Forgiveness and Fred Luskin

Katie D.

November 20, 2010 - 6:33 PM

This week Dr. Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good and director of the Stanford Forgiveness Project was here at the University of Oregon campus. He spoke in two classes: the Reconciliation class I GTF with Professor Cheyney Ryan and Jane Gorden's "Perspectives in Conflict Resolution" class, and gave a public presentation at the UO Law School.

Doctor Luskin is one of the world's leading researchers and teachers on the subject of forgiveness. His background is in Positive Psychology, which is the study of human happiness and positive social functioning. His projects on forgiveness has included groups who have experienced violence in Northern Ireland and Sierra Leone, as well as families of victims of 9/11 attacks. In addition to the work on forgiveness in circumstances of extreme violence and trauma, he also works with "just normal forgiveness," in all its own individual pain and challenge, in family counseling, education, and as a clinical psychologist.

This man was a fabulous speaker.

He spoke about forgiveness in a wide variety of ways, always returning to the basic physical implications of stress and anger. He told Cheyney Ryan's class that, in situations of anger and hostility, blood is drained from the pre-frontal cortex, resulting in a drop of creative thinking in favor of a simplistic focus on a single, overwhelming problem. First adrenaline and then other chemicals are released into the bloodstream, causing physical and mental stress. He told us not only that hostility is a prime indicator of heart disease, but also that the physical response to five minutes of anger is four hours of reduced immune system function.

And, after all of that, he said that love and kindness improves immune systems, heals the cardiovascular system, and opens the mind to new and positive experiences. He said that in every study and by ever standard (which is miraculous in the notoriously ambiguous field of social science) that optimists "do better." Jobs, health, overall satisfaction... Optimists live better lives.

At the public event, he told us "I developed this curriculum out of my own deep misery." Standing there before approximately seventy-five audience members, with his casual demeanor and sweatpants, this almost sounded like a joke. But it wasn't. He suffered the betrayal of a dear friend, and spent years agonizing and aching because of it. He then wrote his dissertation on the subject, and began teaching people how to forgive. As he has progressed from university students as his research subjects to working with mothers who have lost children to direct violence, he reports that the process of forgiveness is always the same and is never easy. It is only the context that changes, and the stories that accompany the individuals through their processes.

He talked about the habits we form and the communities we live in. Human beings are naturally wired both for bitterness and for graciousness. How we develop our reactions is a fundamental piece of our identities, and is something we have the power to change. The most fundamental step we can take in moving toward forgiveness is to "Be in truth with the good in your life." When there is an overwhelming sense of gratitude and fortune, there is less room to begrudge the actions of others. I feel so empowered by this idea, and hopeful for the change this might make in my life. Indeed, over the last several days, I have worked in practicing gratitude in all aspects of my life. I already feel freer.

Finally, he defined forgiveness. The state of un- forgiveness is that gap between what we wanted and what we received. This can be from three sources: from other people, from the world at large, and from ourselves. The intention of the other person is not terribly present in our state of forgiveness, it is our own unmet expectations and resulting disruption of our understanding of the world and safety in it. To move beyond un- forgiveness is to create new stories for ourselves, to let go the desired outcomes, and to re-write our narratives to include new realities. This is not an instantaneous process, and is one that usually requires a phase of both anger and grief. But at some point, the healthy response is to let go the bitterness and create a new understanding of ourselves.

A final, bumper-sticker definition of forgiveness: "Forgiveness means giving up all hope for a better past."