A Power Tool Created by Erica A Carretero Dias
(Transformational Life Coaching, UNITED STATES)
Forgiveness is about setting yourself free. This emotional tool provides understanding, forgiving, releasing, and letting go of…
Most frequent image that comes to people’s mind when they think about forgiveness can be pain, humbleness and feelings of defeat. Actually, forgiveness is about freeing ourselves from emotional pain, traumatic memories that drains our energy, and unbalance our emotions. This tool can be used by anyone; any situation that involves overwhelming feelings, where the client feels trapped and cannot flow in life. It is about self-forgiveness; forgiving someone in a relationship or any particular situation from now or from past events. The great challenge for human beings is to understand how to minimize the effects from our negative emotional state, which cause suffering and pain. We are still looking to answer how to manage our emotions and feelings and be able to live in an effective way.
When the client feels connected to someone who deeply hurt him/her, they can continually be trapped in a state of mind reflecting revenge, resentfulness, blame, grief, powerless, and sorrow. The sensations and images will produce levels of stress dis-empowering and hijacking the inner peace. Facing fears and traumatic scenes most of the time can be a big challenge to overcome. Certainly, this is not an easy task. The emotional memory is activated creating negative emotions which leads us to a vicious loop inside our brain that repeats over and over the same situation with different characters. That’s why most people complain that life does not move on. It is important to bring self-awareness to the emergence of breaking the negative cycles through the act of forgiveness and letting go underlying beliefs and emotional blocks.
Why do most of people have the tendency to hold resentment or revenge? Forgiveness is a high price to be paid and it is translated by anger and bitterness into every relationship and new experience. Life might become so wrapped up the wrong way that it steals the enjoyment of the present and is followed by depression, anxiety, lacks of meaning or purpose, disharmony with your spiritual beliefs, low connection with others. Keeping a state of resentment, guilt or revenge lead us to low level of energy and can cause disturbance in our mind. Dr. Hawkins in his study about human consciousness classified those emotions in a very low level of vibration which causes stress. The higher level of stress leads into developing illness and lack of balance. They collaborate to a narrow perception towards the other person and towards oneself. The frustration for not being able to modify what happened gives the sense of powerlessness and adds more negativity to the memory which in return increases the attachment and discomfort.
People used to say: “I forgave X… or that event”, but most of the time, the truth is that the emotional memory is still registered in the unconscious mind. The old vision needs to be replaced by a new one which activates positive emotions and removes pain and freedom of sensation.
The time frame creates a loving environment of trust and unconditional love in which the client certainly will reach a higher and positive state of mind by forgiving and letting go of those negative emotions. Replacing the old painful vision to a new perception will allow a new program to operate inward. This will substitute the traumatic perception and the negative mind behaviors will vanish. The memory of the negative event won’t be erased, but the meaning will change. A new image to the problem will overwrite the old one. Releasing those feelings of grief, self-doubt, and powerlessness caused by revenge, blame or resentment will allow client to move on from stuck positions to a client’s deep self-awareness. It is important to affirm the need of “de-cluttering” their minds from old negative self-destructive emotions. Some clients tend to avoid or are not prepared to face emotional wounds and to release them. They tend to resist on old situations which make them “imprisoned” to emotional states of revenge, resentfulness, blame or disregard. In order to support the client’s transformation in this perspective, the coach will have specific powerful questions that will trigger the current client’s perspective. At the right time, the shift will take place, and the new perspective will appear.
Changing states of mind and raising emotional vibration requires a great amount of energy and a deep commitment with transformation. Self-awareness is the first step to “letting go” of situations and dis-empowering feelings. At the first glance, forgiveness can be very difficult, especially when the client recalls memories from great stress or traumatic events. Bob Proctor mentions that the Law of Forgiveness means to let go of completely; let the body in an “abandon” state. For example
I do something wrong to you and I forgive you, I am not doing it for you. I am doing to benefit myself. I get rid of the bad thoughts in my mind. I allow myself to move to a beautiful vibration. When we keep the revenge in our inner self, we keep in the same pattern or concept.
FORGIVENESS = FREEDOM AND ENLIGHTENMENT= ENERGY OF LIFE
REVENGE/ RESENTMENT/GUILT = IMPRISONMENT = VICIOUS CYCLE = LACK OF ENERGY
Bernard Meltzer said that when you forgive, you do not change the past at all, however you definitely change the future. By letting go past memories we shift our perspective about the situation then new paths come to us. A new dimension of reality is created. The act of co-creating a new understanding provides a new meaning on the past situation; create a new perspective, a new “me”, and a new reality to be.
Using concepts of Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NPL) in the “perspective taking stage” and the role playing from Psychodrama when client “walks in another’s shoes” allow the client to see what life is like from there. The stage of “personification” is very subjective meaning that the client puts him/herself in the other person’s body and feels his/her senses, s/he will experience verbal and non-verbal situations as if he enters into the other one’s skin. By being in the offender’s shoes, the client will experience and sense another perspective and “understand” the distorted behaviors caused by the specific reality. The client will be able to see the fact in a broadly and be able to take the place the abuser. Looking into the situation from outside will open the client’s mind and create another understanding.
Coaching Application
The forgiveness tool consists in:
Awareness: clarification and identification about the current client’s emotional state in which the coach inquires the following:
Reflection: Clarifying these states of mind is a very important step for this process. You will check the commitment level and awareness about the importance of “letting go” of negative past events.
Choice: “What do I really want?”