The Act of FORGIVENESS Can Cause the Brain to REWIRE – Repair the ‘Fabric’ of the Brain and Restore Normal Positive Healthy Function to Thought Transmission-The Nature of Sin-

The act of FORGIVENESS can cause the brain to rewire – repair the ‘fabric’ of the brain and restore normal positive healthy positive function to thought transmission-

Anthony C. Lopez Ph.D.

Evolutionary Politics–

The good news: Studies have found that the act of forgiveness can reap huge rewards for your health, lowering the risk of heart attack; improving cholesterol levels and sleep; and reducing pain, blood pressure, and levels of anxiety, depression and stress.

Forgiveness and Health –

Perhaps the most basic question to address first is,

What is forgiveness? Though most people probably feel they know what forgiveness means,

Researchers differ about what actually constitutes forgiveness. I’ve come to believe that how we define forgiveness usually depends on context. In cases where we hope to forgive a person with whom we do not want a continuing relationship,

we usually define forgiveness as reducing or eliminating resentment and motivations toward revenge. My colleagues Michael McCullough, Kenneth Rachal, and I have defined forgiveness in close relationships to include more than merely getting rid of the negative. The forgiving person becomes less motivated to retaliate against someone who offended him or her and less motivated to remain estranged from that person. Instead, he or she becomes more motivated by feelings of goodwill, despite the offender’s hurtful actions. In a close relationship, we hope, forgiveness will not only move us past negative emotions, but move us toward a net positive feeling. It doesn’t mean forgetting or pardoning an offense.

READ MORE ON THE SCIENCE OF FORGIVENESS
For a more recent overview of the science of forgiveness, check out this white paper by Professor Everett Worthington of Virginia Commonwealth University.

Forgiveness: Your Health Depends on It – Johns Hopkins …

https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org › health › forgive

Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.

Forgiveness Definition | What Is Forgiveness – Greater Good …

Why Is Forgiveness So Difficult?

Researchers explore the delicate balance between forgiveness and retaliation. Posted April 1, 2019

If you’re like most people, the very thought of forgiving an enemy probably makes you feel uneasy. This doesn’t make you a bad person—it just makes you human.

Forgiveness is difficult in part because evolution has endowed us with the psychological motivation to avoid being exploited by others, and one of the easiest ways to prevent exploitation is to hit back or simply avoid the exploiter. Therefore, any discussion of forgiveness must begin by thinking carefully about the desire for retaliation.

What is original sin? Original sin is an Augustine Christian doctrine that says that everyone is born sinful. This means that they are born with a built-in urge to do bad things and to disobey God. It is an important doctrine within the Roman Catholic Church.Sep 17, 2009

Religions – Christianity: Original sin – BBC

Sin comes in three flavors: commission, omission, disposition.Nov 18, 2014

Sin comes in three flavors: commission, omission, disposition

What does the Bible say about the nature of sin?

the sinful mind is hostile to God. It does not submit to God’s law, nor can it do so.Those controlled by the sinful nature cannot please God. You, however, are controlled not by the sinful nature but by the Spirit, if the Spirit of God lives in you.

Bible Gateway Romans 8 : NIV

READ MORE – on Revenge vs Negative Reciprocity

Two Forms of Retaliation: Revenge vs. Negative Reciprocity

Retaliation, including the violent kind, is perhaps nature’s most common conflict resolution mechanism. It is widespread throughout the animal kingdom, and its evolutionary function is basically to even the score by reversing any gains that might be had by the aggressor. However, not all forms of retaliation are the same. For example, the word “revenge” is often popularly used to describe any form of retaliation, but it is, in fact, one extreme form of it. Another form of retaliation is what researchers call “negative reciprocity.” What’s the difference?

Revenge

Revenge is an extreme form of retaliation that is meant to cause suffering for its own sake, and it tends to be out of proportion with the initial wrongdoing. According to Aaron Sell, this form of retaliation is uniquely motivated by the emotion of hatred, as well as the idea “that another’s existence and well-being will cause harm.” As Eran Halperin and colleagues also explain, hate is triggered in part by a belief that an out-group is actually unable to change their villainous ways. Revenge is driven by the perception (real or not) of the implacable foe: the maniacal menace whose mind cannot be turned, and whose behavior cannot be stopped.

At the group level, revenge has been the stubborn engine of social and political violence from the Hatfields and McCoys to the Arab-Israeli conflict. Anthropologists widely recognize that raids and “blood revenge” are among the most common form of and motivation for warfare across the world.

Part of the reason that revenge is so easily triggered between groups is because the evolutionary cards are stacked in that direction. As a consequence of our long ancestry in small nomadic groups, we possess evolved biases and intuitions that lead us to prefer in-group bonds to out-group associations, we are reflexively suspicious of strangers from other groups, and we are easily rallied by nationalist fervor.

These biases operate to make revenge appear easy and obvious, while reconciliation and compromise appear misguided and dangerous. Political appeasements that have led to reconciliation and peace are often forgotten or downplayed, while those that have led to further exploitation are dramatically and indefinitely ingrained in the social narrative. Thus, calls for compromise in the midst of international crises are often met with the familiar caution against repeating the mistake of appeasing Hitler at Munich.

Negative Reciprocity

Yet, disproportional acts of hateful violence are not always one’s immediate reaction to perceived injustice. We are often angry, yet not hateful. Our responses often fall significantly (and thankfully) short of the complete eradication of a rival.

This leads to the second type of retaliation mentioned above: negative reciprocity. The label itself conveys that an exchange of cost takes place: You harm me, and I respond with equivalent harm. Unlike revenge—disproportionate and motivated by hatred—negative reciprocity is more often motivated by anger, which research increasingly shows to be aimed, at least partially, at restoring rather than destroying relationships. Negative reciprocity, therefore, represents a relatively proportional response or punishment meant to change the mind of the target, and therefore holds the promise of repairing a cooperative relationship rather than foreclosing it.

Of course, unlocking the cooperative benefits of negative reciprocity depends on the punishment being carefully measured: A weak or timid response may invite further exploitation, while overreaction may lead to needless conflict escalation. In at least some contexts, it may be all too easy to assume the worst about the person or group that has wronged you. This is probably truest in the anarchic world of international relations.

THE BASICS–

The Importance of Forgiveness

For example, Dominic Johnson and Dominic Tierney show that when we are inclined to think the worst of others while being overconfident about our own abilities, the seeds of conflict and war are all but sown. In terms of revenge and negative reciprocity, the problem is that we are prone to seek vengeance when we should choose negative reciprocity. That is, we likely tend to escalate conflicts that genuinely don’t need to be escalated, and we are prone to treat those with valid grievances as if they were filled with hateful malice. This kind of attributional tragedy is probably more significant between rather than within groups, but given the increasing lethality of political violence, this may be cold comfort.

Nevertheless, we are social organisms. This means we are particularly vulnerable to exploitation, but it also importantly means that we depend heavily on others for valuable cooperative opportunities.

Forgiveness

Negative reciprocity opens the door to forgiveness, but more is needed. Jeni Burnette and colleagues argue that forgiveness is contingent upon information about the relationship value of the wrongdoer and the probability that the wrongdoer will harm us again in the future. Burnette and her team find that the combination of these two elements goes a long way to determine whether individuals and groups are likely to forgive transgressions, which also explains why a simple apology from others is frequently insufficient to leave us gushing with forgiveness.

FORGIVENESS ESSENTIAL READS

Why Forgiveness Isn’t Required in Trauma Recovery

Why We Struggle to Forgive, and What to Do About It

Robert Taibbi L.C.S.W.

Fixing Families – FORGIVENESS

Why We Struggle to Forgive, and What to Do About It

5 ways to understand what you need to heal an open wound.

KEY POINTS

Those who can’t forgive and let go of the past wrongly believe it is a matter of feeling differently.
Forgiveness is about making a choice, a decision that enables you to act differently despite how you feel.
There are five common underlying causes. Once you find the source, you can take action and change the dynamics of the relationship.

Source: Alexis_Fotos / pixabay

Jake can’t let go of how his brother ignored him when he struggled and looked for support; Anna is still angry at how critical her mother was of her moving across the country for a new job; Sharice can’t forgive her boyfriend for cheating on her.

While some can “forgive and forget,” many others can’t. Not only does this usually kill a relationship, but all too often, these wounds accumulate, occupying too much mental space, pulling you down, coloring your present.

Not forgiving isn’t the problem, but often the outcome of other underlying issues. If you’re struggling with letting go of the past, here are five common culprits.

Believing you need to feel better to act better

“I know I should forgive, but I’m not feeling forgiving.” Emotions, especially when wounded, lag behind your thoughts and behaviors. Telling yourself that you should feel better will not make you feel better. Instead, choosing your values and having the intention to repair a relationship, might. If you choose to forgive, you can now take the next step and change your behavior. Act differently. Be kind and generous despite how you feel.

If you do this long enough, you can change the emotional climate of the relationship. There’s a good chance the other person will change their response (unless they hold onto grudges, too) and begin to repair the damage. If they don’t, know that’s you’ve done the best you can do.

The need for closure

Wounds from the past are often, at some deeper level, about loss and the inability to get closure—the opportunity to say what you couldn’t say. If this is true for you, create that closure. If you can still contact that person, let them know that you need to talk—not to blame or argue over facts, but for them to understand how you feel, to get things off your chest. Let them know you only want sincere listening on their part: you want to be heard. Then, see if you can arrange a meeting—in person, on the phone, or by Zoom (texts messages might not be the most productive medium for this).

If they are not available—because you don’t know where they are, or because they have passed away—write that letter that you will never send expressing all that you didn’t get to say. Then write another letter back from them saying what you would ideally want them to say. This is about getting stuff out of your head.

The moral of the story: behavioral change

Being unable to forgive is often about broken trust—Jake, Anna, Sharice each worry that the brother, mother, or boyfriend will hurt them again—so you cut them off and protect yourself through withdrawal to avoid further pain. The antidote is to move forward, to talk about the lessons of what happened, to change the future. “If you hear me and change your behavior, I can begin to feel safer, can trust, can lean into the relationship.” Be clear about what you want the other to do moving forward: not bringing roses, but saying sorry; not feeling dismissed, criticized, betrayed. Say what you need most.

Learn more–

Unresolved childhood trauma

You may be hot-wired to distrust, to expect others to manipulate you, dismiss you, hurt you. This is often about old wounds from way back that changed your overall view of the world and others that continue to bleed into all close relationships. If you suspect that that is true for you, go back to that source: What is it you need to do to put this old wound to rest? Again, this is about closure, writing, and confronting those who hurt you. Do it in real-time or in a letter that you won’t send to put the past to rest.

Depression

If your focus on the grudges comes and goes, the question is:

Why now and not yesterday? It may be about simple stress—this relationship and point in the past are your Achilles Heel that flares up when your defenses are understandably down. But it may also be about a more depressed state of mind. Depression causes us to focus on the past, as opposed to anxiety which is all about the future. If that is the pattern, look at your past wounds and regrets not as problems to tackle but red flags, letting you know that you’re falling into some old emotional pothole and that something else is going on that you need to pay attention to.

THE BASICS

The Importance of Forgiveness
Find a therapist near me (Google search)

The theme here is that struggling with forgiveness is not one problem but the outcome of several underlying issues. Find these and then take decisive action to put them to rest.

Source: Diana de Weert/Pixabay

To illustrate, consider two examples from international politics. In one study, Philpot and Hornsey found that political apologies for mistreatment of Australian prisoners of war during World War II had no effect on the willingness of Australians to forgive the perpetrators. In contrast, a study by Brown and his colleagues demonstrated that a political apology was sufficient to cause Canadians to forgive an incident in which their soldiers were killed by “friendly fire” by American soldiers. Rather than revealing the weak and inconsistent nature of political apologies, however, these examples help to demonstrate two important points about political forgiveness.

First, as Burnette’s team demonstrates, forgiveness is triggered when relationship value is high and exploitation risk is low. These conditions were arguably much more present in the case of the friendly fire incident than in the prisoners of war case.

Second, forgiveness tends to follow, rather than create, the conditions for reconciliation. Indeed, the political and economic relationship between the U.S. and Canada is one of, if not the most, peaceful and prosperous in the world. Apology and forgiveness may indeed be less frequent internationally, but its success is neither random nor impossible-

A Tangled Web of Motivation

Seen from this perspective, our retaliatory tendencies and capacity for forgiveness actually represent a complex web of interrelated motivational systems in humans that help us avoid exploitation, resolve conflicts of interest, and restore valued relationships—depending on the context.

The next time you feel someone has wronged you, it might be worthwhile to reflect upon the evolutionary roots of our complex desires for retaliation and forgiveness. Neither retaliation nor forgiveness is an unalloyed good: both involve significant risks and benefits, and both are to some degree necessary to enforce the norms and values that we care about, to repair valued relationships, and to build meaningful new ones.

Dee Wagner~Hinkle
HT Wagner@ Twitter
dwh1nine@gmail.com
314-283-8786 (text)

JenCareBCE.com (web site)
(htwagner@jencarebce..com – under construction)

About the Author

Inspirational Verse in the free-form style of Emily Dickinson

HT Wagner – is a Freelance writer of WordPress in St Louis, Missouri
She has had a successful career in Project Manager with over 25 years’ experience in research, development and team building, with a strong background in both technical and financial services industry recruiting. She has also built her own successful recruiting company.

She retired and suffered a series of devastating family tragedies that led to a period of deep depression and devastation. Expressing herself in poetry has helped her to rebuild a normal life.

Dee’s ‘turn on’s- are the ocean, swing dancing and comedy.
Her ‘turn-off’s’ are negative people who judge and people who hate.
She and husband of 53 years now live in St Louis close to her family.
You can email her at dwh1nine@gmail.com
JenCareBCE.com
(htwagner@jencarebce..com – under construction)

Inspirational Verse in the free form style of Emily Dickinson

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Inspirational Verse in the free form style of Emily Dickinson

Prayer Book of Poems & Other Notions: Verses To Hold In Your Heart

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