Hello @Oaktree
A Few thoughts on Therapy and Forgiveness
There was one teacher who I had the belief, had some idea of what was going on for me outside the school environment, at home, and about my disjointed and unbalanced relationships within my peer/age group. That was in 2nd year, here in WA, when I was about 14. That was also the term that I achieved 2nd in the class results. {Most other times, I was way down the scale.} During that term, my father was away, working in Victoria.
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Unfortunately, the next term, my family and I were together in Victoria, my brother and I, in a new school, and that rapport, with teachers, was never re-established. There were some teachers to whom I related better than others. However, there were two teachers in my school life, for whom I had an intense dislike, because of their attitude and behaviour toward me.
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As I became more aware, and because of my self-application of the “empty chair” or Gestalt therapy approach, I have been able to re-frame some of my feelings toward those two people, my father, as well as people from other areas of my life. Needless to say, using this approach does not change the events and experiences that occurred with those teachers, my father, or other people in my life. However, I can now attribute their actions, toward me, as a product of their incorrect and, or deficient framing of their view of me, or possible deficiencies in their own self-perception. In this regard, it is not my intention to project judgement, but to acknowledge possibilities.
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Given these perceptions and outcomes, the only "fear" I should have of the therapy process, is a change in my attitude that no longer supports anger, or disappointment about my own responses in a variety of situations. My counsellor has suggested, one outcome of negatives, faced and resolved in these therapy approaches, is that the concerns, self-disappointment and remaining bitterness actually dissolves, resolves and disappears like burst soap bubbles. The only negative, that might then remain, is disappointment in myself/ourselves, for having retained unnecessary and unpleasant feelings for so long.
Another possible reason to forgive ourselves for the impact of those retained feelings.
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Another reference that my counsellor has offered recently, is about
“the grief and loss associated with what might otherwise have been”,
had I made different decisions in my life. That and the self-imposed anger about those possible and prospective losses, to which I have alluded before, in my discussions with you, are the biggest threats, in and of, various therapy styles. It is not the therapy that is threatening, but our response to what we uncover in ourselves, that is more threatening and possibly distressing. However, even those threats, distresses and disappointments can be dealt with by acknowledging in ourselves, the fact that, in previous times, when certain decisions were made, of not having the developed skills with-in ourselves, or by lack of knowledge, we had not the use of the means or knowledge to make different decisions, or to apply those resolving principles.
Can we be as kind to ourselves, in terms of forgiveness, as we might profess to be toward others.
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Another aspect of therapy, that we may be concerned about, is the question,
“If it is all that easy, why haven't we been able to do this before?”
I believe that the reason may be, in part, because we have been conditioned to believe that we act in specific, ordered ways in our lives. The theory of “nature” and/or “nurture”, whereby it is thought that our beliefs, feelings, thoughts and actions or behaviour, are somehow pre-conditioned or pre-determined, either by our inherited and imprinted patterns, or our life training. Therapy simply uses techniques that show that pre-conditioning and pre-determination are not necessarily fixed by our genetics (nature) or developmental training (nurture). As such, we can vary and change our proximate and world views, on everything that is able to be changed and viewed differently, in our lives. We now consider that we can allow ourselves, to follow a higher level of control and decision making, over choices we make about how those changes occur. We can make choices about which therapeutic models meet our needs, as we make choices about many other options that we have in our lives.
We can choose to forgive ourselves for losses, for incapacity and/or lack of knowledge.
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Fear can also arise, because many people view therapeutic processes as somehow false or damaging. Like hypnotism, therapeutic processes and models, have a wide range of valid and very useful applications in medical and psychological situations. Unfortunately, hypnotism and other methods of therapy have, in the eyes of some, gained bad reputations. Such reputational damage, may be partly as a result of, otherwise unconnected, religious and secular beliefs of their originators and subsequent proponents, as well as their application in entertainment, in the case of hypnosis. There is an increasing development and awareness of the benefits of these applications, independently from their originators and proponents, in both the medical and psychological fields of treatment. Those benefits need not necessarily be connected with other beliefs that are, or have been held by their originators and proponents.
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The feelings that I have experienced, as a result of removing the covers, that I had previously placed over the feelings of anger, anguish, self-disappointment, etc, have been akin to “loss and grief”. When we look at loss and grief, in relation to the death of parents, friends and associates, we can say that there develops over time, a lessening and, to some degree, a resolution of those feelings, in part because we experience fewer reminders of their presence, and may even consider their presence as in a real, but different form, as we progress in our lives. Negative feelings, that we maintain in ourselves, about past events, experiences and people, often do not resolve so easily or quickly. We carry, inside ourselves, the essence of what caused those feelings to exist and be maintained within us. Unless those feelings are resolved by some method, therapeutic or otherwise, which may be considered methods of processing “grief and loss”, about our own internal feelings, the negative feelings are likely to continue, without resolution.
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Even the process of going back into my thoughts and memories of past events, experiences and people, is often distressing. But isn't that really what therapy is all about? – facing our past and resolving that past, in the present.
It is only when we become aware and acknowledge, that we are leaving that past, covered and unresolved, and probably having ever existed and continuing to exist, nowhere else in the universe, but within ourselves. It is in this “form”, by acknowledging that it is likely to continue to cause us problems in the future, that we can then face the impact that certain events, experiences, feelings and people have had in our lives. Those thoughts, feelings, experiences and concepts of people from our past, surface in our present, within ourselves, in ways that are counterproductive and an attack on our person from inside us. Those attacks and counterproductive feelings and thoughts will not cease, until we have taken steps, that we believe will resolve the negative feelings in the present, that are a product of those past events, experiences, feelings and concepts of people from our past.
Are we not doing ourselves, and quite possibly others, an injustice by not taking measures in the present, that will improve our future.
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Because of the generated negative feelings of unworthiness in ourselves, anger towards ourselves and others, disappointment in self and others, we have attacked ourselves as much as anyone else has. If we can release those feelings;
That is another reason to afford ourselves forgiveness and peace.
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With My Best Wishes
@HenryX
Sky blue references – to do with Self-Forgiveness.
Accepting of ourselves – recognising our qualities and value
