BOLTON: Forgiveness is an important step

Hi my name is Erin, and I have "daddy issues."

When new acquaintances make causal conversation by asking about my family or how many siblings I have, I typically respond jokingly, "Oh, my family puts the fun in dysfunction. Everyone is divorced, remarried and even sometimes divorced a second or third time. I have half siblings, stepsiblings and four sets of grandparents."

The reality is, however, that this arrangement has caused significant amounts of pain in my life, and I struggle greatly with the idea of forgiveness. The concept of forgiveness is an enigma. Sure, forgiveness has religious significance, but what does it entail?

Psychologists define forgiving as the motivational shift from desires of retaliation and estrangement to increased motivation of goodwill for the offender. Since the early 1990s, psychologists have spent considerable amounts of time and research exploring the effects of forgiveness on psychological well-being.

Indirect evidence exists suggesting that unforgiving responses to interpersonal transgressions (i.e., blame, anger and hostility) are linked to impaired health, specifically coronary heart problems.

Furthermore, research suggests that reductions in hostility, such as those associated with forgiveness therapy, actually reduce coronary problems. Presently, clinical psychologists recognize the overall positive psychological effects of forgiveness.

In 1987, Donald Hope wrote an article in Psychotherapy, entitled "The Healing Paradox of Forgiveness," in which he explored the process and potential therapeutic benefits of forgiveness. He writes, "Forgiveness can be seen as a meta-action, as a reframing of how one views the world, as a jump to a different level of logical type."

He even likens the act of forgiving as to realizing the self-defeating nature of immediate feelings of anger, retaliation, vengeance and bitterness.

I have not spent time with my father in years. The last event my father and I both attended was my sister's sixth-grade graduation. We had the ultimate staring contest.

I entered the gymnasium, walked directly over to my stepmother and siblings, greeted them with hugs and sat down close to my father. He failed to acknowledge my presence.

"He must know that I'm here," I thought to myself.

He continued to look forward as though he had not noticed me. I sat two chairs to his right. We hadn't spoken since his last drunken escapade. That was months prior.

I turned my entire body toward him and fixed my eyes on his face. He swallowed; a lump moved down his throat. He squinted, blinked rapidly and continued to peer forward.

An hour went by. My vision blurred as the tears welled up in my eyes. My father refused to look at me, and I gave by goodbyes to the other members of my family and walked away.

This lack of contact did not bother me much; I would go as far as to say that I saw my life exponentially more peaceful without him. Then my brother got engaged and invited my father to the wedding.

So began my renewed struggle with forgiveness toward my father in preparation for my brother's wedding day.

Prior to my brother's engagement and my decision to forgive my father, I understood the concept of forgiveness to mean condoning the behavior of the offender: "You know, Dad, it was OK that the last time I saw you, you sat two chairs from me and ignored me for an hour. Even when I sat facing you, attempting to make eye contact, you left and walked right past me without saying a word. You know what? That's cool."

I was wrong; forgiveness does not mean you must condone the offense.

I also mistakenly took the notion of forgiveness to mean that I had to reconcile our relationship. I repeatedly made plans to spend time with my father; each attempt left me weeping or in fits of rage – sometimes both.

Again, I was wrong.

Clinical psychologists recognize what they term Forgiveness Theory to have significant promise in the treatment of post-traumatic stress in women who have suffered spousal emotional abuse. In 2006, Dr. Gayle L. Reed and Dr. Robert D. Enright reported that Forgiveness Theory (FT) "operationalizes forgiveness…while also clearly distinguishing forgiveness from pardon [condoning] and reconciliation."

This is of course important in breaking the cycle of emotional abuse because FT "promotes the reclamation of valued personal qualities, such as compassion, without neglecting the injustice of abuse or encouraging interaction with the former partner."

While I may not have suffered from spousal emotional abuse, working out forgiveness for my father had been an immense struggle because I misunderstood what forgiveness was. Rob Bell, pastor of Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan, gave a three-week sermon series on forgiveness in June 2009.

There he explained forgiveness as a process of absorbing the pain and working through the agony associated with the forgiving process. He even likened forgiveness to a kind of death. One word for forgiveness used in the Biblical context, although rarely used in the New Testament, is splanchnizomai. It is derived from the word for intestines. Literally, it means to spill out one's insides, or intestines.

Following my decision to forgive my father, I discovered buried, unresolved pain I never realized was there. But the truth of the matter is that it had always been there leaking into the way I lived and thought.

I had been known to randomly lash out in irrational anger toward friends or even, say, traffic. One semester I would find myself on the Dean's List, the next, barely able to get myself out of bed in the morning, dropping classes, drinking excessively and crippled with anxiety. 

All is not lost, because as this pain comes to the surface I am forced to learn how to resolve, forgive, let go and move forward. Breaking destructive 10- or 20-year-old mental habits has been extremely difficult (a splanchnizomai of sorts). The upside, however, was that I began to see and treat myself as less of a victim, and true confidence is becoming the natural byproduct.