How do you forgive others?

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How do you forgive those who have hurt you, whether they are your own family members, co workers or friends?

I have both LD and aspergers. How can I forgive someone who has hurt me? I know being disabled makes me more vulnerable to teasing and bullying. I had my share in school. It goes on in the work place. Few weeks ago our priest mentioned forgiveness. He even said to forgive the 911 terrorists. ! !! WHAT???! How in the world can we forgive the terrorists? Can anyone of us welcome Bin Laden into our homes and hug him? How can a LD or autistic person forgive a bully? What if that bully went to the same school and went to same college and lived in the same neighborhood? I never would bully someone or put someone down. I shouldn't come to work feeling sad. I probably should feel happy that I have a full time job and have had the same job for 9 years. I do have a college degree too.

Over the spring, a co worker told me to my face how maybe my supervisor should find someone else who doesn't have aspergers. This co worker is a Dept of Justice employee and I'm just a contractor. Sure it was a long time ago he said it but it was such a bigotry hateful comment. No one on mom's or dad's family have issues with social communication. They don't have LD or nor autism so they are clueless. Only I and others with LD or autism know what it is like to feel so low. I know that some of you have children that are autistic. Do your children get bullied too?

One way to forgive someone or something is to:

1 ) list all the ways in which they/it hurt or harmed you. Let it all out on paper, a long list fully describing all the wrongs that this person or thing has done you.

2 ) Then list all the things that you gain from withholding your forgiveness, the benefits of resenting or coldly keeping them/it at arms length, excluding them from your life, or simply hating them. Do this with pencil and paper too if it helps. Think of all the ways in which your hatred/resentment/unforgiveness/totally justified righteous indignation helps you, strengthens you, makes you feel better, etc.

If you can't think of anything then try asking yourself, "What might I potentially be getting out of feeling like this?", "What could possibly be useful for me in not forgiving this person or thing?"

3 ) Then you list all the things which it costs you to carry on hating, not forgiving, etc. Imagine/think what things you may be losing as a result of feeling like that.

See how you feel.
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I tried that. But I just want these people to feel pain. The pain that they did to me will never go away.

I usually end up forgiving by forgetting. My attention span is really short. >.>

Out of curiosity what did you discover that you were getting out of your unforgiveness of them, your righteous justified anger/resentment?

The first time I ever tried this approach I was quite simply stunned, blown away, and also ashamed, to see how much I was getting out of it. In fact I have been shocked each time I've done this to find out how much I was using the resentment to feel better about myself. It's only having realised what I was gaining, seen it out in the open, that I then began to measure the extent of what it was costing me.

I did it about my parents after years of loathing them, excluding them, hating them for doing x, y, and z to me. I went home for xmas for the first time in 14 years as a result.

But so long as you get enough out of the feeling, so long as it is adaptive, meets more needs than it denies, I don't suppose that you will want to forgive these people.

Why were you asking how to forgive people? What is/was it that made you think about doing so?
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I wish I can forget what happened. It would be nice to got through some experiment where all the painful memories goes away. The most hurtful comment I have had to endure was over the spring when a co worker told me to my face that they should find someone else who doesn't have aspergers. I can't forgive someone who is discriminating against my disability. Not only that I do get discriminated against my race too. I'm half Korean and half white.

But even if we forgive those who hurt us the pain is still there. A person who is being physically abused can someday forgive the person or persons who hurt them and gave them scars some for life. What about that woman who got shot in the face by her husband and now she is disfigured for life? That must be painful. How can she forgive him? He may do that to some other woman or a complete stranger. The scars are still on her face. She can forgive him to move on, but the pain is still there. I can forgive bigots but the pain will never ever go away. I don't know.

Everyone makes mistakes and it is everyones god given right to change.

Have you never made a mistake in your life? Then you can say it's ok to not forgive.

Where the line is drawn is malicious intent. If someone is attacking your right to live. Otherwise in the end, I want people around me who have already learned what not to do.

The big thing is I wouldn't forgive Bin Laden because he didn't ask nor doesnt want it. If someone asks you for forgivness (and is sincere, not talking the principle is sitting the bully down in his office making him say he is sorry kind of thing) you are taking the cowardly road if you refuse it.

For example in the case of the coworker I'd find a lot of trouble in that because he was attacking your means of living, your income, what puts a roof over your head and feeds you. To me that's unforgivable. But also, if you let that continue to bother you and cause you pain you are letting that person win. You've got to realize those people are not worth the energy you exhert to even think about them.

If some bully from grade school came up to me and said "look, i know I made your everyday life hell but man i've changed and am really sorry, could you forgive me" I couldn't say no. I'd raither keep the company of people who know what not to do than hoping they don't. People learn a 100x more from their mistakes than their perfections. The key is to just not invest a lot of emotion into it because the people you don't want to keep around are the ones who make the same mistake twice, and if you give someone a second chance and they repeat it then you have an easier time saying 'adios amigos' and in your mind you then have a solid reason why.

Yes I have forgave people who did say sorry for hurting me only to hurt me again. So I don't take apologies too well anymore. I'm too quiet and don't say much at work or when I was at school to even be a bully to anyone.

You might misunderstand my point here, somewhere in the middle, so please read through before you think you understand what I'm saying. And I hope this helps you.

A couple of years ago, a man in Pennsylvania went into a schoolhouse and shot and killed several Amish girls. Why did he do such a terrible, incomprehensible thing? Years before, his own daughter had died, and he could not let go of his anger. Someone had to 'pay' for that death - it didn't even matter to him that the girls he shot and their families had nothing at all to do with his daughter's death.

The Amish families whose daughters and neighbours who had just died attended this man's funeral, cooked for his family, and did whatever they could to extend their forgiveness for this horrible tragedy. How could they do such a thing? Whether or not they clearly understood this, they were refusing to become like the man who killed their daughters.

I know the pain won't ever go away, and I'm truly sorry that you've suffered. But forgiveness isn't necessarily welcoming someone into your home, or hugging them. At its most basic level, it is simply letting go of your own anger. You can remember the pain, you can learn from it, you don't have to trust that person ever again - but you need to let go of your anger. Over and over again. Every time it bubbles up, you need to set it aside. Yes, it's hard work, as I know from my own experience. But it is work you do, not for the other person's sake, but so that you won't turn into someone fueled by anger, like the man who shot innocent Amish girls - or the terrorists who flew planes into the Pentagon and the World Trade Center.

I am not saying you are like that. You obviously aren't, or you wouldn't even be trying to forgive them. And maybe you'd never go that far. That isn't the point. The point is that anger warps you. It is like a corrosive, that continues to damage as long as it is present. So you need to release all that anger - no matter how justified - to prevent the jerks from continuing to damage you. That's why you go through all that hard work, over and over again, even when you don't really feel like it. As for inviting someone into your home, or hugging them - like I said, you don't have to do that. In fact, you shouldn't do that unless you have some reason to believe the person has really changed and isn't going to just use the chance to hurt you again. Forgiveness is not about giving anyone another chance to hurt you. Sometimes, maybe doing something like that would make it easier to let go of your own anger. That's when I'd say it would be worth doing, because why make things harder on yourself just to hurt them?

But hurting people who hurt you back would bring some relief right? I know that the pain won't go away but at least the people who hurt me can feel pain too.

I did read about the Amish school killings. That was sad what he did. No excuse to kill innocent people who didn't do no harm to him or his family. Just like the VA Tech killers. Those students and professors he killed didn't do a thing to him. I would never go as far as to kill someone who has hurt me. This has nothing to do with me but I can't forgive people who kill children. It's just something I can't understand. Why kill a child who is so innocent and defenseless? Or people who do hate crimes and think it's funny. But I have forgiven others and still feel anger. I have ignored people who hurt me and still feel pain. I was bullied a lot on this Christian fan site forum and I asked one of the girls on there if she loves to poke fun at people. She didn't respond. I don't know what that means. But if we forgive those who hurt us and they are truly sorry for hurting us, what if they hurt us again? Most likely they will. Or a cheating spouse. Once a cheater always a cheater, but that's just my opinion.

Forgive others that of unto you, that seems easy but in my experience is not. I use to be told the 3 strikes out period and the biggest one was cheating. Well I got to experience it just once. I seriously never wanted to see "him" again. But I think it all depends. We're all humans and we make mistakes, we make so many and regret it.

How? That's tricky.

You just let go, let it go, keep letting it go. Get yourself out of the way of any further pain, that makes it easier. Hard to heal if wounds keep getting re-opened.

If the damage done was significant, and it sounds like it was, you may benefit from seeing a professional and getting some talk therapy... perhaps broach that idea with a doctor.

Why? That's easier. Realising that holding onto the pain others have caused you only hurts yourself.

I honestly don't think that is so.

Believe me, I understand a lot of what you're saying. Forgiveness is hard, terribly hard. And the anger does still come back. That's why I said you have to do it over and over and over. But anger is a corrosive. It will hurt you.

And, no, it doesn't really bring relief. Say I could go back and get my hands on the vet who murdered my first two cats (literally; one was 9 months old, the other two and a half, both died on their first vet visits when I was a kid - found out later he hated small animals) and make him feel the way they felt before they died? Would it bring them back? Would it help them? Would I feel better? The answer to all those questions is no. I'd have been cruel, I'd have that memory, and it would be another source of pain for the rest of my life.

Is it hard for me to forgive the %#$@!? Of course it is. I was just thinking of Pollyanna, the 9 month old kitten I lost when I was five years old. Knowing what I know now about his office, I'm sure she was terrified and she suffered before she died - and she had no idea why we'd left her alone there. (My parents wanted to go on vacation, and they wanted to have her spayed.) I tortures me, thinking of what she must have gone through. I can't even apologise to her for what I couldn't have possibly helped at five years old. So, yeah, every time I think of her I have to let go of that anger all over again. But I think it's important enough to do it: I even dredged those feelings up voluntarily in order to write this post, even though now I'll have to wrestle with it again.

Of course I understand what you're saying. I just happen to believe anyone who doesn't forgive is hurting themselves more than anyone else. And I still have trouble forgiving... Does that make me a hypocrite? Maybe, but I try to do the best I can. That's all any of us can do.

Is it harder for aspies to forgive compared to those who have no disability? It seems that way to me. Also I'm so sorry what that vet did to your cats. I can only imagine what he did. If the vet hated small animals, then umm why did he become a vet? If anything happened to my dog at the vet and I knew it was the vet at fault because my dog was healthy before coming in there I would press charges. I would like think any vet who abuses their patients pets need to get their doctor license taken away and never allowed in any vet facility. That would be the best revenge I think. So sorry you had to go through that especially as a kid.

I don't think there's any easy way to measure the difficulty, but it does seem to me AS makes it harder to forgive. Of course, I've had AS my whole life, even if I just figured it out last month, but I've done a lot of thinking about how it seems to affect me. And I would guess it is harder for us. Like I said before, it certainly isn't easy for me. I feel like a hypocrite even trying to give you advice on the subject.

Yeah, I've always wondered why he became a vet, although he supposedly liked horses and cows and animals like that. Which did not give him a right to take his frustrations out on the poor cats and dogs he had to treat. But that's the only sense I've ever been able to make of it.

OT but Important:
If you have a dog, and you love him, the best advice I can give you is, always keep an eye on your vet. As you can guess, I was paranoid after losing two cats. I found a good vet, and stuck with him. When he sold the practice, I figured I'd better stick with the new guy. Bad choice. This guy wasn't a monster, but he brushed off a lot of problems as just "old age"; when I finally took my cat to a new vet, I found out "old age" was really kidney disease and there were things that could be done. He would have died either way, because kidney disease never ends well, but he might have had longer if I'd been paying attention. And the new vet I started going to? They got more interested in money than the animals after a while; the cats I have now go to a vet almost half an hour away. Which is more than worth it.

You forgive because you are superior. The weak hold resentment and try to get revenge as if the attacks done against them are painful. The Enlightened Man realizes that attacks done against him, were done out of weakness, confusion and ignorance, then you laugh at the attack, you are no longer harmed by it. You know that it is the weaker man who bullies because he was abused and he is too dumb to break the pattern. The Superior Man doesn't continue the pattern, he pats them on the head and moves on.