Forgiveness Activities (list)

This article will give a brief idea about Forgiveness Activities and how it is difficult to forgive an offender. Later it will discuss some techniques when forgiving becomes challenging.

Finally, it will highlight activities that might help in forgiveness.

FORGIVENESS ACTIVITIES:

Forgiveness activities help a person to learn how to forget and forgive. It’s not easy to forgive someone, that too if the mistake has been a huge one, learning how to forgive is a very big task and one of a very kind one.

Forgiveness is a process of change and requires commitment and excessive efforts.

We as human beings have a tendency to hurt people because we have feelings and of course we all make mistakes.

We all end up in situations where we ask for forgiveness for hurting someone intentionally or unintentionally.

Forgiveness means letting go of hard feelings whenever there has been a mistake that happened either by you or by anyone else.

We sometimes held up in situations where we have to forgive ourselves as well.

It means having patience and recognizing that nobody is perfect at all.

WHY FORGIVENESS IS IMPORTANT?

Forgiveness is necessary to help oneself from negative feelings like grudges, revenge, etc. Forgiveness helps in letting these feelings out and eventually helps in moving forward.

It’s like a balloon analogy, what if we do not let our feelings out in open and do not forgive people then there is some air in the balloon which is like anger, sadness that comes to us.

If we let the air out from time to time it’s not a big deal and one can be back to normal.

But if we don’t let it move out then the air will be stuck into the balloon and if we fill air into it, well it’s quite obvious what happens to the balloon when it’s full of air.

And as soon as we let out all the air from the balloon, it flies all over the place like a free bird, this is what one feels when we let out all the anger, sadness and negative emotions from within and choose forgiveness.

TECHNIQUES WHEN IT’S TOO HARD TO FORGIVE:

• Benefit Finding Method:

As now we know that Forgiveness is a process of change, and McCullough suggests that one writes about the benefits of interpersonal mistakes it can be an effective measure as it will allow for cognitive processing that facilitates forgiveness.

• Emotional Replacement:

Negative emotions take up the toll when we are hurt and it seems next to impossible to forget the pain and misery.

But the therapist helps here by facilitating emotional Replacement (from negative unforgiving emotions with positive emotions) by giving an altruistically motivated gift of Forgiveness.

The therapist can use the memory of the description given by the client and then try the humility, constriction over wrongdoings, gratitude for having being forgiven and hope from the expectations of something good has been done to others.

• Empty Chair Technique:

This technique is very helpful as in this, the therapist helps the client by letting him experience empathy by using the empty-chair in front of the client.

The client imagines the person who had hurt sitting on the empty chair, then the client describes his/her complaint to the chair.

Then the client moves to the chair and sits there and thinks from the offender’s perspective.

The conversation with the client moves back and forth between the chairs and in doing so the person might imagine an apology or an acknowledgment of the hurt that was inflicted and thus he can forgive the offender.

ACTIVITIES TO HELP PRACTICE FORGIVENESS:

• Mindfulness:

Mindfulness refers to being in the present and living to the fullest. Both Mindfulness and Forgiveness have similarities, mindfulness helps the person be in his full awareness and positivity floods in, while in Forgiveness as well, the positivity floods in as soon as the culprit or the offender have been forgiven and then the individual also can live to the fullest without any grudge or revenge to be taken.

• Naikan Therapy:

In the Naikan Therapy, the main focus is on distinguishing between the actual memories a person has, then the interpretations that are given in and then finally the sense of self as a result.

The self is created by the narrative of the past and our memories are influenced by how we see ourselves through the judgment we make about our past.

The Naikan method suggests that by taking another perspective on the painful memory, is the answer.

Our sense of self is defined by our relationship with others.

• Roleplay Forgiveness:

Roleplay also makes easy to practice Forgiveness.

As the name suggests, it’s playing a role, the culprit and the person who have been hurt play roles respectively and the person eventually forgives the culprit or the offender and makes peace with him.

It helps in paying attention to the feeling that has been felt after forgiving the offender and the feeling that our body feels after forgiving is different altogether and brings happiness to the very core.

• Write a Forgiveness Letter:

Writing down the feelings is the best way to get rid of the negative emotions as what our mouth can not flood out our hands can pen it down.

Writing all the miseries and hurtful emotions out makes the individual feel light and a feeling of self-worth emerges at that point in time which leads to forgiveness to the offender.

Because at that moment no grudge, no harsh feelings are left behind to have a toll on self, it’s just the feeling of self that takes up in the mind and that feeling leads to forgiving the offender.

And writing a forgiving letter is another way of conveying how deep the emotions have been felt in the form of words.

CONCLUSION:

Forgiveness is the most difficult task to do as it’s not easy to let go of the feelings of betrayal, but how a person feels when he forgives the offender is something very different.

The feeling of relief, free and most importantly happy is the wonderful feeling of all time.

This blog has given a brief idea about Forgiveness Activities and how it is difficult to forgive an offender.

Later it has discussed some techniques when forgiving becomes challenging.

Finally, it has highlighted activities that might help in forgiveness.

Please feel free to leave a comment below or a suggestion. We would really appreciate it.

CITATIONS:

brilliantstarmagazine.org

positivepsychology.com