Learning to Forgive

There is a study from the Mayo clinic that seems to conclude that forgiveness is good for you. They say that holding a grudge can adversely affect your heart and your nervous system. This ought to give great comfort to the religious among us because the bible states the same thing.
And, not so oddly, many psychotherapeutic systems believe in forgiveness, as well. The research shows that if you hold a grudge it raises yourblood pressure and heart rate. When subjects imagined forgiving the person they felt more relaxed. But of course the first step for them is to acknowledge the pain. Step number 2, is to find a new way to think about it. Finally, begin to experience emotional relief. It all sounds pretty straightforward. Except! This is no different from cognitive therapy, which also asks patients to think in new ways about the hurt. What it is actually doing is rerouting the hurt from the right frontal area to the left prefrontal; and guess what? The left, when busy concocting ideas and rationales, actually suppresses the structures in the limbic/feeling area so that the person feels more comfortable. But it never really touches the pain. And, as many animal experiments show, when you tranquilize with a pill or shot the animal seems relaxed. But when you measure the deep physiology there is a raging inferno going on. There is no magic to all this. If we don’t address history there can never be a real cure.

Who Do We Marry? Ourselves.

The title seems like an oxymoron but what I mean is that each of us marries our need. We marry what we feel we need. Let me put this way; because of a lack of love early in our lives we are left with unfulfilled need. That need bubbles us later in life and becomes an idea of what we need. It often isn’t even an idea; it is just an automatic behavior that directs toward fulfillment of an old need. A man may idealize almost every woman he meets, and then as time goes on he begins to see who she really is. Then divorce, as is so often the case. She is at first wonderful then someone with faults, and then someone who is terrible. All because he never saw reality, in the first place.


This is the paradigm for so many divorces and breakups. We need fulfillment so badly that we see it everywhere. And later in life we see it nowhere. And it is that screen or filter that we put up automatically when we meet someone new. We don’t see them; we see ourselves. We see what we need. We don’t exactly see who we need, mother, because if we did we would be rolling around the floor in pain begging for love, which is what my patients do. Then they are bereft of their illusions and can finally marry someone who suits them, who is who she is and not some fantasy creation. We finally see reality and that is such a relief and avoids so much strife later on. All those bitter recriminations because the person wasn’t who we thought she was. She had faults and they became more and more evident as the relationship went on.


The woman marries a strong, aggressive man so she can feel protected like she could not with her weak, passive father who let her mother beat up on her. But, alas, he is demanding and driving and sometimes brutal because that is who he really is. And then he could not protect her from himself and his rages and his drinking. She knew he drank a bit but did not really see it because he was her “protector.” Or the woman who married a weak man who would not be a threat as her angry father was. Then reality sets in; he wants her to work and earn the living. He is so passive with the children. He won’t fight for her when there is a problem, and on and on. Disappointment set in but it shouldn’t be there because that was the deal at the outset. “You be soft and unaggressive so I won’t feel threatening and overwhelmed (by daddy), and I will be the forward aggressive one fighting for both of us.” And if we look at the faults of our partner we will see our need; we will see our history and what deep feelings we have. We will finally see ourselves.