What does it mean to forgive, and is there a way to do it that truly works? Why is it essential to practice forgiveness in your life, especially in your relationship? And how does the practice of forgiveness change when it’s something BIG you’re trying to forgive, vs. the everyday things? Did you even know that forgiveness can help you get through the everyday ups and downs of life with your partner? In relationship, it’s inevitable - big, or small, one of you is going to hurt the other. So then, the question is: what do you do? HOW do you repair, and find your way to forgiveness. In today’s episode, we’re going to explore the topic of Forgiveness with one of the world’s experts on the topic, Dr. Fred Luskin, director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, and author of the books “Forgive For Love: The Missing Ingredient for a Healthy and Lasting Relationship” and “Forgive for Good” - which are both eye-opening journeys into how the process of forgiveness works in the context of life and love. Fred Luskin has worked with couples, and has also worked with people from war-torn countries - so his forgiveness methodology covers a wide range of the human experience. When we talk about forgiveness- is it necessary to have someone on the other end who is saying they’re sorry? It certainly is easier when we can directly respond to someone offering us an apology, however this is often not the case. Either that person does not believe they did something wrong, they are no longer in our life, or they are incapable for some reason or another. The crux of forgiveness is when you wanted a certain outcome but that outcome did not occur. Forgiveness is about making peace when you don’t get what you want - and about how you reconcile your desire for something with the reality that it did not happen. Practicing forgiveness: For most of us, true forgiveness, the deep acceptance form (rather than the ‘sorry’ and ‘it’s okay’) is challenging! People don't want to forgive, and often don’t know how. It requires an acceptance that the relationship matters more and that owning one’s own weaknesses matters more than whatever grudge you are holding. This is difficult for our egos to accept. It is a a releasing of focusing on our own hurt, and a switch to being able to say ‘you might have harmed me but I am going to release that image of you as someone who does harm’. It is hard to battle away the power of our self-absorption, for many of us this has become a great defense strategy, but you will find that your life and your relationships are more successful when you do make the shift. Temporary grief is necessary. It is easy to be caught in the habit of wanting to stay in the hurt and the blame, versus choosing to do whatever it takes to release that feeling. It is not just that it is a habit - there are good reasons to feel the hurt, initially. Grief is a necessary experience - that moment of really feeling that thing you didn't get that you wanted or needed. When you don’t get the love you wanted, OUCH. It is hard. The struggle, however, helps shed light on our desires, stuck places, expectations, and opens our awareness. That said, this period of hurting is not necessarily bad - it can be necessary to experience grief, on some level, in order to grow! Choose to grow. Grief becomes negative when it becomes chronic. This is often caused by being stuck in an inept or unuseful schema of how life should be. Throughout your entire life you have a choice on how you are going to move on from hurt - are you going to use this as a chance to grow, or as a chance to remain bitter? Creating new ways of thinking about things: The understanding of what happened requires creating some new cognitive schemas around events. For example, instead of the thought ‘they owed me’, a new schema could be ‘I don’t always get what i want’. In order to have adult relationships we have to accept that we are all flawed human beings. It is important to grow out of our immature and young schemas that hold that we should get everything we want. These old schemas can be replaced- it just takes time! Thanks to neuroplasticity our brains themselves change as we change these long held stories and beliefs. The process of forgiving does not depend on what you are forgiving! The easiest way to practice forgiveness is to practice on the little things. If you want to become more forgiving in your relationship(s), you can choose minor things that your partner does that you don’t like as a way to develop your skills. This way, when the bigger things come you have already developed the skills and created the brain pathways that you are going to use! We need these new pathways to help us handle disappointment - work towards building this ‘muscle’. Moving away from blame. In order to move out of the grudge and blame cycle it is essential to shift your perspective from THEM to YOU. You have to take responsibility for your own part and your own life. It is not always about finding out what you did wrong, but rather about taking responsibility by saying “my nervous system, my moods, my brain, these are all up to me and not that other person!” Even though your partner sends out a lot of information and stimulus that can be frustrating and triggering, you are responsible for knowing how to handle yourself and your life. This sense of efficacy in handling yourself is what forgiveness helps lead us towards. If you do not practice this shift in perspective than you suffer due to constant fear of what others can do to you. Reframing really traumatic and difficult experiences: While it may seem counterintuitive at first, when it comes to the more damaging and traumatic experiences in our lives, the most helpful thing we can do for ourselves is to reframe our hurt in the context of all humanity’s wounding. Devastation and hurt are ubiquitous on planet earth, and it may be one of the aspects of being human that we have to struggle with. Be careful not to exaggerate your experience by seeing it as unusual - yes, your individual wounding may feel distinct, but reframe it within the context of the amount of human suffering. Focusing in on the uniqueness of our specific hurt can cause incredible extra suffering. By reframing your suffering in the greater sense of human suffering it is possible to feel connected to a greater universal truth and power. From here you can more easily access a sense that change and obstacles are a part of life. The question then becomes, given that suffering is part of life, am I going to, in my present life, let these things have power over me and control my life? You have the choice on how strong and capable you want to be when it comes to your own hurt. Blame, in the context of love: Much of the reason that couples blow up is due to the fact that everyone has been hurt, and everyone has a lot of anger, and we are all looking for places to put this anger. When we find something wrong with our partner, part of us focuses on this so that we can channel the bigness of our frustration that existed - long before we had a partner! Their mistakes and flaws become a place to blame so that we do not have to directly address our deeper dissatisfactions - in other words, our partners actions become ammunition we use to protect ourselves from our own disappointments. To break this cycle we have to choose to be a loving person, even in the midst of hurt. We have to look at our own flaws simultaneously. It is not a matter of “how am I, perfect and whole, going to deal with this broken person?”. No, the question instead is: how do two flawed humans get along? This question moves you away from blame, and out of the victim cycle of someone doing something to you, and moves you towards the true creative challenge of figuring out how two people trying to work with their own weakness can learn to love each other! You cannot actually push forgiveness - you can sneak around to it though! Forgiveness lives in the part of the brain we have access to when we are calm and centered. It is a natural response to life, but you have to cultivate conditions to bring out that natural response! The 4 practices towards forgiveness: Calm yourself! Quiet down, relax and do practices that are gentle and calming to your nervous system. The adrenalized brain is going to make everything worse… taking care of it is primary to the process of forgiveness. Find good! See the good in whatever it is you are dealing with and in your life so that you do not exaggerate the negative. Cognitive reframing. Help yourself understand that ‘hey! It is a given that at some level I am not always going to get what I want!’ Alter the victim story. If you have gotten stuck in the perspective and the story that this has all happened to you - get out! Find a new way of looking at things that helps you take responsibility for your own actions - whatever part is yours. Your anger may be automatic, but you still have a choice: When you are upset and triggered your sympathetic nervous system reacts and will take over if you do not learn to calm it. When you are on the adrenal pathway, you are going to say the same stereotypical things to yourself, and you will likely revert to older and more immature patterns and habits of reactivity. There are of course, certain experiences in which it is appropriate to use your adrenaline to react so that you can protect and defend yourself, but most often in relationships we are not dealing with actual fight or flight situations. Instead, what is often happening is that your partner does something that makes you enraged, and your nervous system reacts as if you are ACTUALLY in danger. You can learn to change this response. The habitual response to hurt is often “Wow! I am so angry because they did that horrible thi...