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Accepting Forgiveness

Michael J. Brenneis, Ph.D. LCPC
Vol. V No. 4
September/ October 2001

"As they were eating, he said, 'Truly I say to you, one of you will betray me.' And they were very sorrowful, and began to say to him one after another, 'Is it I Lord?'"

When we read in Matthew's account of the last supper (Mt. 26:21-22) that Jesus told his disciples that one of them was a betrayer, we also read that each questioned if he was the one. It is not hard to image how they must have felt. We have probably all been there at one time or another. "Oh my God, I've been exposed. He knows." Since Judas was the betrayer, we would assume that the other eleven must have known that they were not. Nevertheless, each had that painful feeling of being found out.

The human dynamic that accounts for this reaction is shame. Shame is the sense of being defective, or wrongly put together, at the very core of one's being. It is also the dynamic that has much to do with an individual's difficulty in accepting forgiveness and with forgiving one's self.

Both John Patton (Is Human Forgiveness Possible?) and Dr. Jane Tagney and her associates, have described a process by which shame blocks one's ability to accept forgiveness from others and to give it to oneself. If we have hurt another, either intentionally or unintentionally, we have been taught that the thing to do is to admit our mistake or our fault, accept responsibility, express remorse, and to ask forgiveness. This sounds rather straightforward and easily done. For someone who has felt accepted from an early age and who has been taught to see mistakes as opportunities to learn and improve, perhaps it is, however, for those who have not felt accepted from an early age and who have had their honest mistakes met with "How could you have been so stupid? (or selfish, careless, mean or evil) it is not so simple. For persons with this type of background, to admit a mistake is to open one's self to yet one more humiliating experience of public exposure as stupid, selfish, careless mean or evil. To admit a mistake is to fear public shame. Give this potential outcome, it can be too much for some persons.

Tagney's research demonstrates that shame-prone individuals tend to be unforgiving of themselves; they cannot forgive themselves for being weak, vulnerable, or imperfect enough to do something for which they need forgiveness. And since they are not able to forgive themselves for being imperfect, they cannot admit these imperfections to others. Hence, they do not ask for and/or accept forgiveness because to do so would be to admit that they were capable of doing something bad enough to need it. The research on forgiveness has shown that it is hard to forgive another who has hurt us because he/she becomes an automatic pain stimulus, which triggers a natural tendency to avoid them so we do not get hurt again (See Demythologizing Forgiveness in LUKENOTES, Vol. IV, No 4.) The experience of being mistaken or wrong in any situation becomes then an automatic pain stimulus that we seek to avoid because the reactions we received when we made mistakes were so painful in the past that we do not want to go there again. And to admit a mistake and to risk public exposure would take us back. Tagney has found that not only will shame-prone individuals avoid asking for forgiveness, they will often become angry at the person that they hurt, and blame them for the whole thing. Some even blame God for their own failings. "Since God created me this way, what can I do?

Individuals learn to feel shame when their failings are held up to ridicule and humiliation. They learn acceptance of forgiveness and forgiveness of self when their failings are met with compassion and understanding, and they realize that they are not the only ones who fail. In such a context they learn to say to others, "I am sorry, please forgive me" and to say to themselves, "I wish I had not done that." A person can only do this when, in the context of compassionate and accepting relationships, he/she transforms the experience of making a mistake from a pain stimulus to avoid, to an experience of sharing and connection to be desired and enjoyed. When individuals can confess their faults to others who are also confessing their faults to them, this transformation can take place. This is when the shame that stands between them and accepting forgiveness from others and from themselves can be effectively converted.

"Confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, that you may be healed."
(James 5:16, RSV )

Michael Brenneis, Ph.D., LCPC is a therapist at SLI.

LUKENOTES is a bimonthly publication of Saint Luke Institute.
Permission to use these materials must be requested in writing by contacting
lukenotes@sli.org

SLI EDUCATION DEPARTMENT
Saint Luke Institute
8901 New Hampshire Ave.
Silver Spring, MD 20903
(301) 422-5499 • (301) 422-5519 (fax)

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