(photo: Gnothi Sauton at Reichert-Haus in Ludwigshafen, Immanuel Giel, 2006)

There is an old saying, and it’s quite simple: “Know thyself.” As short and simple as it is, in the (really) old days, it was understood to be such an important thing to do that it was carved into the rock at the Temple of Apollo in Delphi, in its original Greek version: Γνῶθι σεαυτόν. Greek philosophers such as Plato explained the importance of introspection (literally “looking within”) in order to see what’s true, understand it, and turn that into wisdom for oneself.

The best research on forgiveness conveys that the forgiveness process also starts with using introspection to get some self-awareness. While decisional forgiveness can accomplished with just an awareness of one’s own decision to not engage in negative feelings of unforgiveness in response to a hurt or offense, full and lasting forgiveness involves deeper acknowledgement of one’s emotional and mental responses to a hurtful event, along with as clear a recollection of the event as possible. Self-awareness is how we connect with those emotional and mental impacts of the event, and use those as the energy to get into a forgiveness process that will release us from those impacts so that we can move on in life.

Self-awareness is not always easy or automatic. Especially when it comes to hurtful events, we may try to avoid the pain of the event in different ways, or pretend that the event didn’t happen. Those strategies can work only temporarily if at all, because the hurt and pain of the event did happen, and is still there whether we are connecting with it or hiding from it. Real release from that hurt and pain requires us to take a look at ourselves, and to be honest with ourselves.

Self-awareness happens when we trust and value ourselves enough to take a look at ourselves and ask whether we have lingering emotional responses to an event and person who hurt us in the past that are taking away from our freedom and personal growth. Forgiveness researcher Everett Worthington (developer of the REACH Forgiveness Process) explains these emotional responses, and I will summarize them here:

• Fear — especially connected to memory of the event or person, that can be triggered when similar events, memories or thoughts happen.
• Anger — often mixed with fear, we can end up as “walking wounded” expecting hurt or rejection, or “ticking time bombs” always on the edge of explosive anger, or a bad combination of both.
• Avoidance — perceptions of the hurt or offense motivate us to avoid the person who hurt us,
• Retaliation/Revenge — scheming to strike back at the person who hurt us.
• Attack — hatred drives us beyond scheming to actually attacking the person who hurt us.
• Withdrawal/Submission — feeling that fighting back against the person who hurt us is not possible, or pointless.
• Self-Protection — using mental processes to step around the event, person, and pain it caused us, and causes us in memory and daily life.
• Denial — telling ourselves that the hurtful event never happened and also expending our mental and emotional energy to continue denying that it happened to us.
• Self-Justification — mentally adopting a position that we are supremely virtuous and pure and then choosing to remember only the parts of the hurtful event that fit that picture we have of ourselves.
• Rumination — revisiting the memory and feelings we have about a hurtful event over and over again, maybe even uncontrollably, maybe making progress toward forgiveness, or maybe not making that progress.

…and I am going to add two more to this list…

• Guilt — feeling that the hurtful event is our own fault, even though we are the one hurt by someone else.
• Shame — feeling that the hurtful event happened to us because we are worthless or deserve suffering, or feeling that the hurtful event has made us into a worthless person.

All of these possible emotional responses to a hurtful event and person serve a function for us, whether self-protection or our best try at putting the event and person in a mental place where we can handle the impacts and memory of the event and person in our daily life. Using self-awareness and finding that we have made any of these responses to a hurtful event and person does not mean that we did something wrong, or that there is something wrong with us — that is very much not the point. What we actually want to do is become self-aware of the responses we have made, the impact that response is having on us now (even years since the hurtful event), and whether it is time to release ourselves from that response and cost of maintaining that response so that we can move on with our lives in freedom and personal growth.

In the REACH Forgiveness Process that can be taught in Live and Forgive presentations, guided retreats, small group series, or wilderness walks, the first step is to recall the hurtful event with as much clarity and self-awareness of our responses as possible. In the very similar Guideposts for Forgiving process developed by forgiveness researcher Robert Enright, the first step is “Uncovering Your Anger” and using self-awareness to start honestly looking at how our emotional response to the hurtful event or person is impacting us in our daily lives. Questions to prompt that self-awareness include:

• How have you avoided dealing with your anger?
• Have you faced your anger?
• Are you afraid to expose your shame or guilt?
• Has your anger affected your health?
• Have you been obsessed about the injury or the person who hurt you?
• Do you compare your situation to that of the person who hurt you?
• Has the injury caused a permanent change in your life?
• Has the injury changed your worldview — ideas about justice, mercy, love, God, eternity or morality?

You may be wondering whether recalling the event ( the “R” in the REACH Forgiveness Process) or becoming self-aware of the impact of the event comes first. I think that either works, and they can even happen at the same time. You can recall an event and then start using self-awareness to bring your responses and their impacts on your life to the surface — “Has that past event made me angry now?”. You can also start with self-awareness of your emotions and thoughts and then trace them back to a hurtful event — “Is my anger right now coming from something that happened in my past?”

The REACH Forgiveness Process that can be taught in Live and Forgive presentations, guided retreats, small group series or wilderness walks, integrates self-awareness as the start of forgiveness in a safe and supportive space. Participants enter into self-awareness together and the group dynamic has participants creating a safe space for each other and supporting each other in a spirit of fellowship.

This text is an original work of its author Tom Delaney and was entirely composed without the use of artificial intelligence (AI).

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If your parish or faith community is seeking a deeper experience of healing, mercy, and spiritual renewal, Live and Forgive is here to help. To begin the conversation, email Live and Forgive presenter and facilitator Tom Delaney at tom@liveandforgive.com—Tom will be glad to connect with you in a spirit of welcome, respect, and shared faith.