>Having been in this situation myself, even figuring out “what is forgiveness” can seem incredibly daunting. Should I just forget the painful memories inflicted? Is forgiveness just some words you say? My own answer to this was being able to remove the pain from those memories when I recalled them, part of this was by rebuilding trust by creating new positive shared experiences after the painful event
I think that for some people, past emotional events are much more salient and enduring for others. Personally, I think I might have a very high discount-factor-for-past-emotions, such that I get over things quite quickly. It’s not that things aren’t upsetting at the time they happen, but the affective charge drains quickly—usually minutes to hours; anything longer is very very rare for me; where as I’ve had friends/acquaintances who’ve mentioned things that happened months or years ago with deep emotional upset.
I think it’s possible that my emotional-discount factor wasn’t always this high. It’s possible that this may be a result of mediation, or just a side effect of getting older.
What I am confident about is that doing loving-kindess meditation after an upsetting event, particularly if I incorporate the person who upset me, can be extremely effective at drawing out the affective charge from an event.
Loving-kindess meditation is almost a scarily powerful technique for bumping mood up.
>Having been in this situation myself, even figuring out “what is forgiveness” can seem incredibly daunting. Should I just forget the painful memories inflicted? Is forgiveness just some words you say? My own answer to this was being able to remove the pain from those memories when I recalled them, part of this was by rebuilding trust by creating new positive shared experiences after the painful event
I think that for some people, past emotional events are much more salient and enduring for others. Personally, I think I might have a very high discount-factor-for-past-emotions, such that I get over things quite quickly. It’s not that things aren’t upsetting at the time they happen, but the affective charge drains quickly—usually minutes to hours; anything longer is very very rare for me; where as I’ve had friends/acquaintances who’ve mentioned things that happened months or years ago with deep emotional upset.
I think it’s possible that my emotional-discount factor wasn’t always this high. It’s possible that this may be a result of mediation, or just a side effect of getting older.
What I am confident about is that doing loving-kindess meditation after an upsetting event, particularly if I incorporate the person who upset me, can be extremely effective at drawing out the affective charge from an event.
Loving-kindess meditation is almost a scarily powerful technique for bumping mood up.