Episode 13 - Forgiveness: The Facts, The Fiction and The Truth
This week on the TOUGH LOVE ENERGY podcast, we’re exploring the topic of forgiveness – the facts, the fiction and the truth.
It’s inspired by my own recent experience with forgiveness, where I recently decided to forgive someone in my life. If I’m honest, it wasn’t because they’d said sorry for the hurt they’d caused me – it was because I was worn out thinking about it and I knew I really needed that closure and peace of mind for myself.
One of the big ‘myths’ around forgiveness is, that by forgiving someone, you are somehow either condoning what they’ve done or dismissing the truth of how you were hurt. Let’s get this out of the way early, I want to be really clear that this is NOT what forgiveness is about. Forgiveness is about letting go, yes – but it’s never about letting anyone off.
For me, the very best reason to forgive someone is that it puts an end to allowing what happened then, affect how we’re living our lives right now. It puts a stop to the reliving of the hurt, disappointment, anger or betrayal – whatever emotion is at the heart of it for you, and releasing the hold it has over you. And that’s really one of the best gifts you can give yourself.
I talk further in the episode on why exactly it is so important to practice forgiveness, and what can happen when we don’t. Often, we’ll simply shut down or lose perspective – in more extreme cases, we can become bitter, which is no good for anyone. Sometimes we might put up barriers in the hope that we’re never hurt again, which just rarely works either.
I also share my advice on how to go about forgiving someone. I’ll walk you through the steps of forgiving and letting go so that you can understand what happened and why, process the emotions you’re feeling and then come to a place where you are able to forgive, release and then move on from it.
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Until next time,
Niamh x