Acknowledging the complexities and connection between anger and forgiveness

Those who have suffered injustice inevitably have a relationship with both anger and forgiveness.  Anger is a big part of the triggers that take a person from a stimulus they don’t understand to a place of acting out their anger.  Understanding those triggers is always an initial key in getting a grip on the anger.

Anger can so easily be pathologised as “a lack of forgiveness,” without understanding that anger and forgiveness are interlinked and co-related.  One doesn’t form without the need of the other.  Forgiveness’s antecedent is anger.  And anger’s invitation is forgiveness.

UNDERSTANDING CONFLICT, ANGER & FORGIVENESS

Forgiveness isn’t forgiveness without the apportionment and rectification of anger.  To say that forgiveness could occur without having the need to deal with one’s anger is to say that the issue didn’t really matter, and therefore one can wonder if a case in question is even a genuine case of conflict that required forgiveness.  If it didn’t matter, it didn’t matter.

When we acknowledge that conflict is a difference in opinion or purpose between people that frustrates their goals or desires (from Ken Sande), we necessarily account for the idea that there is an inherent measure of anger to process in conflict.  Acknowledging this helps to de-shame anger and it validates the convoluted work nested within forgiveness.

Anger is not always visible, but as surely as frustration is experienced, there is always a measure of irritation anxiety within conflict.  It’s all too easy to be dishonest about anger.

Many people make a lot about forgiveness, pretending it is easy when it is often complicated by the anger that shades many unknown and confounding nuances, and they simplify something that is not aided in simplification.

Many people also make a lot about forgiveness because they can’t or won’t hold space for a person who needs empathy and time.  Not holding space for someone in this situation speaks more about a lack of love than anything.

STALLING ANGER, FORCING FORGIVENESS

Telling someone they must forgive, without empathising for the anger they feel because of the injustice incurred and the mysteries behind the difficulties experienced, is like knowing someone is going hungry while offering to pray that someone feed them.

It’s just not helpful and says something more about the heart of the person telling a person to forgive, and their unconscious and unacknowledged anxiety, than it says about the person who is struggling to forgive.  What occurs is the person struggling to forgive then must bear what is essentially abandoning and thereby traumatising.

Many people who are angry know that they need to get to a place of acceptance, of forgiveness, for their own benefit, let alone for the benefit of others they care about.

When a person is angry and struggling to forgive it’s often because the injustice simply cannot be reconciled—there are so many different situations like this.  Until a person has been in a situation like this, they don’t really comprehend how difficult it is to process anger, and how complicated it can be to advance upon forgiveness.

THANK GOD FOR THE TRAUMA-INFORMED

Now to one of the purposes of learning how to forgive the hard way.  Experiencing injustice that cannot be reconciled is paradoxically of profound importance and is instructional for their equipping in anyone’s life who wishes to assist in the ministry of the traumatised.  It’s inherent in trauma-informed work, for instance.  Forgiveness and anger are such complex concepts in trauma.

It’s always important to take polarising situations as they come, always resisting the urge to judge anything as good or bad or otherwise.  If there is a situation where a person finds it impossible to forgive, it is not a weakness in them, but simply an opportunity to explore the matter.

There’s always a logical reason as to why anything’s difficult.  The task is to find the reason or reasons.  Where matters can be explored without prejudgement there is the opportunity to be curious where judgement would quench the spirit of trust.  Judgement stems from either ignorance or anxiety (sometimes both), most often the former, due to a lack of empathy.

The trauma-informed have invariably been through their own trauma work.

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When a person finally achieves forgiveness, a vital component of celebration must be the acknowledgement of the anger that has been processed, and the courage it took to get there.

Processing anger invariably involves navigating the complexity, showing grit borne of humility, and the key element of time, which levels the playing field for us all.