It is said that you can find peace and you can move on after someone has hurt you bad without forgiving them. If so, the only way to move on is to make this affirmation: "This is too big for me to handle right now. Maybe it will always be too big. I accept that. I have better things to do than mull over it. I am so confident about this." One tip is, to allow a process similar to mourning to help you.
The following six things are said to be forgiveness.
One, it is the letting go of the desire to see the offender suffer the same evil as he or she has done to you or to a loved one. You cease wanting to hurt them back. This is an emotion and it can be slight or very severe.
Two, it is letting go of intending evil to happen to them. This might not be accompanied by the actual feeling of desire at all. We intend to do things we feel nothing about.
Three, it is letting go of the anger. Anger can range from being nearly harmless to you when it is weak but very destructive to you when it is strong.
Four, it is letting go of the feelings of hurt. Again these feelings can hurt you a tiny bit but if they get stronger the more harm they will do to you.
Five, it is an act of love for the one who wronged you. In doing this, you prove your own dignity.
Six, forgiveness does not encourage the harming of others or the wrongdoers to hurt themselves. If it is necessary to prevent the wrongdoers harming themselves in illegal ways or harming others then justice comes in. This means doing something that ensures they will be deterred or others will be protected.
We are told that forgiveness does not necessarily require us to forget about justice - that it warns us to respect it. We will get examples like those.
We may forgive the burglar but still have to report him to the police to stop him hurting somebody else if we are sure he will not stop. That is not about punishing him but protecting people.
We can forgive a person and ask them to pay for
damaging our car. That is not about punishing but getting the car repaired.
Actually both of those are not about justice in so far as they think
punishment can just be forgotten about. Where do people draw the line there?
Does Hitler get sent to a Caribbean paradise?
In some cases, the victim is the punisher - you have to sentence Steve for breaking into your house. While it is true that victims are not asked about how they think the criminal should pay, there is no reason that they cannot be. In principle, forgiving and punishment are compatible.
Some say that punishing is about helping them and this is not against forgiveness but a manifestation of mercy. To bless them by giving them the chance to prove themselves better than the wrongdoing they did and yourself is forgiveness in action.
The best way to make sense of it is, you are willing to be good to the person who harmed you but not in a way that rewards them for the evil they did. That is forgiveness. So you give the serial killer his hot dinner but that does not mean you campaign to get him out of prison.
One, Three and Four are not forgiveness at all. They are feelings. If you have bad feelings towards someone, you simply can't just switch the feelings off. Having the feelings does not mean you have failed to forgive. You can have them while practicing Two, Five and Six. Just see the feelings as not good or bad but as facts. Let is just call One, Three and Four "emotional healing of past hurts".
There are too many lies about forgiveness. So it stands to reason that any of those who forgive in fact are being passive-aggressive in doing so.
Forgiveness is not really necessary.
Thus the demand for it is strange - is it really about hiding sympathy for the
Devil? Forgiveness can backfire - which is hardly surprising if it has traces of
passive-aggression in it. What the person really thinks of the one that hurt
them can come rushing back and even lead to a violent incident. It is concerning
that too much of the pro-forgiveness thinking comes ultimately from the
influence of religious ideology. It has been an on-going problem since Moses,
Jesus and Muhammad made mercy a core part of what God is about.