Just imagine when you felt hurt or betrayed by a colleague, patient, staff member, friend, or family member. Now, picture life if you could somehow free yourself of that hurt, pain, or discomfort. This article will discuss the concept of forgiveness and how it applies to our medical practice.
Examples of forgiveness
A white male racist burned down a predominantly African American church. The arsonist was convicted and sentenced to prison. He was invited to the rebuilt church when he was released from prison. All congregation members stood in a line, and each one forgave him for his actions. The man fell to his knees, weeping, overcome by the congregation’s forgiveness. He was ashamed of his previous behavior but felt relief when the congregation forgave him.
After World War II ended, Peggy Covell discovered that Japanese soldiers had beheaded her missionary parents at their small mountain mission in the Philippines. Peggy wrestled with her initial hatred of the Japanese people, then overcame hatred with love and made a trip to Japan to forgive those soldiers who murdered her parents.
Another example of forgiveness is Nelson Mandela, who spent 27 years in prison on Robben Island in South Africa. During that time, he was isolated in terrible conditions. After being released in 1990, he could have stayed angry at those who had wrongfully imprisoned him. Instead, he chose to forgive them and accept what happened. By releasing that hurt and focusing on a brighter future, he achieved true freedom for his nation.
I had a patient who instituted a lawsuit that took fifteen years to defend. Ultimately, the jury deliberated for less than fifteen minutes and unanimously found me innocent, and my management was within the standard of care. I was hurt and angry that the patient initiated a lawsuit for a frivolous claim. However, when I decided to forgive the patient (and the plaintiff’s attorney), I felt a sense of relief.
Anyone familiar with Italian opera or Shakespearean plays knows the terrible price paid for grudges, vendetta, and revenge. This results in negative thinking and can be distracting, resulting in a loss of positive focus. This kind of response to someone who has hurt you, deceived you, or caused you mental pain can deteriorate your health, including gastrointestinal distress, headaches, depression, and even suppression of your immune system. Physicians and medical practices flourish and become mentally healthy when we do not hold on to past hurts. Under the sway of these emotions, painful incidents linger in the mind, sapping our ability to find peace and happiness. The 18th-century English poet Alexander Pope gave us the antidote: “To err is human, to forgive divine.” But finding a way to forgive without giving up your principles is not easy. In this article, we will address forgiveness and how to implement it. We will discuss when forgiveness is most needed—in your everyday personal life with patients, colleagues, family members, friends, co-workers, and health care associates.
One of our challenges in understanding this process is that the word forgiveness needs to be revised to explain a complex concept. Forgiveness embodies three things, each applying to different situations and providing different results. The three types of forgiveness are exoneration, forbearance, and release.
Exoneration
Exoneration is the closest to what we usually think of when we say “forgiveness.” Exoneration is wiping the slate entirely clean and restoring a relationship to its previous state of innocence before the harmful actions took place. There are three situations in which exoneration applies. The first occurs when you realize the harmful action was a genuine accident for which no fault can be assigned. The second is when the offender is a child or someone else who, for whatever reason, did not understand the hurt they were inflicting and toward whom you have loving feelings. The third situation occurs when the person who hurt you is genuinely sorry, takes full responsibility (without excuses) for what they did, asks for forgiveness, and gives you confidence that they will not knowingly repeat their harmful action. In such situations, accepting their apology and offering them complete forgiveness of exoneration is essential. You will feel better, and so will the person who hurt you. Not offering forgiveness in these circumstances would be harmful to your well-being. It might even suggest something more wrong with you than with the person who caused you pain.
Forbearance
The second type of forgiveness is called forbearance. Forbearance applies when the offender makes a partial apology or mingles their expression of sorrow with blame that you somehow caused them to misbehave. An apology is offered, but it is not what you had hoped for and may not even be fully authentic. While you should always reflect on whether there was a provocation on your part, even when you bear no responsibility, you should exercise forbearance if the relationship matters to you. Cease dwelling on the offense, do away with grudges and fantasies of revenge, but retain a degree of watchfulness. This is like “forgive but not forget” or “trust but verify.” By using forbearance, you can maintain ties to people who, while far from perfect, are still important to you.
Furthermore, in some cases, forbearance can rise to exoneration and full forgiveness after a sufficient period of good behavior. But what do you do when the person who hurt you does not even acknowledge that they have done anything wrong or gives an insincere apology, making no reparations whatsoever? These are the cases of forgiveness that are the most challenging.
Release
The third type of forgiveness is release. Release does not exonerate the offender. Nor does it require forbearance. It does not even demand that you continue the relationship. But it does ask that instead of continuing to define much of your life in terms of the hurt done, you release your bad feelings and perhaps the guilt you are experiencing. Release does something critically important: letting you let go of the burden weighing you down and eating away your chance for happiness. Suppose you do not release the pain and anger and move past dwelling on old hurts and betrayals. In that case, you will be allowing the ones who hurt you to live rent-free in your mind, reliving forever the persecution that the original incident started. Release liberates you from the tyranny of living in the traumatic past, even when the other forms of forgiveness—exoneration and forbearance—are impossible.
Benefits of forgiveness
As physicians, we hear from patients, clients, colleagues, and our staff when they are hurt by someone they trust. This naturally causes them to feel anger, frustration, and resentment. Offering forgiveness provides positive emotions, enhances our energy, and allows us to make wise decisions and perform at our best.
Those who offer or practice forgiveness will often receive positive lessons from previous painful events. It is not unusual for those who forgive to reconnect with a parent, friend, or others they have not spoken to in years.
Forgiveness is not meant to condone others’ hurtful behavior. It is about developing compassion and accepting others for being imperfect. Blaming others never solves the problem or leads to contentment. We must free ourselves from playing the victim story of what we believe happened to us. And we must realize that the other person’s behavior likely had nothing to do with us.
Perhaps they were feeling some threat or danger (consciously or unconsciously), which activated their survival instincts and inhibited them from doing the right thing.
The bottom line: Everyone makes mistakes. It is part of being human, so we cannot expect the people in our lives always to meet our expectations. They have limiting beliefs and personal struggles, so forgiveness is key to a successful practice and a healthier life.
Neil Baum is a urologist.
