How Can I Forgive You? Part 2

You may soon learn that to live in peace with them you need to silence your voice and swallow their scorn.

31."When a nun in elementary school whacked me with a geogra-phy book for playing the wrong note during my piano lesson, my mother made me practice more," a patient named Denise told me.

"When my boyfriend slammed his fist through our den wall, my mother asked me, 'What did you do to provoke him?' When I told her Dad put his tongue in my mouth, she told me to shut up, that my tongue was more dangerous than his. Whatever happened to me, she made me feel I deserved it, I caused it. I learned not to make waves. I a.s.sumed I had no right to complain."

Origins of If you want to break out of your pattern of mindless peacemaking, it may help to look back at your early life and identify the critical experiences that shaped you. Did you grow up so frightened of conflict that you couldn't acknowledge when you were violated, let alone expect the offender to make repairs? Were you so traumatized by a parent's abandonment that you desperately held on to relations.h.i.+ps, no matter how superficial or unhealthy the bond? Were you taught to be so other-directed that you couldn't appreciate yourself except when you were serving someone else? Did you grow up with an excessive sense of responsibility, a hypersensitivity to others'

needs and feelings?

Perhaps a family member was physically ill or emotionally dis-abled, and you were thrust into the role of a "parentified" child who readily sacrifices herself to care for others. Perhaps your parents were critical or controlling, and you learned to surrender your needs in order to avoid humiliation. As disparate as these two experiences are, both may lead you to subjugate your needs as an adult,16 and forgive too quickly and automatically for your own good.

The roots of your behavior may also go back to the moral and religious exhortations of your family or community. You may have been taught that decent people forgive, that if you aspire to behave in a G.o.dlike way, you have no other choice.

Pressure to forgive at any cost may be drilled into you through seemingly innocent messages. One of my patients was told again 32 and again, "Birds in their little nests agree; why can't we?" These family mandates get deeply embedded in us at a young age and stay with us throughout life.

Your biological imperatives are another variable. Low levels of testosterone, for example, may contribute to pa.s.sivity or shyness and make you more likely to lay down your arms and avoid conflict than to seek revenge or even acknowledge the harm that was done to you.

A patient named Phyllis traced her pattern of Cheap Forgiveness directly to her relations.h.i.+p with her mother. Phyllis must have told me the same story ten times in therapy-it captured a formative experience in the development of her adult self. "My mother used to pick out my clothes for me," she would recall. "She said she knew what looked good on me, and what I liked, better than I did. Even as a child I sensed how badly she needed me to love her, to merge with her. She told me how mean her mother had been to her, always favoring her sister-and how important it was that we be close. Her idea of 'close' was to take over. My idea was to let her dominate me. I came to doubt my ability to know what I felt or thought as a separate human being. I couldn't say no to her. It's the same with my husband, Steve. For years I've tried to be his good little wife, eviscerating myself, mastering the art of staying attached to a difficult, overbearing person, while ignoring my resentment, my despair. After two kids and thirty years of marriage, I just found out he's been carrying on with his personal trainer for ten years. He put her through a Ph.D. program-in psychology.

I've told him I need him to get into therapy with me to make sense of it all, but he insists the affair is over. 'My honey, my baby,' he says, pleading with me not to leave; and on some level I ask myself, 'Why can't I just believe him? Why can't I just give up my tantrums, forgive him, and move on?' A part of me wants to scream and another part wants to make him happy. It's so hard to separate myself out from all this. And that's what I'm here to work on with you."

If, you, like Phyllis, have a propensity to forgive too easily, you may be responding not to a particular interaction but to early childhood patterns. To access them, I encourage you to look closely at how you routinely react to injury. Ask yourself: Cheap Forgiveness 33.* Do I compulsively seek to repair relations.h.i.+ps, regardless of the circ.u.mstances or my feelings?

* Do I beat up on myself when someone mistreats me?

* Do I make excuses for the offender?

* Do I repress or deny a violation?

* Do I fail to know my anger or my despair?

* Do I fail to voice my objections or my needs?

* Do I often feel powerless, trapped, manipulated, snuffed out?

* Do I pardon the offender as a way of a.s.serting my control, dominance, or moral superiority?

* Do I extend a generosity of spirit to everyone, and therefore to no one?

* Is Cheap Forgiveness my typical, robotic response when someone hurts me? If so, does it serve me in this particular situation, or should I consider another tack?

What you may discover is that your characteristic response is not necessarily your healthiest-that it makes more sense, sometimes, to offer the offender an opportunity to apologize and seek forgiveness.

That's what a high school teacher named Ruth did when her son Josh insulted her. "I E-mailed him, asking if his girlfriend Andrea would like some Chanel perfume for her birthday," Ruth told me. "His response was short and to the point. 'Isn't that the perfume you and your mother used to wear? Why would I want my girlfriend smelling like the two of you?' I felt slapped-not just because of the insult but because Mom died just a few months ago."

Ruth revealed her hurt to me but said nothing to her son. Having grown up taking care of a mentally handicapped sister, she was a perfunctory peacekeeper-unfailingly considerate, sympathetic, programmed to deny her own hurt feelings. Oversolicitous and desperate for affection, she defined herself through the approving eyes of others, even those who violated her.

Ruth was prepared to shake off her feelings, as always, and go back to grading papers, when she remembered how her father-"a 34 sweet, soft-spoken man who never confronted anyone"-had repri-manded her long ago for behaving abominably toward her mother.

"I was a soph.o.m.ore in high school, going out on a first date with a real catch-at least he seemed that way at the time," Ruth said, "and I was terrified that Mom, with her lack of education, would say something stupid and spoil my chances with this guy, so I instructed her to stay in the kitchen and not come to the door when the bell rang. My father overheard me and let me have it. 'You're totally out of line, insulting your mother and hurting her feelings,' he scolded me, in a voice sterner than I had ever heard before. 'This woman kills herself for you-you owe her nothing but grat.i.tude. Don't you ever speak to her that way again.'"

The incident happened more than thirty years before, but when Ruth told me about it, she still flushed with shame. "Dad was right,"

she said. "And I respected him for saying so. It couldn't have been easy for him. It was so uncharacteristic."

Ruth's thoughts went from her parents to her son Josh. "I know I'm not doing myself a favor by not disciplining him," she said.

"Why am I so anxious to forgive him? Do I think he'll get so mad that he'll stop loving me? Do I think he'll be so crushed by my anger that he'll never recover?"

At her next session, Ruth told me, "I did something out of character. I called Josh and left him a message that his comment hurt me deeply. I told him that a more appropriate reaction would have been, 'Thanks for the offer, Mom. I'll find out if Andrea is into Chanel.' I waited a day for his response. Nothing. I was rattled. But the next morning I got a very thoughtful apology. 'Mama, got your message.

Sorry you took my comment about the perfume the wrong way. I was joking. I guess it wasn't that funny. It was nice of you to think of Andrea. Love, J.'"

Ruth went from feeling totally cut off from her son to feeling deeply proud that he had the character to admit being wrong and apologize. She also felt good about herself for not offering her typical gift of Cheap Forgiveness. "Josh came through," she told me. "So did I."

35.If you, like Ruth, are a compulsive peacekeeper, I encourage you not to shrug off your feelings but to pay attention to them, share them with the offender, and give him a chance to understand how he wronged you and make good. This process shows respect not only for you but for the resilience and substance of the offender, who may relish the opportunity to make amends. I invite you to find the courage to do this.

"Healthy relations.h.i.+ps," writes Dana Crowley Jack in Behind the Behind the Mask, Mask, "require mutuality (being with), but they also require positive aggression (being opposed)." In other words, you must challenge "require mutuality (being with), but they also require positive aggression (being opposed)." In other words, you must challenge "devaluing patterns of interaction" and experience your right to be an "I" within a "we."17 Cheap Forgiveness bypa.s.ses the injury-as well as any possibility of developing a healthy relations.h.i.+p with yourself or with the offender.

Part Two

REFUSING TO FORGIVE.

W hen someone deliberately hurts you, you may refuse to forgive him because Not Forgiving seems the most self-affirming thing to do. The only other response you know-forgiving-may feel far too generous. Giving voice to your rage, you proclaim, "My feelings matter-if not to you, then to me. And to prove it I'll offer you no cheap pardon, no opportunity to repay your debt, no out.

Whatever you say or do, I'll continue to despise and denounce you.

I'll show you that you can't hurt me with impunity, that what you did was unforgivable."

RESPONDING WITH AGGRESSION.

OR DETACHMENT.

Refusing to forgive usually takes one of two forms. First, you may strike out aggressively at the offender, heaping on him the full weight of your "condemnatory fury,"1 deriving an almost s.a.d.i.s.tic pleasure from the power, the thrill, of subjecting him to the pain and indignity you believe he inflicted on you. Second, you may turn your back on him and try to destroy him with your indifference. Your silence will speak volumes about your contempt.

Either way-through aggression or detachment-your goal is to teach him a lesson and keep him in your punis.h.i.+ng grip. Either way, you hope to strip him of his humanity, recalibrating the balance of power and restoring your place in the sun. "Vindictive triumph,"

notes the distinguished psychoa.n.a.lyst Karen Horney, becomes "the only goal worth striving for" and is achieved through the acquisition of power to frustrate, humiliate, or exploit the person who has offended you.2 So long as you're in an unforgiving mode, your anger is non-negotiable; there can be no emotional resolution, no letting go, no letting in. Should the offender show remorse, you won't soften your rage. Should he refuse to repent, you're likely to feel trampled on 40 twice-once by the injury and again by his failure to acknowledge it.

His disregard for your suffering may wound you more deeply than the injury itself. "Why should I forgive someone who refuses to apologize?" you protest. "Why is it up to me to make peace? If I don't want to be hurt again, shouldn't I seal the boundaries around me and cut him out of my life, out of my psychic s.p.a.ce?"

ORIGINS OF NOT FORGIVING.

All of us refuse to forgive at times, but our response is usually proportional to the provocation. Our anger flares up and later subsides.

For some of us, however, Not Forgiving is not an isolated reaction to a single violation but a lifelong pattern of response. This pattern could be innate-a basic personality trait. Or it could be learned, largely from damaging early life experiences but also from negative a.s.sumptions about the meaning of forgiveness.

Innate Factors That May Stop You from Forgiving I know of no formal study that has found a chemical basis for Not Forgiving. Preliminary data suggest, however, that a tendency to react with hostility is a.s.sociated with such neurochemical variables as "excessive hormones, like testosterone, or a deficiency of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin or dopamine."3 Recent research suggests that those of us who have "a highly reactive sympathetic nervous system and a slow-to-respond parasympathetic nervous system" may experience and react to offenses with heightened anger and hurt, leading to an unforgiving response.4 I know of no formal study that has found a chemical basis for Not Forgiving. Preliminary data suggest, however, that a tendency to react with hostility is a.s.sociated with such neurochemical variables as "excessive hormones, like testosterone, or a deficiency of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin or dopamine."3 Recent research suggests that those of us who have "a highly reactive sympathetic nervous system and a slow-to-respond parasympathetic nervous system" may experience and react to offenses with heightened anger and hurt, leading to an unforgiving response.4 In his research on the origins of hatred and violence, Aaron Beck, M.D., University Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania, finds an adaptive, evolutionary explanation for our guided instinctive response to imagined or real threat. In prehistoric times, he points out, there was survival value in overreacting to any noxious stimuli. A quick, unfettered response to danger could spell the difference between life and death.5 Researchers who study forgiveness have postulated a personality Refusing to Forgive Refusing to Forgive 41.trait they call "vengefulness"-a tendency to act aggressively against a perceived offender. People who exhibit this trait are likely to be more negative, more easily offended, less empathic, and less likely to forgive.6 Learned Factors That May Stop You from Forgiving If you tend to say no to forgiving, it may be that you continue to perpetuate dysfunctional interactions from your past. Here are three examples: If you tend to say no to forgiving, it may be that you continue to perpetuate dysfunctional interactions from your past. Here are three examples: * If you were physically or emotionally battered at an impres-sionable age, you may grow up seeking to empower yourself by feeling contempt for others. You may permanently sever ties with anyone who makes you feel weak or helpless in the slightest way.

* If you grew up in a family where ruptures and grudges were a way of life-for example, your mother banished her sister from her home forever-Not Forgiving may become your calcified response to conflict, even with someone who deserves better treatment.

* If you grew up in a strict, repressive family where you were subjected to cruel humiliations, you may become punitive and unforgiving as an adult. Pressured to live by the rules, to abide by uncompromising ideas of right and wrong and unrealistically high moral principles, you may evolve into someone who is emotionally restricted, lacking in spontaneity and warmth, and impatient with anyone, including yourself, who can't meet your exacting standards. If you are reluctant "to consider extenuating circ.u.mstances, allow for human imperfection, or empathize with anyone else's feelings,"7 your natural response is to Not Forgive.

Parents are not the only ones who may teach you never to forgive; popular culture can play a role, too. If you're taught that "only sissies forgive" or that "when you forgive, others walk all over you,"

42.you may be loath to make peace with anyone-even if the offender tries hard to redress your grievance-even if your perception of the grievance is exaggerated or wrong. So long as you see forgiveness in terms that discredit you, Not Forgiving is likely to be your only viable option.

It's often the personal meaning the personal meaning you ascribe to a perceived offense that ultimately colors your emotional and behavioral response to it. you ascribe to a perceived offense that ultimately colors your emotional and behavioral response to it.

As Beck points out in Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Prisoners of Hate: The Cognitive Basis of Anger, Hostility, and Violence, Hostility, and Violence, your "catastrophic" distortions and misper-ceptions of what happened may create a frame of mind that encases you in hostility or impels you to lash out.8 your "catastrophic" distortions and misper-ceptions of what happened may create a frame of mind that encases you in hostility or impels you to lash out.8 PEOPLE WHO REFUSE TO FORGIVE.

Let's look now at two types of people who tend to be unforgiving- the narcissist and the Type A personality. Does one describe you?

The Narcissist Individuals who routinely refuse to forgive often have what is called a narcissistic personality disorder. Narcissists believe that they're "ent.i.tled to special rights and privileges, whether earned or not. They're demanding and selfish. They expect special favors without a.s.suming reciprocal responsibilities and express surprise and anger when others don't do what they want." 9 If you're a narcissist, you may frequently feel wounded and enraged when others refuse to comply with your agenda. Your exaggerated sense of ent.i.tlement leads you to a.s.sume that people are mere instruments for your self-enhancement, placed on earth solely to serve you. Since others don't exist to you as separate individuals with needs, desires, and feelings of their own, you're likely to exploit them and not see how this exploitation may set up the conflict you blame them for creating.

If you recognize some of these qualities in yourself, you may be someone who is dependent on the admiration of others to keep your Refusing to Forgive Refusing to Forgive 43.self-esteem afloat, and hypersensitive to anyone who threatens your sense of specialness. Any experience of degradation or personal failure may cut you so deeply that you feel not just slighted but annihi-lated. Rather than admit how much you need others to fill the emptiness inside you, you may devalue them and a.s.sume an air of superiority. Forgiveness is not an option for you-you have too great a sense of self-importance and too little humility.

"Humility," writes Robert Emmons, "is the disposition to view oneself as basically equal with any other human being even if there are objective differences in physical beauty, wealth, social skills, intelligence, or other resources. . . . It is the ability to keep one's tal-ents and accomplishments in perspective, to have a sense of self-acceptance, an understanding of one's imperfections, and to be free from arrogance and low self esteem." 10 Without these qualities, you're unlikely ever to forgive.

It's hard to forgive someone if, lacking humility, you believe that he's totally at fault and that you're perfect and can do no wrong. If you could accept a degree of complicity, you might respond more charitably, but that would shatter your grandiose view of yourself and ask more of you than you have to give.

When most of us feel wronged-when our sense of fairness is violated-we usually vacillate among three responses: acceptance, forgiveness, and retribution. When a narcissist feels wronged, however, he believes that his only choice is retribution.11 He can see no alternative but to strike back and settle the score with anyone who dares to defy his power, weaken his control, or threaten his belief in his own perfection.

The narcissist is unlikely to be affected by these words, because he's unlikely to read them. Incapable of tolerating the discomfort of self-scrutiny or criticism, he seeks admiration, not self-knowledge. He attaches to those who flatter him and discards those who don't. People who get into therapy are often those who are desperately clinging to a narcissist, trying to be good enough, trying to apologize and make peace with someone who is chronically unrepentant and unforgiving.

44.The Type A Personality Several researchers have found a link between the Type A personality and the narcissistic personality. Like the narcissist, the Type A individual is power-oriented, hostile, condescending, over-reactive to minor frustrations, defensive, and incapable of close relations.h.i.+ps.12 If you're a Type A person, you have an impatient, self-centered, demanding manner that's likely to push people away and make it hard for them to apologize to you or care about your hurt feelings. Blaming them for your own offensive behavior, which you lack the insight to see, you lock the door on forgiveness.

Paul, a hulking forty-five-year-old Wall Street trader, was both a Type A personality and a narcissist. Every day for him was an opportunity to settle scores. Easter was no exception. On a family trip to Boston to see the Celtics, he stopped in a crowded deli for a quick bite before the game. Dressed in black, with his hair punked up, he was a tough and formidable presence. He and his children finally reached the front of the line when an older couple slipped in front of them. Paul called over the seating clerk and jabbed at his watch. "No problem," the clerk a.s.sured him, "you're next." But when a table freed up, the couple took it. Paul saw red. He pulled a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his pocket and waved it in the clerk's face.

"You see this?" he said challengingly. "This is lunch money for me.

You know how I make a living? I kill. And you've made me very unhappy." Within minutes, Paul and his family had a table.

"I knew my kids were watching, so I tried to keep my voice calm," Paul told me later. "I don't know what I would have done if they hadn't been there. This guy just sent me over the edge. He made me feel invisible, like I didn't exist-just like my father did."

I encouraged Paul to peel back the layers of emotions he had experienced in the deli and try to understand where his reaction was coming from, how it repeated deep-seated patterns of response, and how he might deal with conflict differently in the future -still conveying annoyance without losing control or frightening his children.

He began by responding to the following questions. If you, like Paul, Refusing to Forgive Refusing to Forgive 45.have an unforgiving style of coping, you're likely to answer yes to many of them, too: * Do I get insulted and offended too easily?

* Do I have too many confrontations with people?

* Do I jump to conclusions, take what people say or do too personally, and react with arrogance or indignation?

* Do I tend to harbor grudges forever?

* Do I cut myself off from those who hurt me without wrestling with the truth about what actually happened?

* Do I find that an apology is never good enough to warrant my letting go of an offense?

* Do I take comfort in the role of victim and fail to see that an injury wasn't simply something done to me but something I may have been partly responsible for?

* Do I dream of ways of crus.h.i.+ng my opponent? Do I fill my time with retaliatory fantasies that make me feel powerful, superior, and in control?

ADVANTAGES AND DISADVANTAGES.

OF NOT FORGIVING.

Why Not Forgiving May Seem Attractive to You Not Forgiving may come across as an appealing option for at least three reasons. Not Forgiving may come across as an appealing option for at least three reasons.

1. It makes you feel invulnerable.

Not Forgiving gives you an aura of invincibility and allows you to convert "a feeling of impotence into a feeling of omnipotence."13 When you refuse to forgive, you gather strength by humiliating the person you accuse of humiliating you. In your eyes, a "nonforgiver" is a hammer; a forgiver is an anvil begging to be hit.14 The strength you feel from striking back at someone who hurt you may not be entirely illusory. You may force him to think twice about re-injuring you and reduce the frequency with which he tries.

46.Of course, you might inflame the conflict and provoke him to attack you again; but your tough, retaliatory stance may also intimi-date him and show him who's the boss.

2. It lets you blame others for your own failures.

Not Forgiving lets you blame others for your own failures and transfer to them whatever it is you curse (and eventually need to confront and forgive) in yourself. It helps you ward off the shame and humiliation that come when someone gets too close to the unflattering truth about you. "The source of my problem lies in you," you insist, "not in me. You You made me miserable. made me miserable. You You made me fail. Because of you, I don't have a better job, more friends, more money, more happiness, more freedom, more laughter, more stuff. Because of you, I drink, take drugs, have affairs, can't get out of bed in the morning, can't find my way, can't get a life." Living in a "grudge state,"15 you insist that you're innocent and that the person who hurt you deserves every imaginable punishment. You conveniently blame him for all your troubles, when the problem may be made me fail. Because of you, I don't have a better job, more friends, more money, more happiness, more freedom, more laughter, more stuff. Because of you, I drink, take drugs, have affairs, can't get out of bed in the morning, can't find my way, can't get a life." Living in a "grudge state,"15 you insist that you're innocent and that the person who hurt you deserves every imaginable punishment. You conveniently blame him for all your troubles, when the problem may be you you- your your inability to take the initiative, ask for help, say no. inability to take the initiative, ask for help, say no.

3. It replaces the emptiness inside you with a surge of elation.

Whether you boldly retaliate or hold yourself aloof, Not Forgiving makes you feel alive and kicking, and at one with yourself. As Robert Karen notes ironically, "No one is immune to the joys of vic-timhood and revenge."16 Why Not Forgiving Is a Dysfunctional Response to Violation When you say no to forgiving, what started as a self-protective solution to pain-a way of coping with your indignation-ultimately leaves you feeling cold and bitter. What held out the promise of restoring your self-regard, creating emotional and physical safety, and providing a just resolution to the injury, doesn't deliver-or delivers at a dear price. The presumed rewards of Not Forgiving, which initially seemed so attractive and healthy, turn out to be maladaptive in at least three ways.

47.1. Not Forgiving cuts you off from any dialogue with the offender and any positive resolution of the conflict. and any positive resolution of the conflict.

When you exorcise the offender from your life, you deny him the opportunity to respond to your grievances and earn forgiveness. Refusing to consider what he meant to you in the past, and could still mean to you today, you also deny yourself any possibility of reconciliation. In human relations.h.i.+ps, there are so many unintended slights and misunderstandings. If both of you could only air your differences, it might change the face of the violation and soften your response. Remember, if you choose to open a dialogue, you're not required to reconcile or forgive, but you may let the offender in and your sorrow out.

2. Not Forgiving may restore your pride, but it cuts you off from an opportunity for personal growth and understanding. opportunity for personal growth and understanding.

When you refuse to forgive, you transfer all the blame to the offender and make yourself una.s.sailable. This proud pretense of perfection, however, is likely to mask a shaky interior. As Karen Horney writes, "Neurotic pride is an exalted self-esteem that is built not upon existing a.s.sets but upon an imaginary superiority."17 Wrapped in sanctimonious anger, never questioning how you may be wrong, you cut yourself off from an opportunity to look into yourself-to learn, change, and grow.

Behind your refusal to forgive may be a fear of facing your own frailty and failures. You may blame someone for excluding you, for example, and not see how your belief that you're not worth knowing causes you to distance yourself. You may accuse someone of subjugating you and not see how you fail to speak up and set boundaries.

You may feel tyrannized by the demands of others but not know how to relax and create balance in your life.

Blinded by rage, you become an expert in how others let you down. You can write volumes on how your parents, children, or friends have failed you, but you often know little about how you have offended others, who in turn defend themselves or strike back at you in equally combative ways. And you fail to see others with the same generosity you insist that they extend to you.

48.3. Not Forgiving may make you feel less empty, but it poisons you physically and emotionally and cuts you off from life. physically and emotionally and cuts you off from life.

The venom that pours into your bloodstream when you refuse to forgive may make you feel less hollow, more vital, and more ener-gized, but it may also leave you "psychically sterile"18-detached from life, blind to those who deserve your grat.i.tude, cut off from tenderness, beauty, and joy. You may seek the solace of solitary pleasures-a book, a walk-or shared moments with old friends, but rage is likely to be the only feeling that resonates inside you.

Obsessed with getting even, you fulfill your basic need for protection and self-preservation,19 but leave no time to gratify your "higher" needs for peace, creativity, love, and connection.