Don’t be too quick to forgive

How to move past hurt

In the wellness scene there’s a lot of emphasis on the power of forgiveness. And for good reason, forgiveness is liberating. We forgive not so much to help the person we are forgiving, but to unburden ourselves from the grudge we carry against them.

But if you try to forgive someone before you process the emotional impact of what happened, then the forgiveness is just performative.

To truly forgive, we need to feel all the anger and sadness they caused us. Often we dissociate from these feelings because they feel like they’re too much, or don’t know how to process them, and then never fully move past what happened.

One of the oldest and most effective ways to process feelings is to tell a safe person what happened. You can tell them that you’re not looking for advice, you just want to share what happened and how it impacted you so you can process your feelings.

Or you can journal, or scream into a pillow, or cry in the shower, or meditate with your feelings, or write a song, or paint a picture, or do an interpretive dance… There is no right way to process feelings, so feel free to explore and find what works for you.

We typically process feelings in waves. Sometimes a big wave comes, sometimes a little wave. Your job is to just to ride each wave as best you can by staying present with the feelings, and if appropriate expressing the feelings and also caring for yourself until the feelings subside.

It’s common to shift between anger and sadness. This is normal, it’s part of the process. Healing is a process reflecting, making sense of what happened, but mostly feeling and grieving.

And then, after you’ve processed the bulk of the feelings, then you may feel ready to forgive.

This isn’t a process to be rushed, and you don’t have to forgive anyone. But, if you really do want to move emotionally, then forgiveness is something to eventually be worked towards. Again, not for them, but for you.