How to Forgive Someone Who Hurt You?

Not very long ago, there was a teen age girl living in a beautiful valley. She loved going to school and study, even in a society where girl’s education was considered unnecessary. To her dismay, the routine life of the people was severely affected by the presence of extremists in the town. Her school was also closed down due to threats of the terrorists.

She was very upset about it because she was not ready to skip school or leave study at any cost.  With the help of her father, she started writing a blog where she used to share her situation and feeling about not going to school. The terrorists considered this teenage girl a threat to their ideology so they decided to target her. They approached her when she was on her way to school with her friends, identified her by asking her name and then shot her in the head to ensure that she does not remain alive. But her resilient spirit refused to leave her body and she survived.

This incident became a catalyst for an international movement in support of girls’ education. When she was later asked if she hated her attacker, she said that she had no anger against them. Just imagine, a fourteen year old girl forgave her worst enemies who tried to kill her. Her name is Malala Yousafzai.

How to Forgive Someone Who Hurt You?

Is it really possible to learn how to forgive someone who hurt you? Yes, you can develop the emotional capacity to forgive no matter what the situaiton is. Forgiveness can heal emotional wounds. It has the power to transform our lives for the better. Forgiveness has the powerful much greater than we normally think to make us more peaceful, calm, and joyful. It is important to learn how to forgive someone who hurt you, to live life to the fullest.

Hurt is Unavoidable

We human beings are social animals and we are very much connected with people around us. We can’t live an isolated life because most of our physical and emotional needs, desires and hopes are dependent on other humans.

When there will be interactions between people, there will be conflicts, betrayals, cheating, lying, abuse, and misbehavior. And these experiences affect us emotionally. This could happen in our family and social life and in our professional and business dealings. Even the strangers can hurt us with improper language or behavior. It feels really painful when any of this happens. This pain and anger continue to haunt us whenever we think about that event. We can’t feel comfort and peace within us.

Therefore, we need to know how to deal with such emotional distress. You can respond to any bad experience with people one of the following three ways:

1. You may want to take a revenge
2. You may just curse the person in your head and keep hating him or her.
3. Or you may like to forgive and move on.

Let’s take a look at each of these options:

Option 1: Revenge

Let’s say that you want to take revenge from someone who had misbehaved and hurt you deeply.  You will then look for a situation to bounce back and do the same thing to him. If you respond with the same insulting behavior, do you think that the matter will be over? No, the pain may still be there in your heart. The other person may also try to harm you again in one way or another and this cycle will continue forever.

This is the same kind of situation that we see in tribal societies where enmities between tribes continue from one generation to another and people sometimes don’t even know why the fight was started. Unfortunately, our culture and movies encourage us to take revenge and they portray forgiveness as some kind of weakness. In this scenario, no question arises for learning how to forgive someone who hurt you, because you are in a revenge mode.

The desire for revenge is not going to solve your problem instead it will expand it and you will be wasting your mental and physical energy in useless fight for months and years to come.

Option 2: Hate

Let’s say you you don’t go for revenge but you may continue to hate the person in your heart and mind.

If I ask you “would you like to experience the same negative event that you have faced earlier?  Of course, you would not. However, if you do forgive someone who hurt you and keep hating him, then every time you think about that situation or whenever that person comes in front of you, you become uncomfortable, feel anger and pain within your heart and relive the same experience again and again. You carry emotional baggage of suffering with you all the time.

What it means, it means that most of the time, we give control of our moods, emotions and behavior to other person or situation.

Whatever happened in the past is history, we can’t change it. The only control we have is on our present moment. Then why should we let any negative past event influence our present. The horrible movie of depressing incident we repeatedly play on the silver screen of our minds does not let us move forward in life.

Option 3: Forgive the Person Who Hurt You

Here comes the option of forgiveness. But why would you forgive someone let along learning how to forgive someone who hurt you and had done something terrible to you. When our hearts are wounded with cheating, lying, betrayal or misbehavior, no doubt, it is very difficult to forgive someone who emotionally hurt and harmed us.

On asking about forgiveness, your response could be:

Forgive! Forgive that person who made my life a living hell? Who made me miserable; hurt me emotionally, physically and created financial troubles. How in the world can you ask me to forgive him?

This could be your reaction and it appears quite normal in our society. But by not forgiving, it is who that is suffering? It is you who are suffering, not the person you are cursing or hating.  If you are upset today by their past behavior, then they are still controlling you. So there is no sensible reason to suffer by holding on to negative thoughts about other people that only hurt you.

Forgive for Your Own Sake

Forgiveness is not something you do for another person. You do it for your own sake. You forgive because it is your need to do that, your happiness depends on it. Don’t forgive just because they deserve it, rather make yourself free from the negative influence of your past. It will eliminate suffering, overcome resentful behavior and bring peace into your life.

Emotional hurt is like a snake-bite. No one dies just by a snake bite because a bite can only create a small wound which can heal relatively easily. However, the person dies by the venom released by the snake which mix up in the blood, and goes though the system into veins and then to the heart, and destroys the whole body functions. There is no sensible reason to hold on to the venom of anger and hate in your mind. It is a wise choice to throw this venom away by learning how to forgive someone who hurt you.

Forgiveness and Acceptance are not Same

When you forgive someone, you do not necessarily accept the wrong behavior that hurt you emotionally in the first place. It simply does not mean that you are accepting the action as justified. It simply means that you are not willing to keep that hurt anymore in your heart. You become ready to move on in your life instead of reliving that negative experience.

Develop Child-like Capacity to Forgive

We all make mistakes and sometimes indulge in terrible manners. If we don’t forgive others, how can we expect them to forgive us? Have you observe the way children behave in such situations? One moment, they will have a big fight with each other. However, the other moment, you will see them playing together as if nothing has every happened.

But when we grow old, our ego also gets bigger and we somehow lose the ability to forgive even for the petty things and events.  We need to awaken this child-like capacity to forgive and forget.

When you know how to forgive someone who hurt you, it becomes much easier to do so. You even don’t need an apology from someone to forgive. You also don’t need to tell the person that you have forgiven, because it has nothing to do with him or her. You are doing it for your own benefit. It needs inner strength and courage to be a forgiving person. An emotionally weak person cannot forgive others because he is the slave of his ego.

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.”

gandhi

Forgive and Forget

If you forgive but do not forget, then you have not really forgiven. I am not talking about forgetting in literal sense; it is beyond anyone’s control. It means that you are no longer emotionally attached to that event.  If you can’t feel inner peace and calm and the thought of a person or event stills triggers your emotions, it means you have not forgiven whole-heartedly.

Forgiving someone who hurt you does not happen by just say a few words from your mouth. The essence of this act should come from the deepest parts of your heart.

You may not be able to forgive someone for something big in a few moments. It is a gradual process and may take some time to sink in your heart and fully forgive a person. So start with small incidents where it is easy to forgive others. With some practice, you will be able to make forgiveness a permanent trait of your personality.

Let go, forget and move on with your life. Once you have forgiven someone, you may feel the urge to talk about the same negative event during arguments with that person.  But you need to operate from courage, and resist the temptation to relive the same experience. Don’t go back in the past and stick with your decision to move forward.

“Forgiveness ought to be like a cancelled note torn in two, and burned up, so that it never can be shown against one.” 

Maxwell Maltz

Once you forgive someone, leave it behind and don’t talk about that event anymore. It is difficult but this is what real forgiveness is.

3-Day Forgiveness Challenge

Forgiveness can’t change the past. However, it can heal our emotional wounds and make our present and future more peaceful and enjoyable. sI am sharing with you a 3-day forgiveness challenge to guide you how to forgive someone who hurt you deeply:

Today, tomorrow and the day after tomorrow, before you go for sleep; recall one incident from the day or anytime in the past when someone hurt you in some way, may be through words, behavior or action. Then close your eyes and imagine in your mind that this person is standing in front of you. Look into his eyes, call him by name and say with full conviction and emotion:

“I forgive you.

I forgive you for………….

I forgive you unconditionally.

I forgive you with no negative feeling against you in my heart.”

 Repeat this phrase multiple times. Feel yourself forgiving that person. Release the burden from your mind, and let go of whatever he or she had done.

Continue this challenge for at least three days and see what happens.

Inspiring Stories of Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the best revenge. Can you really learn how to forgive someone who hurt you or is it a natural trait? You definitely can learn how to forgive someone who hurt you. We have some great examples to learn from. I will quote just a couple of them:

• Malala Yousafzai, her story is of courage, motivation, hope, and forgiveness. There is no better example than a 14 year old girl who forgave her worst enemies who had tried to kill her.

• Nelson Mandela: 27 years in prison for advocating the rights of people. When he was released in 1990, he forgave everyone including those who imprisoned him.  He urged to forgive each other because it is God’s plan and always the right thing to do.

• An Iranian woman Samereh Alinejad suffered the loss of her teenage son whose killer was sentenced to death. She wanted revenge for the murder of her son. However, just before the killer was to be executed, she made an unexpected decision to pardon him. Forgiveness was in no way an easy thing to do in such situation.

• A woman Sandra Walker was in a car with her husband when a woman crashed into them. Her husband died on the spot and she had a life-changing brain injury. The other woman lost her son in the crash. During the trial for the accident, Sandra sympathized with the woman and gave her a hug. She said, “I know she is going through as much pain as I am feeling. I wanted her to know that I forgive her what she did.”

Summary: How to Forgive Someone Who Hurt You

• Forgiveness is not a quality you born with. You definitely can develop this ability by consciously learning how to forgive someone who hurt you.
• The interactions between human beings create friction which requires constant forgiveness to balance it out with peace and kindness.
• There are three options to respond with emotional hurt i.e. revenge, hate and forgiveness.
• Revenge starts constant battle, hate does not let us live in peace and forgiveness is the only option that liberates us from toxic past.
• It is not easy to forgive but the rewards outweighs the anger and hate.
• The appraoch of forgive and forget is beneficial for our mental and emotional wellbeing. It free us from the emotional baggage of past negative event.