badness.  All. Kinds. Of. Badness. 

Let me give you a bit of a story.  I once had a patient who sought treatment with me due to struggles with anxiety as well as problems focusing and sleeping.  After listening to her story during our initial evaluation, I felt angry and outraged.  The things she’d suffered were terrible.  Downright terrible.  Entirely unfair.  Clearly not right.  The circumstances she’d experienced were so devastating that I almost didn’t believe her.  Surely, she was exaggerating.  She told me to Google the incident because the court records were public.  I did.  And there they were--the transcript of the court case just as she had described.  I wanted so badly for justice to be served and for every wrong she’d experienced to be made right.  The best I could tell, justice had not been served.  It seemed to me that there’d been a major cover up--and I felt sick.  No wonder she felt anxious.  No wonder she couldn’t focus.  No wonder she couldn’t sleep.  Each time I checked her blood pressure, it was through the roof.   

Over the course of several months, we worked through her grief and heartache, and I prescribed medications targeting focus, anxiety, and sleep.  Despite these interventions, her symptoms showed very little improvement.  Her symptoms continued to persist—at least in part, I believe—because she could not find it within herself (at least during the time that she remained in treatment with me) to forgive the perpetrator.  She continued to embrace an intense hatred toward this individual—and I certainly don’t blame her—but I think the hatred and unforgiveness continually gnawed away at her body and soul...and it was taking a massive toll on her physical and mental health. 

I’ll leave you with some quotes that could possibly help you embrace forgiveness for the sake of your own mental (and physical) health: 

“The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”  Martin Luther King, Jr. (paraphrasing of a quote from Theodore Parker) 

“It’s not an easy journey, to get to a place where you forgive people.  But it is such a powerful place, because it frees you.”  Tyler Perry 

“It’s one of the greatest gifts you can give yourself, to forgive.  Forgive everybody.”  Maya Angelou 

“There is no revenge so complete as forgiveness.”  Josh Billings 

“Forgiveness is an act of the will, and the will can function regardless of the temperature of the heart.”  Corrie Ten Boom