To forgive others can have a healing effect and bring each other closer to each other. We’ll tell you why makes you happy and is good for your health and relationships.
If someone else does something hurt, be it just an insult or worse like an affair, we often show the following reactions: we avoid the other person or wish for retribution or reparation. Relationships can break up because of this because we no longer let the other person close to ourselves. Or a vicious circle of retaliation is created. Because often the opposite of our supposed balance is more serious than his actual act. In its part, the other will wish again that there will be reparation. If someone is not getting out of here, this cycle can go on forever and destroy good friendships and relationships.
But there is another way: forgiveness is a way to break through the circulation of the retaliation and maintain relationships. We can never undo what happened – but what we have in hand is our reaction to such an action that has hurt us.
Forgive someone something – we usually combine that we are generally a step towards the other person. But there is a different look at the topic: forgive and forgive as PowerMove and act of self -care.
“Forgiveness is the greatest gift that you can give yourself,” said the US writer and civil rights activist Maya Angelou in an interview. Psychologist Nicole Lepera also encourages to take this different perspective.
That means forgiveness
According to the word, forgiving means: avoiding retribution or reparation. If we forgive, we do not ask for what we are actually entitled to. We let off, renounce, stop “pointing”, that is, to name, make it known. By forgiving, we end the eternal pointing to the wound, the accusation of the other. We allow the other to blame the other – beyond fair compensation.
In psychological research, forgiving is also described as follows: Instead of retribution, a positive reaction follows the hurtful behavior of the other person. This means that you approach the other person instead of avoiding them and does not have anger, no atroceptives or revenge constraints against them, but loving and accepting feelings. For a long time, research has dealt with forgiving. It was only in the 20th century that social scientists began to deal with the topic and were able to empirically demonstrate the already suspected positive effects of forgiveness.
Decide who happens like in your own life
Forgiveness can be a “border” that we set: “I decide not to have the behavior of someone else’s well -being determined,” writes Nicole Lepera in her current newsletter.
If the other person says that you have to forgive me, it often means that you have to let me in your life again.
But that is not true, says Lepera. If you want to forgive yourself self -determined, you can say: “I can forgive someone and decide exactly how I allow him to come in my life.”
“You can forgive someone and protect yourself,” she writes. “You can withdraw. You can tell the other person that you have made peace and that in the future you will do what is best for you.”
Or as Maya Angelou says: “You have to forgive. For your own sake. To free yourself from the burden.”
This happens to you when you forgive others
People who can take good experience experience more positive and less negative feelings in their everyday life. If you can forgive others, then you will:
- You can look forward to more things in everyday life
- look hopefully into the future
- be happier
- less suffering from depressed moods
- have fewer fears
- And ponder less.
Researchers: On the one hand, it is due to the fact that people who forgive can let go more easily and thus carry less ballast around and concentrate on the positive things.
But researchers were not only able to find positive effects on the emotional level. It was shown that forgiving is advantageous for physical health-people who can forgive others show fewer cardiovascular problems than people who are difficult to forgive and let go. However, this connection is not only due to forgiveness, but also to other factors.
Forgive can make strong
The Berlin psychotherapist Wolfgang Krüger also says: Forgiveness can make strong. “Forgiveness is important for ourselves, because otherwise we will always get stuck in a bold feeling and darken the world.” “But if we forgive, we are in an attitude of generosity and overcome our visual attitude, which has a very positive effect on our self -esteem.”
Sounds good – but forgiving is often not so easy and is difficult for us. How are you? Krüger explains:
- First of all, I have to perceive the insult, I must not push it away.
- I have to pronounce the insult.
- I have to have interests that are more important than this insult. Then I was offended, but I was not hit too deep – and can also forgive.
“In this respect, the forgiveness relieves us and brightens our mood of life.”
That is why forgiveness is good for your relationships
There are many situations in which you can forgive: if someone has abused your trust when something rash was said when someone breaks a promise or even the parents after years of conflict.
If you forgive, you give the other chance to think about his actions honestly and impartially without getting caught up in defense reflexes. The other does not have to justify or try to make amends. He can reflect, reflect on his own conclusions without fear of consequences. This often has a sustainable effect on the other person and rather leads to an admission. It becomes much more likely that the other person actually learns something from his actions than if we insist on compensation or avoid the other person from now on.
If we forgive, we show honest appreciation for people behind the deeds and do not reduce him to his offenses and misconduct.
However, it is often difficult for us to do without an apology. At least we want to feel that the person regretted what they did. Maybe we just want to understand why the other did. But that’s not the point when forgiving! If you really forgive, you have no expectations of the other person in this regard.
If you forgive, you prevent the vicious circle of retaliation gets rolling or you break it after years of argument. So it is possible that we approach others instead of moving away from each other. Because smaller and larger misconducts can happen to all of us and if we forgive each other more often, the open and appreciative interaction with each other is possible that the world needs so urgently.
Forgiveness makes life easier
Anyone who forgives experiences Mannheim psychotherapist Doris Wolf:
- The thoughts no longer constantly revolve around the negative experience, you have more freedom for the impressions in the here and now.
- You can also feel physically relieved: the pressure in the stomach or in the chest is gone, you feel your energy flowing again.
- Serenity and inner calm take the place of anger and insult.
And so it is also possible to see positive sides on the other person again, to be open to her and possibly feel closeness and love again.
“Forgiveness can make life easier,” said the co-author of the book “Wake your joie de vivre”-and that can contribute to exactly the positive energy of the forgiveness.
If you still have difficulties with the topic, there are also workshops in which you can work up and learn offset from the past, for example, to be able to deal with insults in the present, so that you can then forgive, said Wolfgang Krüger.
Because avoid being disappointed, insulted and offended because of what another person says or does disappointed.
“Life is a good teacher: you have to understand that insults and disappointments are possible everywhere,” said Wolfgang Krüger. “And the biggest insults are where you love. And we are usually not saints. If you understand this, you often become more lenient with your dear fellow human beings.”
With material of the dpa.
Revised by Lena Kirchner
Read more on utopia.de:
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- Resilience: This is how you train your mental resilience
- Fears of attachment: When love and relationship seem threatening
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