Letting Go Versus Forgiveness

In this talk you will learn the difference between letting go and forgiveness so that you can decide for yourself which one is best for you. Forgiveness doesn't have to be the goal in order to heal from emotional pain. Dr. Traci also shares her own struggle with forgiveness and she was able to overcome it.

Transcript

Hi, I'm Dr. Tracy Moreno and this talk is titled, Letting Go vs. Forgiveness. Forgiveness doesn't have to be the goal of therapy. I can't even count how many patients come in and assume that forgiveness is going to be their goal. They are usually shocked and pleasantly surprised when I tell them that it doesn't have to be. Forgiveness doesn't have to always be the goal. Forgiveness is a difficult and sometimes impossible task. Your therapy goal should always be something realistic and attainable, And it should help you decrease your symptoms and help you feel better. Usually the mere thought of forgiving someone who hurt us instantly brings about feelings of anger, Resentment, Fear. So why would this be the goal? Realistically we can forgive, But we can never forget. There's something about letting go of the pain that isn't as emotionally challenging as having to forgive someone that hurt us. So is there a difference between letting go and forgiving? Only a slight one. We can let go without having to forgive, But we can't forgive without letting go. I think if we can get ourselves to let go of the pain, Forgiveness will not seem so impossible and will soon follow along with your progress. So maybe it's just easier to trick our mind in the beginning to go on this journey of forgiveness. So let's start with letting go. It's important to understand that we can't let go without feeling it first, Addressing it, Confronting it. Then and only then can we truly let it go. If we don't do this, Then we are merely repressing and denying the pain. You're basically building a house of cards. You're not on solid foundation and you'll be blown over by the slightest problem. You must rebuild on solid ground and to do that you have to get all that pain inside of you out. All the anger, The fear, The sadness, Guilt, Rejection, Shame, All of it. To do that means you have to stop and allow yourself to feel it so you can process it. Process what you feel and why you feel it. You can do this through talking about it with someone you trust or a therapist or you can write about it. There's journaling exercises, There's writing what we call a therapy letter, Which please remember this letter is for therapy purposes only. It's for your eyes only and it will never actually be given to anybody else. But what you do is you would address the letter to the person who has caused you the pain. It could be another person, It could even be an entity or a situation or even yourself or God. Whatever it is causing you the pain and tell them everything that you wish you could tell them. You can curse, It doesn't have to be grammatically correct, It doesn't have to make sense, It doesn't even have to be full sentences. Just get it out. But you've got to channel the pain and get it out on the paper. There's a magic when putting pen to paper. When you're done, Destroy it. Rip it up, Burn it, However you want, But just don't reread it. I know this is rather gross, But it's just as if you wouldn't eat what you just threw up so you don't want to put all that pain back in your mind and body. Other forms of processing your pain can be through more creative outlets, Poetry, Music, Writing songs or anything similar. After you do this, You want to use some healthy and appropriate coping skills such as working out is great, Taking a long hot shower, Lighting a candle, Taking a bubble bath, Playing with a pet, Doing something fun with friends, Anything that helps calm you down and recover from the emotions that you just experienced. Repeat this process as often as you need to. It will take several times, Several letters and using the coping skills to heal from the letters. It's a process that will take time and consistency. But the intensity of the emotions will gradually decrease as you do this. The more you process your emotions, You will begin to become more desensitized to them and eventually come to a place of indifference and just be able to make peace with your past. This is really the goal. Once you're able to get to a place of indifference, Forgiveness won't seem like an impossible, Unattainable challenge anymore. Although I did run into some minor hiccups on my own journey of forgiveness that I thought would be helpful to share with you. I recently did a few different meditations on forgiveness and on a personal level, I was shocked and a bit upset. I was looking for the strength and courage to let go of my pain that somebody else had caused me and be able to forgive them. But what I found in these meditations was not that. Instead, I found the instructors asking me to look within myself and look how I hurt others throughout my life. This completely pissed me off to say the least, But I kept listening. Then they talked about how I have undoubtedly hurt myself throughout my life. Then at the very end, The talks finally turned to focusing on how others have hurt me. I was confused and angry. The last thing I wanted to hear was what I may have done wrong. I was thinking, How is this supposed to help me? I haven't done anything wrong, But I guess I was too busy turning blame outward on others to look within or get the big picture. One meditation I did, I even shut off halfway through it out of anger, Of course, And tossed my phone across the bed. I tried a few more meditations and they all had the same general message. So at that point, I really had no choice but to try and step back from my own blinders of emotions and try to think as a psychologist. So I started again and analyzed it on a psychological level to determine how I would explain the reasoning behind this concept to a client. And then I would be able to apply it to myself. The challenge of looking within and how I've hurt others throughout my life forced me to realize that I am not an innocent victim in all this. We are not innocent victims in all this. We will inevitably hurt others and they will hurt us either intentionally or unintentionally. This is all part of the human experience. So what makes another person's actions unforgivable when I expect mine to be forgivable? Next, We look at how we hurt ourselves. We can hurt ourselves by not having the compassion and understanding for others or even ourselves. And by not forgiving, We are holding on to anger, Resentment, Sadness, Even hate. We are destroying ourselves from the inside out. Lastly, The act of forgiving someone else is not for them. It's for us. We are the ones hurting inside when we are refusing to let go of the pain. Forgiveness allows us to release that pain. And this is where this came full circle for me. We can't forgive anyone else until we are able to see ourselves in others and forgive ourselves. It's a lot of mental and emotional work, But it is very worth it. The outcome is to be able to free your mind, Free yourself, And free your spirit. Good luck on your journey.

Reviews

You have such a gift for getting right to the root of what hurts and putting words to it. Thank you for making these meditations. I feel so lucky to have found you.

Love the content, greatly explained and wrapped up, thank you 🙏🏼 🫶🏾

Thank you, you showed me a whole new perspective on how I was/am part of my own problem. This meditation has been extremely helpful to me. I no longer want to be angry with life, people, situations etc. as it’s only hurting myself and holding me back
Much gratitude 💫💫💫

Thank you for the thoughtful talk. I want us both to feel better, but I prefer neither of us become indifferent to each other.

Mm. Yeah. Not exactly sure what to make of this. I don’t know that I agree with all of it – yet anyway, just as she pointed out how she wasn’t ready to hear certain views from her therapists when she first heard them. I like it though, and will most likely listen to it several more times.