How to Let Go- Forgiving Others and Yourself

I’m one for holding grudges. I like people to know that I’m upset about something. When holding a grudge, I often act like a child; refusing to speak until the other person has apologized and I have deemed it acceptable. They hurt my feelings! I want them to know.

I also hold onto past mistakes with a tight grip. For things said to others in anger, for slip ups and imperfections- my list of past failures is also something that I hold onto tightly. Sometimes, the list of my faults runs through my head so loudly, I can hardly take it. 

This unforgiveness runs deeps. God pointed out to me recently how much this type of hurt was actually hurting me. Because I don’t forgive easily, the hurt festers inside of my mind. It takes over thoughts and actions. It ruins days and weeks. It’s even ruined some relationships. So why do I hold on so tightly?

For me, it comes right back to the center of most of my problems in life. I like control. When someone hurts me, or I feel an emotion (like embarrassment or sadness), I’d rather turn it into anger towards someone or myself. Anger is more comfortable for me to feel than those other, harder, emotions. My unforgiveness, my anger, gives me some control when those uncomfortable emotions come up. 

How do we ‘Let it go’ as Elsa likes to remind us? How do we consciously choose to surrender to the emotion instead of letting unforgiveness hold us tightly? 

Recognize what you are doing. 

I can honestly say that most of the grudges I’ve held in life felt justified in the moment. Someone didn’t live up to the expectations I had set and I felt angry! But in reality, the anger was the secondary emotion. The first emotion was hurt. Did they not care enough about me to do this thing for me? 

When we feel hurt, we don’t forgive others so that we have the power to hurt them. “Hurt people hurt people” is a saying that I hear a lot as a teacher. I see students lash out at each other because of situations at home that aren’t in their control. I can recognize it with them. With myself? Not so much. 

The first step in healing chronic unforgiveness is to recognize what you are doing and identify the underlying emotion of that unforgiveness. 

When we have unforgiveness towards ourselves, we need to take a long look at that as well. Holding onto past mistakes is like holding yourself on trial, daily, for something that you did a long time ago. This type of unforgiveness often breeds shame in ourselves. Shame and embarrassment are hard emotions to feel. It’s a hard one to let go of too because we have convinced ourselves that we deserve it. Taking a look at WHY we are feeling that shame, what core belief that we have about ourselves is so much more important than the secondary emotion of shame or embarrassment that we hear playing in our heads on repeat. 

Pray about it. 

Often, in our anger and our ‘bad’ feelings, we don’t go to the Lord. We are so focused on why we are upset or what is wrong in our lives that instead of going to God, we vent to others, or our thoughts are so seeped in words about the situation that we literally don’t think about God. 

When thoughts are like this, if we can recognize that we NEED the Lord in that moment, more than anything, we will get on the path to forgiveness. 

Talking to God will help you resolve any emotion that you ever feel. Yet, in our humanness, we forget that He is the ultimate healer of all- including emotional hurt. 

Pray about it. Process all of the emotion in prayer. And don’t hold back with God. Tell Him everything. Vent to Him. During this process, He will speak to you. And you might think that I sound crazy, but anytime that I can remember to pray when I am hurt or angry, I always calm down about the situation. God always gives me a new perspective and helps me let go of it. 

If I talk to a friend about it, I always leave more angry than when I went into the conversation. 

God cares that you are hurt. Don’t let the enemy convince you otherwise. God wants to know every detail of your day and every hurt that you ever have. He wants to be the one that you turn to when things are hard. He wants to be your constant support and healer. 

The thing is though, when you feel the hurt and the unforgiveness seeping in, you have to turn to Him. You have to go to the Father as the source of help, not the people around you. 

Feel it

This is the part that everyone wants to skip over. When someone hurts us, we want to get mad and make them feel hurt. We never want to do the hard part- feel the hurt, the sadness, the embarrassment. We think that by running from these emotions we are making ourselves feel better. In reality, we are making ourselves feel worse by bottling up these situations that we haven’t really dealt with. 

My therapist had a wonderful example of this. She told me that I kept putting these unresolved situations and feelings in a bookbag. That bag was weighing me down emotionally. Because of that, one day, a situation would come and knock me to my knees. Suddenly, all of the past hurts would be something that I would have to deal with. If I would deal with them as they came up, they wouldn’t end up in my emotional bookbag.   

For me, sadness is something that I tend to run away from and pretend that I don’t feel. But see, feeling that sadness, that loss, and that grief is essential to my emotional stability in the long run. 

In prayer, I can usually let myself feel. I feel that need to be ‘perfect’ in front of God slip away when I am honest about how things are really going in my life. God knows. He knows what I need and how to heal me. He know that I need to talk about it and process it with Him. Go to Him. Talk to Him. Feel with Him. Cry with Him. Get angry with Him. Feel all the things with Him. He will care and He will always listen. Best part? He will start the healing process and help you forgive.

Let go of ‘The Talk’

In the movies, it seems like there is always this big talk between characters when they forgive each other. Life isn’t like this. Sometimes, we will have to forgive without ever getting an apology and without ever getting closure with that person. Sometimes, we will never know their side of the story. 

And that’s okay. 

Forgiveness really isn’t about the other person. It’s about you. It’s about you letting go of a slight against you. It’s about your heart and your soul being at peace. It’s about you, healing and moving on. It’s about you not letting the past hold you hostage anymore. 

Forgiveness isn’t about anything that person can do or say. It’s simply about your heart. 

When we take away the need for that other human to feel hurt, or that other human to understand what they did, it all comes down to us. We don’t need that other person’s approval to move on with our lives. We don’t need to replay scenarios over and over again when there is nothing that we can do to change them. None of that matters in forgiveness. 

We need to understand that forgiveness is about healing ourselves, not about that other person. Understanding why that person hurt you and why you felt hurt is the real outcome that we are looking for here. When we understand, for example, that we feel unforgiveness when someone hurts us because we didn’t feel heard or get another emotional need met, that is when we have made true progress in our emotional lives. Being able to move on and say ‘This is what I need emotionally from people around me’ is a life lesson that will help us so much in the long run. 

Forgive.

Talk with God about forgiving that person. Tell God that you forgive them. Forgive them in your heart. Personally, I like to write a prayer to God about it. Say it out loud that you forgive them. 

When the situation inevitably comes up in your mind again, or someone brings it up, remind yourself that you have forgiven them. Don’t talk about the situation, or dwell on it. 

If talking about it does bring up some uncomfortable emotions, go back to God with them. He will help you sort it out. I’ve had to forgive people a few times in my life, and that’s okay. Forgiveness isn’t some magic word that you can declare over a situation. 

Forgiveness takes work. Don’t believe the movies that tell you forgiveness can be had in one conversation for every situation. That’s usually not how it works. 

Forgiveness can be life changing when you allow it into your life and decide that the grudges aren’t worth it. When you move on and take a deep look at yourself and why you were hurt over that situation instead of why you are angry with that person, or yourself, now. 

Forgiveness is a powerful tool that God gave us to heal- both ourselves and our relationships. God asks us to forgive others. Forgiveness is an important part of our Christian faith. And we are told to forgive it ALL in this life. Our humanness makes that hard. I get it. We are called, above anything else, to love God and to love others. Forgiveness is part of loving others. Forgiving yourself for past mistakes, missteps and failures is part of loving yourself. 

Take time today to look at the unforgiveness in your heart and see what is under that hurt. Pray about it today so that you can start the healing process. 

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