Forgiveness, like surrender, is something that you feel in your heart. There are steps to take to learn to forgive, and the first one is to learn to forget. Not that forgiveness is forgetting, or accepting that what happened to you is okay. It wasn't. Forgiveness is learning to accept that what happened to you happened. In order to move on through the negative side of the Pain Cycle, you must learn to put these things to rest. As the saying goes, you must learn to “choose your fight.” This is extremely important in the context of pain treatment.
Every pain patient knows about their own justice trap. I have never met a chronic pain sufferer who has been through the medical system properly. I have never met one who has been treated properly by their employers, lawyers, or insurers. I cannot say with conviction that they don't exist, I've just never met one. Of the thousands of patients that I've met personally, every one of them has a story to tell about the negative side of the medical system, and of the justice they are hoping to achieve through the use of lawyers, insurance companies, and their medical records, which all of us keep diligently in our houses.
I had studied forgiveness when I first attempted to walk to Washington, DC, but every time I read about it I would say to myself, “There is no way I will accept this forgiveness stuff. What they (the medical system) did to me was wrong. Someday I will make it right.” I realize now that this was a futile way of thinking. Looking through most of my medical files everyday was wrong. It controlled me and kept me tied to a negative, depressing, and angry mess. I'm sure that the medical system, the lawyers, the insurers, and the employers were happy to be rid of me, but I had to let it go. I had to relieve myself of the guilt and anguish that the constant pursuit of justice was causing me. Constant pain is bad enough without adding anxiety to it. I needed to learn how to let it go, how to forgive.
To tell you the truth, I don't know when it happened, I just know that I thought about it and thought about it, and right up until I reached Washington, DC, on my first “Walk”, I still hadn't realized that I was accepting the forgiveness into my heart. I remember my nephew approaching me on the bench, and when he said to me “Hey Uncle, how was your walk? ” it dawned on me, I had forgiven. I no longer felt the need for justice. It was such a big thing, that it makes me emotional right now trying to write this. I had been dealing with this for five years! I had my large box of medical records that were neatly organized, updated, and fresh in my mind, so that, just in case I ever receive that phone call from the proper agency, association, or Board of Directors, I would be ready to answer any questions in the pursuit of equity.
I no longer felt the need to pursue this. It will be something that will haunt me for the rest of my life, but in order to move on, in order to approach the positive side of the Pain Cycle, in order to complete these walks, I needed to let it go. There were many lessons along the road that showed me what “letting go” meant.
I had to give up a lot of things that were necessary due to the problem of carrying weight, and the problem of a broken wheelbarrow. One of the hardest decisions I had to make on the walk to Washington, DC was giving away all of my stuff when I lost an axle to the cart that I was pulling. I had a backpack with wheels on it, but it could handle so little, that I had to give up anything that wasn't extremely necessary to survival, and that included many, many things that were near and dear to me, and some things that I actually needed for comfortable survival.
Letting Go, the key to forgiveness.
A very hard lesson to learn in the “school of pain”. Many of you reading this now are saying “I don't think so,” and I can't blame you. You have been wronged. You have been used and abused. In some cases it was unintentional, just as your family members may say or do the wrong things to help you. They mean well, but are inexperienced and uneducated in the care of a person in pain. This is also the case with some of the medical professionals you've dealt with. Most mean well, but are lost in a chaotic system and are trying to satisfy their mandates by a higher authority. Doctors, employers and insurers may fall into this category. Legislation is also an uneducated culprit in this maddening circumstance.
It is written, and you and I will say, that the more you understand things from another's perspective, the more you'll be able to gain forgiveness. Putting yourself in their shoes, and taking your emotional response to your plight out of it, will help you better understand someone else. Even in the case of outright wrongdoing, as in my case, where I was able to see my medical records and put together some of the truth. It made me extremely angry. Then to find out that the law, and the lawyers would allow me no recourse, which truly frustrating and sickening. These people were planning insurance cover up games with my life, and especially, with my children's lives. How can this ever be forgiven? It can, and it is.
Forgiveness, however, comes from within, and I can prove this. You can study forgiveness techniques all you want, and you should, as it is a key to gaining forgiveness, but it comes to your heart, not your head. I still, to this day, believe that myself and my family were wronged by these medical professionals and I can prove it with documents, but I don't have the need to. I can never condone what they did, and I never will. I am fighting to change this, but I no longer have the passionate want for justice. I am no longer tied to these feelings of retribution. I can't even say why, or at least say how, this “letting go” happened. It doesn't make sense. Forgiveness just happens. You need to take steps towards it, which allows it to happen and this is very important, but it will seem that you study to understand it, and never do. Then, one day, you think back and boom! It has happened.
When I first walked to Washington, DC, from Boston, I had studied forgiveness through many books at the library, I did my homework, and began to walk and think about what I had learned. After 400 miles, heading in to Maryland, I realized that it was working. I was still very angry and I couldn't stop thinking of how wrong it was for them to treat me the way they did. It cost me everything. This “walk for healing” wasn't working. I hurt badly and felt that I was building up more anger and frustration, then, on the day I landed at the Capitol, when my nephew asked me that line I will never forget, I stopped for a moment, and reflected on the walking, and the towns, and the people I had met, and I realized, I have forgiven! I no longer felt the anger. I no longer felt tied to all that negative. I felt peace, and joy, and calm, and relaxed. “Where did that come from?” was my first thought. It surprised me. I don't know when it happened, or where I was when it happened. I could only look back and realize that it happened. I believe that you must learn the techniques of forgiveness to get there, you must take your steps, but when it happens, it will seem to come out of nowhere. Get books about forgiving, or study grief, it's in there. I will list some techniques and knowledge here, but this is just scratching the surface. There's a lot to study. Just don't be too surprised or frustrated when you feel that it's not helping you. It's okay. Keep going. Keep trying. Keep learning more. Don't give up. It will happen. It's worth waiting for. Here some knowledge for you:
Steps to Forgiveness
1. Confront your emotional pain - your shock, fear, anger, and grief. Recognize that the hurt that has occurred may have been very unfair and that these steps are not meant to minimize the hurt involved.
2. Realize that forgiveness can only be appropriate after you have processed out your fear, anger, and grief. However, also realize that you can set forgiveness as a goal in the future for your sake now! Recognize that to continue to dwell on the anger and resentment involved in the hurt will literally destroy your physical health, and cause you great mental suffering.
New studies clearly show that anger and resentment doubled the risk of myocardial heart attacks in women with previous coronary problems. Other studies indicate cancer and other deadly illnesses are also caused by anger and resentment. So be willing, for your sake, to begin to process out these deadly emotions as soon as possible.
3. Understand that - love is what you ultimately want for yourself, from yourself.
4. Understand that - forgiveness does not condone or approve or forget the harmful acts; forgiveness does not allow yourself to be abused. We forgive the doer, not the doing. Remembering this helps us to break harmful cycles of behavior.
5. Realize that - you are the only person responsible for your own feelings and for healing the hurt that is going on inside of you.
6. Remember that - you are so powerful that usually, you had some part in what happened. Be willing to totally face up to that part and accept it without blame (to forgive and love that part).
7. See this situation as an opportunity for healing and for growth. See that the other person involved has revealed to you through his or her actions where there was a wounded spot in you which needed healing.
8. Start releasing anger, sadness, grief, and fear through the many processes, therapies and therapists available. Have a person to work with who can truly empathize with you, yet who can be objective and help you shift your perception from blame to healing.
9. Decide to forgive. Even if this decision is half-hearted at first, it will probably lessen your hurt and anger immediately.
Notice that this decision can be difficult because, after you have processed out the anger, resentment and grief, you will have to give up the grudge - the being the "victim", the "being right" and making the other person "wrong". Notice that this is the "superior" position, which can be used to get a lot of self-righteous attention. Be willing, for your sake, to have the courage to get off that "superior" position.
10. Be willing to find a new way to think about the person who wronged you. What was his or her life like growing up? What was his or her life like at the time of the offense? What were this person's good points up to the time of the hurt? Notice you may not be able to see much good within until you have processed out your anger and/or grief or fear.
11. Be aware that being forgiving is a courageous act on your part. It has nothing to do with whether the other person can admit they are wrong. You are forgiving to liberate yourself no matter what the other person decides to do.
12. Be willing to do and learn whatever it takes to forgive. Commit to do processes, to read courageous stories of forgiveness, to write in journals, to see a therapist, to do training’s, or to do whatever it takes to heal the wounds involved. Remember these wounds may be deeply tied to past hurts going back to your interactions with your parents. Resolve to follow them through for your total healing, even if it involves years of effort to heal. Remember that you are determined to find the true happiness and joy that true forgiveness can bring to your life.
13. If you believe in a Higher Power, be willing to pray on this problem and to turn to this Higher Power for guidance and assistance in the forgiveness process.
14. Accept the lessons involved in this incident — our lives are laboratories for learning. What have you learned from this event that is invaluable to you? Has some form of attachment to a belief or beliefs a position has caused you the pain involved? What belief or beliefs were involved?
15. See that everything is okay; possibly perfect, as it is now.
16. If you have the willingness and it is appropriate, seek feedback from the other person by being willing to say "I'm sorry that I did..." (whatever it is that you feel contributed to the problem).
17. Regardless of what the other person does, work towards seeing them with good. Know that therefore that goodness is flowing through you for your mental and physical well being.
Now let's talk more about letting go.
Release it. That's what it means. Like a helium balloon to a child, it stays attached to your arm, do you. The longer it's with you, the more attached to become. It will begin to take on a personality, sometimes a name, a secure familiarity. My balloon was called “the medical system”. As I said before, I had to learn this lesson, not just read about it, and it came in an amazing way. When that car broke, so did I. I sat staring at it for four hours. I didn't know what to do. I had just walked 400 blocks from the Bronx to Manhattan and back, to cross the George Washington Bridge. I turned the corner and felt the dragging from behind me. I thought I had a flat tire but when I inspected it, I saw the wheels inflated but bent in. The axle had snapped in half! I was done, and right at the halfway point. I had about 80 pounds of gear, clothes, lights, rain gear, winter gear, all the things I needed to walk 400 miles. I kept walking up this huge hill to use the phone, leaving my cart full of these items unattended. I was trying to call my cousin to tell him it was over, to see if he could come pick me up. Every time I went up to make the call, the phone wouldn't work.
I tried several times and each time there'd be something else wrong. There I was, head in my hands, a light cold rain coming down, staring at my cart, feeling deflated. Each time I would sit down with my coffee and cigar, a voice in my head, getting stronger and louder, kept saying, “lighten the load and move on, you can do it. You said you would walk this, now, lighten the load and move on. Let it go!”
Let it go? Let go of all my stuff? My raincoat? My camera? My lights and clothes and implements of survival? The voice kept saying, “Take only what is necessary, what will fit.”
I had that wheeling backpack with me. I couldn't carry any weight on my back, but I could pull some. This voice became so strong, and so determined, but I started getting the same enthusiasm. I started thinking of all the people that were counting on me. My family and friends, the people I had met, and the thousands of pain patients watching my progress on the Internet, and I said to myself “I'll just have to let it go, lighten the load, and move on.”
I started gathering important things and began stuffing the small pack with them. Most of what I had wouldn't fit and I had to decide what was going with me, and what would have to go somewhere else. I knew that anything with weight, that wasn't absolutely necessary, could not go with me. I thought about it for three more hours. I had to let it go. My gear, especially my raincoat and camera. This camera had been with me for 30 years! It had captured all of my memories during all of the changes of my adult life. But it was unnecessary and too much weight. It had to go.
I packed what I could and put the rest in the car with the long London Fog raincoat covering it all. I had made this decision however, and was determined, even psyched, to move on. I didn't know what to do with the cart so I just knocked on the nearest door. The man who answered was Spanish-speaking but spoke a small amount of English. I showed him my flyer, which explained who I was and what I was doing, and told him, “I can't take this with me, my cart is broken, it's now yours!” I think he thought he was misunderstanding me, but I kept patting him on the back and said “It's yours now.”
I grabbed my backpack and as I wheeled it away, up and over the start of a long, long bridge, I looked down on his street and saw him standing there, scratching his head, my flyer in his hand, staring at my cart with a quizzical look on his face. It was a moment I'll never forget because at that moment of letting go, seeing him with my camera, what popped into my head, was my divorce.
I realized right there, in the rain, looking over the harbor at downtown New York City, that I had never let go of my divorce, of my wife. I saw it all, the years of torment and anguish, just fly away over the railing of that bridge, then up into the sky. It was so overwhelming that I had to sit in the middle of the passageway, halfway across, and feel the peace of that moment, and cry, tears of a burden that had plagued me for many years, lift away. It was so beautiful!
For a few days afterwards I found myself literally enjoying the feeling of giving things away. I know this was a major step in gaining my forgiveness. But it was just a step. I had read many times about “letting go of the past” but now I understood it in a very tangible way. I can't ever fix the past, but I can let it go. It became much easier for me to accept my part of the blame for our divorce, because I was at peace with it. I wasn't ashamed anymore, I wasn't the failure I thought I was. I will always miss my wife, but I forgave her, and I forgave myself, and I moved on. Another important factor in forgiveness comes right from the Bible. The crucifixion of Christ. He said it best as He was dying on the Cross, having been beaten unmercifully, in total agony, but saturated with peace, “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.”
Think about this every time you feel wronged. Even in my case, pondering the deliberate games that were played with my life, I realized, though they thought they were shrewd, and thought they were good at their games, they apparently didn't know, they were destroying my whole life. They were so busy dotting the i's and crossing the t's to cover up their mistakes, they have forgotten the Hyppocratic oath. They weren't trying to hurt me personally, though it ends up that way. To them, I was a 15 minute, once per month, case number, that was in their way, threatening their perfect routine, their idealistic medical practice. So they lied, and forged documents, and arranged it so I was left with nothing and no way to reciprocate. Not personal, but business. Much like Christ was a major threat to the hierarchy of his time, I was a minor one to the “good old boy network” of workers compensation, my employer, my insurer, and my doctor's practices.
Apparently, they felt the need to “do me in” just as I now feel the need to “let it go.” If only one of them had thought of my children, my plight, or my well-being, they would have said “Hey, we can't, as fellow humans, do this to someone, especially to children!” But no one thought. They just kept taking actions, for 15 minutes every month, and moving on. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” This is not just a saying, or a principal or an ethic. It's a feeling. Only someone who has felt this can understand it. I'm not saying that you can feel it right now. I'm not asking you to simply put it aside and forget about it. That doesn't change the feeling, it just puts it aside, buries it deep into your soul and like a festering wound, someday, it will come back to haunt you. It will cause more damage than you can imagine. It must be dealt with, but you must approach these inequities of justice with your own self-preservation in mind. We must live to fight another day. To us, our medical situation is with us 24 hours, seven days per week. We become consumed by it. Those who deal with it, that are assigned to help us, only see it for a very short time and they deal with hundreds of us per week. We are lost in that system and also to their thoughts, attentions, and feelings. In most cases, they are not unthinking unfeeling individuals, they are just equally as consumed as we are, lost in their own businesses and their own failures to their professions.
“Forgive them for they know not what they do.” Unfortunately, we are the sacrificial lambs in a system that is changing, albeit slowly, and we must accept this, if we are to change things for the next generation. Pain is a misunderstood affliction just as are pain patients. Until any of us understands this Pain Cycle, with its negative/positive sides, and how this affects an individual, we are all doomed to remain on the depressed, negative side. Until doctors and practitioners in the pain field understand the human side of this, until they learn to appreciate what a painful life is like, they will always be frustrated at us, at their chosen field of pain treatment. This will not happen in our lifetime unless there is a major concerted effort on the part of millions of people with pain, and a handful of those who do understand, standing up together as one voice and slamming our efforts against the wall of denial.
In the meantime, we can help ourselves, accept our losses, lighten the load and move on. Someday, I hope I'm alive to see us all, 50 million of us, looking back at the “old days” of this medical system, smiling contentedly, thinking to ourselves, “forgive them...”
Remember however, that in order to forgive everyone else, we must learn to forgive ourselves. If you think about it, you'll say “forgive ourselves for what? What did I do?” Well, nothing outright. Nothing as obvious as those others who say mean things or show bad intention toward you. That's easy to spot. The doctor who never looks you in the eye, who talks down to you, who seems to not believe what you say. The family member who is always dropping subtle hints about your attitude, or your “not being able to work” while suggesting places to find a job. The insurance agent who is making life much more stressful, demanding forms from your doctor, but asking you, the disabled person in pain, to go get them or suffer the consequences. The employer who threatens your job, your living, because you “keep getting sick.” These are right out in the open.
But what about you? What do you do to yourself that needs to be forgiven? Your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. I don't pretend to know yours, but mine seem to agree with the thousands I've talked to personally. In my case it was first and foremost, the losses of my self identity and my self-worth. I felt totally inadequate. I imagined what people were thinking of me when actually, I was thinking that about myself.
I could no longer play sports, hang out with my friends, look my wife in the face, or play with my children. I could no longer provide full money for my family, sit and do anything comfortably. I also knew that my pain was causing a major anxiety on my family's life. It was creating pressure to bear on finances and holidays and recreation. I was forcing my family to go into survival mode and every time a bill collector called I felt like it was me causing this. The more people would say “Don't worry, we understand.” the more it just pushed these feelings deeper and deeper, leaving behind a little red button that could be pushed at the drop of a certain word or phrase, causing my guilt and anguish to spill over the top and come out as intense anger.
This caused more guilt and anger as I now felt like I was causing the tension also. A self-perpetuating system of denial, guilt, anger, then more denial. And people think behavioral therapy isn't necessary in pain treatment? Well it is. It took therapy to understand this and to see that none of this was my fault, that it was a natural course of events to fall into. No one however, mentioned that I needed to forgive myself, for I also “knew not what I did.” Again, a major, peaceful feeling that sets in when this happens, and you know it happened when you can smile at yourself in the mirror, when you can look yourself in the eyes again. When you understand that you just fell down the stairs, healed yourself, and now you stand again, ready for reinvention. In order to take the journey to the positive, to understand what that means, you must put the past in the past, forgiven not forgotten, at peace with what happened. Now, you are ready to believe in the power. Now you are ready to fight the good fight, making sure your passion, necessary for this journey, is in the right place. Now you can accept what happened to you and your family, your life, and move on. As we learned in surrender, this is not the way we were taught to fight, not the way we are supposed to deal with things, but, it is the only way you can “swing the curve.” As I said in that chapter, be prepared to fight in a way you've never fought before.
Get to the next chapter, Belief, and you'll be fully poised to now accept and pick your “weapons of healing”, weapons that you will recognize but were never trained to use, nor were you in the right mind to be learning to use them effectively. Like landing on a hostile planet, as you find yourself fighting off the aliens with their own weapons. You wouldn't make it unless you were trained to use them, to recognize what they do, to understand how they work. Surrender, forgiveness and belief prepare you for this training. It is the proper mindset. To prove this, I haven't thought about, or even looked at my medical records in two years! I haven't written a letter to any agency or doctor. I haven't said a cross word to anyone in the medical profession in that time either, yet they know up front that my whole existence is dedicated to changing the system. Isn't it funny, that for the four years I felt victimized and oppressed by the system, it only created anger and frustration, but since I gained surrender and forgiveness, I've dedicated my life to changing the oppression and never once, in hundreds of appointments with doctors, felt any anger or frustration. Ahh, the illusions of pain.
Every pain patient knows about their own justice trap. I have never met a chronic pain sufferer who has been through the medical system properly. I have never met one who has been treated properly by their employers, lawyers, or insurers. I cannot say with conviction that they don't exist, I've just never met one. Of the thousands of patients that I've met personally, every one of them has a story to tell about the negative side of the medical system, and of the justice they are hoping to achieve through the use of lawyers, insurance companies, and their medical records, which all of us keep diligently in our houses.
I had studied forgiveness when I first attempted to walk to Washington, DC, but every time I read about it I would say to myself, “There is no way I will accept this forgiveness stuff. What they (the medical system) did to me was wrong. Someday I will make it right.” I realize now that this was a futile way of thinking. Looking through most of my medical files everyday was wrong. It controlled me and kept me tied to a negative, depressing, and angry mess. I'm sure that the medical system, the lawyers, the insurers, and the employers were happy to be rid of me, but I had to let it go. I had to relieve myself of the guilt and anguish that the constant pursuit of justice was causing me. Constant pain is bad enough without adding anxiety to it. I needed to learn how to let it go, how to forgive.
To tell you the truth, I don't know when it happened, I just know that I thought about it and thought about it, and right up until I reached Washington, DC, on my first “Walk”, I still hadn't realized that I was accepting the forgiveness into my heart. I remember my nephew approaching me on the bench, and when he said to me “Hey Uncle, how was your walk? ” it dawned on me, I had forgiven. I no longer felt the need for justice. It was such a big thing, that it makes me emotional right now trying to write this. I had been dealing with this for five years! I had my large box of medical records that were neatly organized, updated, and fresh in my mind, so that, just in case I ever receive that phone call from the proper agency, association, or Board of Directors, I would be ready to answer any questions in the pursuit of equity.
I no longer felt the need to pursue this. It will be something that will haunt me for the rest of my life, but in order to move on, in order to approach the positive side of the Pain Cycle, in order to complete these walks, I needed to let it go. There were many lessons along the road that showed me what “letting go” meant.
I had to give up a lot of things that were necessary due to the problem of carrying weight, and the problem of a broken wheelbarrow. One of the hardest decisions I had to make on the walk to Washington, DC was giving away all of my stuff when I lost an axle to the cart that I was pulling. I had a backpack with wheels on it, but it could handle so little, that I had to give up anything that wasn't extremely necessary to survival, and that included many, many things that were near and dear to me, and some things that I actually needed for comfortable survival.
Letting Go, the key to forgiveness.
A very hard lesson to learn in the “school of pain”. Many of you reading this now are saying “I don't think so,” and I can't blame you. You have been wronged. You have been used and abused. In some cases it was unintentional, just as your family members may say or do the wrong things to help you. They mean well, but are inexperienced and uneducated in the care of a person in pain. This is also the case with some of the medical professionals you've dealt with. Most mean well, but are lost in a chaotic system and are trying to satisfy their mandates by a higher authority. Doctors, employers and insurers may fall into this category. Legislation is also an uneducated culprit in this maddening circumstance.
It is written, and you and I will say, that the more you understand things from another's perspective, the more you'll be able to gain forgiveness. Putting yourself in their shoes, and taking your emotional response to your plight out of it, will help you better understand someone else. Even in the case of outright wrongdoing, as in my case, where I was able to see my medical records and put together some of the truth. It made me extremely angry. Then to find out that the law, and the lawyers would allow me no recourse, which truly frustrating and sickening. These people were planning insurance cover up games with my life, and especially, with my children's lives. How can this ever be forgiven? It can, and it is.
Forgiveness, however, comes from within, and I can prove this. You can study forgiveness techniques all you want, and you should, as it is a key to gaining forgiveness, but it comes to your heart, not your head. I still, to this day, believe that myself and my family were wronged by these medical professionals and I can prove it with documents, but I don't have the need to. I can never condone what they did, and I never will. I am fighting to change this, but I no longer have the passionate want for justice. I am no longer tied to these feelings of retribution. I can't even say why, or at least say how, this “letting go” happened. It doesn't make sense. Forgiveness just happens. You need to take steps towards it, which allows it to happen and this is very important, but it will seem that you study to understand it, and never do. Then, one day, you think back and boom! It has happened.
When I first walked to Washington, DC, from Boston, I had studied forgiveness through many books at the library, I did my homework, and began to walk and think about what I had learned. After 400 miles, heading in to Maryland, I realized that it was working. I was still very angry and I couldn't stop thinking of how wrong it was for them to treat me the way they did. It cost me everything. This “walk for healing” wasn't working. I hurt badly and felt that I was building up more anger and frustration, then, on the day I landed at the Capitol, when my nephew asked me that line I will never forget, I stopped for a moment, and reflected on the walking, and the towns, and the people I had met, and I realized, I have forgiven! I no longer felt the anger. I no longer felt tied to all that negative. I felt peace, and joy, and calm, and relaxed. “Where did that come from?” was my first thought. It surprised me. I don't know when it happened, or where I was when it happened. I could only look back and realize that it happened. I believe that you must learn the techniques of forgiveness to get there, you must take your steps, but when it happens, it will seem to come out of nowhere. Get books about forgiving, or study grief, it's in there. I will list some techniques and knowledge here, but this is just scratching the surface. There's a lot to study. Just don't be too surprised or frustrated when you feel that it's not helping you. It's okay. Keep going. Keep trying. Keep learning more. Don't give up. It will happen. It's worth waiting for. Here some knowledge for you:
Steps to Forgiveness
1. Confront your emotional pain - your shock, fear, anger, and grief. Recognize that the hurt that has occurred may have been very unfair and that these steps are not meant to minimize the hurt involved.
2. Realize that forgiveness can only be appropriate after you have processed out your fear, anger, and grief. However, also realize that you can set forgiveness as a goal in the future for your sake now! Recognize that to continue to dwell on the anger and resentment involved in the hurt will literally destroy your physical health, and cause you great mental suffering.
New studies clearly show that anger and resentment doubled the risk of myocardial heart attacks in women with previous coronary problems. Other studies indicate cancer and other deadly illnesses are also caused by anger and resentment. So be willing, for your sake, to begin to process out these deadly emotions as soon as possible.
3. Understand that - love is what you ultimately want for yourself, from yourself.
4. Understand that - forgiveness does not condone or approve or forget the harmful acts; forgiveness does not allow yourself to be abused. We forgive the doer, not the doing. Remembering this helps us to break harmful cycles of behavior.
5. Realize that - you are the only person responsible for your own feelings and for healing the hurt that is going on inside of you.
6. Remember that - you are so powerful that usually, you had some part in what happened. Be willing to totally face up to that part and accept it without blame (to forgive and love that part).
7. See this situation as an opportunity for healing and for growth. See that the other person involved has revealed to you through his or her actions where there was a wounded spot in you which needed healing.
8. Start releasing anger, sadness, grief, and fear through the many processes, therapies and therapists available. Have a person to work with who can truly empathize with you, yet who can be objective and help you shift your perception from blame to healing.
9. Decide to forgive. Even if this decision is half-hearted at first, it will probably lessen your hurt and anger immediately.
Notice that this decision can be difficult because, after you have processed out the anger, resentment and grief, you will have to give up the grudge - the being the "victim", the "being right" and making the other person "wrong". Notice that this is the "superior" position, which can be used to get a lot of self-righteous attention. Be willing, for your sake, to have the courage to get off that "superior" position.
10. Be willing to find a new way to think about the person who wronged you. What was his or her life like growing up? What was his or her life like at the time of the offense? What were this person's good points up to the time of the hurt? Notice you may not be able to see much good within until you have processed out your anger and/or grief or fear.
11. Be aware that being forgiving is a courageous act on your part. It has nothing to do with whether the other person can admit they are wrong. You are forgiving to liberate yourself no matter what the other person decides to do.
12. Be willing to do and learn whatever it takes to forgive. Commit to do processes, to read courageous stories of forgiveness, to write in journals, to see a therapist, to do training’s, or to do whatever it takes to heal the wounds involved. Remember these wounds may be deeply tied to past hurts going back to your interactions with your parents. Resolve to follow them through for your total healing, even if it involves years of effort to heal. Remember that you are determined to find the true happiness and joy that true forgiveness can bring to your life.
13. If you believe in a Higher Power, be willing to pray on this problem and to turn to this Higher Power for guidance and assistance in the forgiveness process.
14. Accept the lessons involved in this incident — our lives are laboratories for learning. What have you learned from this event that is invaluable to you? Has some form of attachment to a belief or beliefs a position has caused you the pain involved? What belief or beliefs were involved?
15. See that everything is okay; possibly perfect, as it is now.
16. If you have the willingness and it is appropriate, seek feedback from the other person by being willing to say "I'm sorry that I did..." (whatever it is that you feel contributed to the problem).
17. Regardless of what the other person does, work towards seeing them with good. Know that therefore that goodness is flowing through you for your mental and physical well being.
Now let's talk more about letting go.
Release it. That's what it means. Like a helium balloon to a child, it stays attached to your arm, do you. The longer it's with you, the more attached to become. It will begin to take on a personality, sometimes a name, a secure familiarity. My balloon was called “the medical system”. As I said before, I had to learn this lesson, not just read about it, and it came in an amazing way. When that car broke, so did I. I sat staring at it for four hours. I didn't know what to do. I had just walked 400 blocks from the Bronx to Manhattan and back, to cross the George Washington Bridge. I turned the corner and felt the dragging from behind me. I thought I had a flat tire but when I inspected it, I saw the wheels inflated but bent in. The axle had snapped in half! I was done, and right at the halfway point. I had about 80 pounds of gear, clothes, lights, rain gear, winter gear, all the things I needed to walk 400 miles. I kept walking up this huge hill to use the phone, leaving my cart full of these items unattended. I was trying to call my cousin to tell him it was over, to see if he could come pick me up. Every time I went up to make the call, the phone wouldn't work.
I tried several times and each time there'd be something else wrong. There I was, head in my hands, a light cold rain coming down, staring at my cart, feeling deflated. Each time I would sit down with my coffee and cigar, a voice in my head, getting stronger and louder, kept saying, “lighten the load and move on, you can do it. You said you would walk this, now, lighten the load and move on. Let it go!”
Let it go? Let go of all my stuff? My raincoat? My camera? My lights and clothes and implements of survival? The voice kept saying, “Take only what is necessary, what will fit.”
I had that wheeling backpack with me. I couldn't carry any weight on my back, but I could pull some. This voice became so strong, and so determined, but I started getting the same enthusiasm. I started thinking of all the people that were counting on me. My family and friends, the people I had met, and the thousands of pain patients watching my progress on the Internet, and I said to myself “I'll just have to let it go, lighten the load, and move on.”
I started gathering important things and began stuffing the small pack with them. Most of what I had wouldn't fit and I had to decide what was going with me, and what would have to go somewhere else. I knew that anything with weight, that wasn't absolutely necessary, could not go with me. I thought about it for three more hours. I had to let it go. My gear, especially my raincoat and camera. This camera had been with me for 30 years! It had captured all of my memories during all of the changes of my adult life. But it was unnecessary and too much weight. It had to go.
I packed what I could and put the rest in the car with the long London Fog raincoat covering it all. I had made this decision however, and was determined, even psyched, to move on. I didn't know what to do with the cart so I just knocked on the nearest door. The man who answered was Spanish-speaking but spoke a small amount of English. I showed him my flyer, which explained who I was and what I was doing, and told him, “I can't take this with me, my cart is broken, it's now yours!” I think he thought he was misunderstanding me, but I kept patting him on the back and said “It's yours now.”
I grabbed my backpack and as I wheeled it away, up and over the start of a long, long bridge, I looked down on his street and saw him standing there, scratching his head, my flyer in his hand, staring at my cart with a quizzical look on his face. It was a moment I'll never forget because at that moment of letting go, seeing him with my camera, what popped into my head, was my divorce.
I realized right there, in the rain, looking over the harbor at downtown New York City, that I had never let go of my divorce, of my wife. I saw it all, the years of torment and anguish, just fly away over the railing of that bridge, then up into the sky. It was so overwhelming that I had to sit in the middle of the passageway, halfway across, and feel the peace of that moment, and cry, tears of a burden that had plagued me for many years, lift away. It was so beautiful!
For a few days afterwards I found myself literally enjoying the feeling of giving things away. I know this was a major step in gaining my forgiveness. But it was just a step. I had read many times about “letting go of the past” but now I understood it in a very tangible way. I can't ever fix the past, but I can let it go. It became much easier for me to accept my part of the blame for our divorce, because I was at peace with it. I wasn't ashamed anymore, I wasn't the failure I thought I was. I will always miss my wife, but I forgave her, and I forgave myself, and I moved on. Another important factor in forgiveness comes right from the Bible. The crucifixion of Christ. He said it best as He was dying on the Cross, having been beaten unmercifully, in total agony, but saturated with peace, “Forgive them Lord, for they know not what they do.”
Think about this every time you feel wronged. Even in my case, pondering the deliberate games that were played with my life, I realized, though they thought they were shrewd, and thought they were good at their games, they apparently didn't know, they were destroying my whole life. They were so busy dotting the i's and crossing the t's to cover up their mistakes, they have forgotten the Hyppocratic oath. They weren't trying to hurt me personally, though it ends up that way. To them, I was a 15 minute, once per month, case number, that was in their way, threatening their perfect routine, their idealistic medical practice. So they lied, and forged documents, and arranged it so I was left with nothing and no way to reciprocate. Not personal, but business. Much like Christ was a major threat to the hierarchy of his time, I was a minor one to the “good old boy network” of workers compensation, my employer, my insurer, and my doctor's practices.
Apparently, they felt the need to “do me in” just as I now feel the need to “let it go.” If only one of them had thought of my children, my plight, or my well-being, they would have said “Hey, we can't, as fellow humans, do this to someone, especially to children!” But no one thought. They just kept taking actions, for 15 minutes every month, and moving on. “Forgive them for they know not what they do.” This is not just a saying, or a principal or an ethic. It's a feeling. Only someone who has felt this can understand it. I'm not saying that you can feel it right now. I'm not asking you to simply put it aside and forget about it. That doesn't change the feeling, it just puts it aside, buries it deep into your soul and like a festering wound, someday, it will come back to haunt you. It will cause more damage than you can imagine. It must be dealt with, but you must approach these inequities of justice with your own self-preservation in mind. We must live to fight another day. To us, our medical situation is with us 24 hours, seven days per week. We become consumed by it. Those who deal with it, that are assigned to help us, only see it for a very short time and they deal with hundreds of us per week. We are lost in that system and also to their thoughts, attentions, and feelings. In most cases, they are not unthinking unfeeling individuals, they are just equally as consumed as we are, lost in their own businesses and their own failures to their professions.
“Forgive them for they know not what they do.” Unfortunately, we are the sacrificial lambs in a system that is changing, albeit slowly, and we must accept this, if we are to change things for the next generation. Pain is a misunderstood affliction just as are pain patients. Until any of us understands this Pain Cycle, with its negative/positive sides, and how this affects an individual, we are all doomed to remain on the depressed, negative side. Until doctors and practitioners in the pain field understand the human side of this, until they learn to appreciate what a painful life is like, they will always be frustrated at us, at their chosen field of pain treatment. This will not happen in our lifetime unless there is a major concerted effort on the part of millions of people with pain, and a handful of those who do understand, standing up together as one voice and slamming our efforts against the wall of denial.
In the meantime, we can help ourselves, accept our losses, lighten the load and move on. Someday, I hope I'm alive to see us all, 50 million of us, looking back at the “old days” of this medical system, smiling contentedly, thinking to ourselves, “forgive them...”
Remember however, that in order to forgive everyone else, we must learn to forgive ourselves. If you think about it, you'll say “forgive ourselves for what? What did I do?” Well, nothing outright. Nothing as obvious as those others who say mean things or show bad intention toward you. That's easy to spot. The doctor who never looks you in the eye, who talks down to you, who seems to not believe what you say. The family member who is always dropping subtle hints about your attitude, or your “not being able to work” while suggesting places to find a job. The insurance agent who is making life much more stressful, demanding forms from your doctor, but asking you, the disabled person in pain, to go get them or suffer the consequences. The employer who threatens your job, your living, because you “keep getting sick.” These are right out in the open.
But what about you? What do you do to yourself that needs to be forgiven? Your thoughts, your feelings and your actions. I don't pretend to know yours, but mine seem to agree with the thousands I've talked to personally. In my case it was first and foremost, the losses of my self identity and my self-worth. I felt totally inadequate. I imagined what people were thinking of me when actually, I was thinking that about myself.
I could no longer play sports, hang out with my friends, look my wife in the face, or play with my children. I could no longer provide full money for my family, sit and do anything comfortably. I also knew that my pain was causing a major anxiety on my family's life. It was creating pressure to bear on finances and holidays and recreation. I was forcing my family to go into survival mode and every time a bill collector called I felt like it was me causing this. The more people would say “Don't worry, we understand.” the more it just pushed these feelings deeper and deeper, leaving behind a little red button that could be pushed at the drop of a certain word or phrase, causing my guilt and anguish to spill over the top and come out as intense anger.
This caused more guilt and anger as I now felt like I was causing the tension also. A self-perpetuating system of denial, guilt, anger, then more denial. And people think behavioral therapy isn't necessary in pain treatment? Well it is. It took therapy to understand this and to see that none of this was my fault, that it was a natural course of events to fall into. No one however, mentioned that I needed to forgive myself, for I also “knew not what I did.” Again, a major, peaceful feeling that sets in when this happens, and you know it happened when you can smile at yourself in the mirror, when you can look yourself in the eyes again. When you understand that you just fell down the stairs, healed yourself, and now you stand again, ready for reinvention. In order to take the journey to the positive, to understand what that means, you must put the past in the past, forgiven not forgotten, at peace with what happened. Now, you are ready to believe in the power. Now you are ready to fight the good fight, making sure your passion, necessary for this journey, is in the right place. Now you can accept what happened to you and your family, your life, and move on. As we learned in surrender, this is not the way we were taught to fight, not the way we are supposed to deal with things, but, it is the only way you can “swing the curve.” As I said in that chapter, be prepared to fight in a way you've never fought before.
Get to the next chapter, Belief, and you'll be fully poised to now accept and pick your “weapons of healing”, weapons that you will recognize but were never trained to use, nor were you in the right mind to be learning to use them effectively. Like landing on a hostile planet, as you find yourself fighting off the aliens with their own weapons. You wouldn't make it unless you were trained to use them, to recognize what they do, to understand how they work. Surrender, forgiveness and belief prepare you for this training. It is the proper mindset. To prove this, I haven't thought about, or even looked at my medical records in two years! I haven't written a letter to any agency or doctor. I haven't said a cross word to anyone in the medical profession in that time either, yet they know up front that my whole existence is dedicated to changing the system. Isn't it funny, that for the four years I felt victimized and oppressed by the system, it only created anger and frustration, but since I gained surrender and forgiveness, I've dedicated my life to changing the oppression and never once, in hundreds of appointments with doctors, felt any anger or frustration. Ahh, the illusions of pain.