Sunday, June 6, 2010

Facts on Forgiveness Part 3 of 4

 I am delighted that a couple of my readers have  requested the Steps of the Forgiveness Process. So next week, Part 4 will start on some of the Steps.

Now to answer a question of another reader, who shared an excerpt of a  book she read on Forgiveness where the author stated that you don't have to know how to forgive to forgive. Maybe so. It begs the question, why then are so many people telling me that they thought they've forgiven but months or  years later, there remained residues of resentment, irritation or hurt at the person they had 'forgiven'?
Dr. G. Pettitt has the answer - the forgiveness was not complete as they did not follow certain steps that would make it so. Are you shaking your head dubiously??
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 If you have a leaking faucet and you put strong tape on it,  for a short while the faucet will stop leaking but then, the amount of water collected will cause a pressure to bust the tape and the waters would gush out causing a mini-flood.  So that is how it is when the Steps of the Forgiveness Process is not followed.

Many times, when we think we've forgiven, we have just repressed the memory. While treating some physical ailment in Energy Medicine and EFT, I noticed how the lack of forgiveness was a prominent culprit. When a client during the sessions, acknowledge the forgiveness aspect, that physical ailment heals. You must have heard about the connection of gastric ulcers and anger. When we use emotional freedom technique taught by Gary Craig, we always acknowledge the negative feeling but we do not stop there. Let me give you an example.

A client with severe pain came in, barely able to walk, doubled up in pain.. After a very brief history and discovering that her predominant emotions were shame and anger, I started  initially with siphoning the pain, then tapping her meridian points with her saying  "Even though I am angry with my ??? for humiliating me in front of my friends, I profoundly accept, respect and love  & (forgive)  myself anyway."
You might ask why she was saying "forgive myself'  Great question - Any feed backs. Before you  can truly forgive others, you have to learn to forgive yourself, using a similar process.
The end result for this particular client - She walked out of the therapy which lasted for about an hour with zero pain. She saw me as a last resort as she had tried everything else, from tests, other therapies to medications.

So next post - will mention some of the Steps in the Forgiveness Process - Have you any ideas of what they may be??

4 comments:

Nathan said...

Great post! I agree with a few of the other readers that this is the best text book out there. You are doing a great job. Your posts are easy to read and very informative. I am looking forward to the steps of forgiveness. I am not entirely sure what they will be but I do know my first step will be acknowledging that I need to forgive. I think you are dead on about us just suppressing our emotions. With that said, how do I know if I have actually forgiven in the past or if I have just suppressed it. I would like to find out before it all comes back to haunt me. I am sure I have things that I need to forgive people for but I have no clue what they are. I am kind of afraid to look inward and find out in case it is more than I bargained for :)

Keep up the great work and thank you for helping us become better people.

PC Nicholas said...

Thanks Nathan for your kind support.As for your question "how do I know if you've suppressed or actually forgiven..", I hope the several posts on the Steps of Forgiveness will indicate that. Also remember my earlier post...one of the Myths of forgiveness is that it is a difficult or painful procedure.
This project was quite time-consuming because "moi" tried the steps on myself and it is an ongoing exercise which seems to get easier, the more you do it.

nothingprofound said...

Valuable work, PC, not only here on your blog, but in the real world as well. What a gift being able to help people that way.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for Part 3! It just keeps getting better and better. True forgiveness is indeed liberating! As exhibited in the patient you aided, failing to forgive properly leads to the bottling up of hatred, resentment and vengeance which leads to a whole lot of other health problems.

Certainly looking forward to Part 4!

Gerry

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