importance of forgiveness, very few people talk about the actual process
of forgiveness. In The Book of Forgiving, the Archbishop and his
daughter Mpho Tutu presented a universal fourfold path to forgiveness.
This step-by-step process has been made available to the world in the
Global Forgiveness Challenge (forgivenesschallenge.com), and has now
been used by people from over 170 countries. Forgiveness can be a rather
involved process, and those two resources may be helpful to those who
are working to forgive major sources of pain and trauma. The resources
also address how we can ask for forgiveness and learn to forgive
ourselves. The following are the basic steps of the fourfold path,
combined with some of the latest neuroscience research.
1 . Telling your story. All forgiveness must begin by facing the
truth. You can write down in a journal or tell a trusted friend
what happened. Telling your story also allows you to integrate
the memories in your consciousness and defuse some of your
emotional reactivity. To help heal the memories and avoid
retraumatizing yourself, it is helpful to imagine that you are
watching the event happen in a movie. This way you may
reduce the chances of triggering the brain’s neural stress
response. One scientific protocol by Ethan Kross and his
colleagues suggests recalling your experience this way: Close
your eyes. Go back to the time and place of the emotional
experience and see the scene in your mind’s eye. Now take a
few steps back. Move away from the situation to a point where
you can watch the event unfold from a distance and see
yourself in the event, the distant you. Watch the experience
unfold as if it were happening to the distant you all over again.
Observe your distant self.
2 . Naming the hurt. The facts are the facts, but these experiences
caused strong emotions and pain, which are important to name.
As you watch the situation unfold around your distant self, try
to understand his or her feelings. Why did he or she have those