"The most loving form of detachment I have found has been forgiveness. Instead of thinking of it as an eraser to wipe another's slate clean or a gavel that I pound to pronounce someone "not guilty," I think of forgiveness as a scissors. I use it to cut the strings of resentment that bind me to a problem or a past hurt. By releasing resentment, I set myself free.

When I am consumed with negativity over another person's behaviour, I have lost my focus. I needn't tolerate what I consider unacceptable, but wallowing in negativity will not alter the situation. If there is action to take, I am free to take it. Where I am powerless to change the situation, I will turn it over to my Higher Power. By truly letting go, I detach and forgive.

When my thoughts are full of bitterness, fear, self-pity, and dreams of revenge, there is little room for love or for the quiet voice of guidance within me. I am willing to love myself enough to admit that resentments hold me back, and then I can let them go.

Today's Reminder

Every time I try to tighten the noose of resentment around someone's neck, I am really only choking myself. Today I will practice forgiveness instead.

"A part of me wants to cling to old resentments, but I know that the more I forgive, the better my life works."
...In All Our Affairs

From Courage to Change

Compulsive disorders such as addiction twist and distort many good things, including the great principle of forgiveness. We repeatedly forgive the same people. We hear promises, we believe lies, and we try to forgive some more. Some of us may have reached a point where we cannot forgive. Some of us may not want to, because to forgive would leave us vulnerable to further hurt and we believe we cannot endure more pain. Forgiveness turns on us and becomes a painful experience.
Some of us may be truly trying to forgive, some of us may think we have forgiven, but the hurt and anger won't diappear.

Some of us can't keep up with the things we need to forgive, the problems are happening so fast we barely know what's going on. Before we can register the hurt and say, "I forgive," another nasty thing has been dumped on us.

Then we feel guilty because someone asks, "Why can't your forgive and forget?" People uninformed about the disease of addiction and other complusive disorders frequently ask that. For many of us, the problem is not forgetting. Forgiving and forgetting feed our denial system. We need to think about, remember, understand, and make good decisions about what we are forgiving, what can be forgotten and what is still a problem. And forgiving someone does not mean we have to let that person keep hurting us. An addict doesn't need forgiveness, he or she needs treatment. We don't need to forgive the addict, at least not initially. We need to step back so he or she can't keep stomping on our toes.

I am not suggesting that we adopt an unforgiving attitude. We all need forgiveness. Grudges and anger hurt us, they don't help the other person much either. Forgiveness is wonderful. It wipes the slate clean. It clears up guilt. It brings peace and harmony. It acknowledges and accepts the humanness we all share, and it says, "That's okay. I love you anyway." But I believe we codependents need to be gentle, loving, and forgiving with ourselves before we can expect to forgive others. But I believe codependents need to think about how, why, and when to dole out forgiveness.

Also, forgiveness is closely tied into the acceptance or grief process. We cannot forgive someone for doing something if we have not fully accepted what this person has done. It does little good to forgive the addict for going on a binge, if we have not yet accepted his or her disease of addiction. Ironically, the kind of forgiveness we often give to soothe an addict's "morning after" remorse may help him or her continue using.

Forgivness comes in time----it's own time--if we are striving to take care of ourselves. Don't let other people use this principle against us. Don't let other people help us feel guilty they think we should forgive someone, and we are either not ready or believe forgiveness is not the appropriate solution. Take responsibility for forgiveness. We can dole out forgiveness appropriately based on good decision, high self-esteem, and knowledge of the problem we are working on. Don't misuse forgiveness to justify hurting ourselves; don't misuse it to help other people continue hurting themselves. We can work our program, live our own lives, and take the Fourth and Fifth Steps. If we are taking care of us, we will understand what to forgive and when it's time to do that.

While we're at it, don't forget to forgive ourselves .

Taken from Melody Beattie's Codependent No More.

Forgiveness Vs Grudges

Forgiveness begins with forgive-ness or forgiven-ess.

I find that interesting because you usually cannot give one or get one without the other happening. Forgiveness is the opposite of grudge and a grudge or system of grudges is what addiction is all about for all using alcoholics and drug addicts. It's a focus point for the drinker-drugger as long as they use. It is something held onto tightly and clasped against the chest the "you did me wrong" mentality that keeps anger and explosion nearby or simmering below the surface for easy access. It is a power to be reckoned with this keeping score and the single most destructive self-defeating emotion that anyone can embrace. It is the ultimate Nuke to any goodness or happiness anyone can have. It will hold you down like an anchor drunk, addict, or any human.

A lot of recovering drinkers and druggers know exactly what the seeds were that brought about lives of addiction. We know how the seeds were planted and by whom. We know who watered them and nurtured them. That and about a buck will buy you a cup of coffee. If we try to point at the reasons we became what we became a grudge starts to fester and ugly feelings emerge and soon we are off on some tangent of "How could you do this to me?" Angry and focused on that anger our lives become obsessive and unmanageable just like when we using our substances. This is no good.

A grudge is a simmering hatred that is felt for someone or many someones . It has many reasons that it's roots take hold. It is not a sin to feel negative thoughts right after negative happenings in our lives for a short time. It is when those thoughts rather than passing, begin to feed upon themselves growing larger and more consuming that it becomes a problem. The roots form. The thoughts take hold and the mental scheming begins. With some folks it never reaches the scheming phase. But that's the toxic phase that plants the roots that powers resentment and grudges. It can be an addiction in and of itself these feelings.

Grudges or resentments may not seem like a problem to a lot of folks unless they stop to think that their negative feelings certainly do touch everything and everyone in their lives and not in a good way. The ones and the things we care most about are in the express lane to negativity while the people resented often don't know you resent them and even if they do know, many of them probably don't give a rip about your feelings. Think about that. All the hatred hits your life and your loved ones impacting you negatively and the target many times isn't even grazed by your grudge.

You shoot yourself and then wait for someone else to die! Now that makes sense doesn't it ?

The thing called grudge that gnaws at people to get out does so by consuming their insides soul first and every dream and good thing in their life step by step until their spiritual and physical death. The worst cancer there is and it is a self-imposed fatal illness of choice. In fact. science is finding out that negative feelings are indeed linked to cancer rates, depression rates and other serious illnesses. Couple that with the obvious divorce rates and family impacts of these feelings and add in a heaping tablespoon of friends shunning a negative person, plus a pinch of employer dissatisfaction over bouts of attitude and one can clearly see that the life being bombed is not the life of the bombing target. "I'm mad at YOU, but I'm killing ME!" Now that makes sense!

Now you will call me crazy and believe me when I say I had to train myself to let go of negative feelings quickly by adding a simple sentence to my life to change the direction of my thoughts when bad things happen. The sentence is "What is so good about this?". You see, if you look for a black lining in problems or mishaps your mind will provide a black lining. But if you ask yourself better questions your brain will provide better answers. In better answers we move on quickly to learning from what happened and from there we go to avoiding that problem or preventing that problem from reoccurring.

In dealing with people, instead of harboring a grudge I ask myself what I need to say to that person to clear my air . But I first must understand the nature of what was said or done. Was it on purpose? What were they thinking? What was their intent? So I ask those questions without answering them myself first which would be rather insane on my part. But to hold a grudge questions are usually self answered and away we go.

I can ask them why they said or did what they said or did. Depending on the answer I can say that what you did or said I don't appreciate giving them the room to respond to my charges. Apologies are not uncommon at this phase. Explanations often disarm our anger. And in some cases, what was said or done wasn't even aimed our way. We just thought so. The thing is to never assume the worst and then fly with it. You could end up with a belly full of acidic bile over absolutely nothing that couldn't have been solved by simply asking one or two questions.

If something was intentional I can tell them I want to break off with them. I can tell them I will do no further business with them or that I now do not trust them. I can provide my own closure and be done with it for good. The thing is to communicate what is bothering you now instead of holding onto it for ages to come tainting your life and taxing your outcomes.

Some people think that forgiving means kiss and make up when in some cases it means, "I shall not try to harm you or seek your ruin, go in peace and I shall do the same. Be happy in your life and allow me the same grace". It's that easy! You don't have to fall in love with the other person or kiss them or send them greeting cards on the holidays or invite them over for a cookout. You simply release yourself of the power that a grudge holds over you by telling the other person "I forgive you". Old Spanish Proverb; "There is no argument where one will not". Which means simply it's your choice.

************************************************** ****************************************** The power of forgiveness does far more for the person initiating the forgiveness than the person forgiven. When we forgive we release a power that ruled our lives, our thoughts, our actions and many of our outcomes. Forgiveness is a lavish gift we give ourselves to turn a negative power into a positive power that will touch everything and everyone in our lives in a very meaningful way.
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Look at it this way. A grudge is a group of negative feelings that take up space on your hard drive like a virus infecting you files. If you remove the virus your files are no longer affected and you now have free space in your memory to replace with something better. Your performance increases and your programs work faster no longer compromised by something you didn't need or want. Your system is less venerable to attack or failure. Things run now like a fresh PC just out of the box.

I just love these posts of yours. They are a excellent vitiman for the heart & brain:).