Learning to forgive is one way to reduce chronic pain. Who hasn’t experienced dissapointment, rejection, abandonment-loss, ridicule, humiliation, betrayal, deception or abuse? Any of these experiences can induce and prolong your chronic pain. How can you reduce their impact?
Authors, Dr. Sidney and Suzanne Simon, in their classic book, “Forgiveness: How to Make Peace with Your Past and Get On With Your Life (1990)”, share the ways you can overcome your pain. It involves your going through, or staying stuck, in certain stages, from denial, or “playing down the importance of painful past experiences”; to self-blame, or ‘believing you were somehow responsible for the injuries suffered’; to ‘being a victim, wallowing in self-pity’; to indignation or “being angry at the ones who caused you pain”; to recognizing that, despite what you went through, you survived; then finally, to integration, or being willing to let go of the past pain by putting it into perspective, without ever forgetting it.’
Read this wonferful book! then tell me your pain isn’t reduced.
