FORGIVENESS

[PODCAST TRANSCRIPT]

Is there strength in forgiveness? You might think that forgiving means forgetting, or that it minimises the issue, or perhaps you believe it weakens your feelings, or even your or even invalidates them, leading you to hold onto grudges. In reality, forgiveness is less about excusing a wrongdoing and more about choosing to give over the emotion, deciding to put it down.

I’m Savannah Alalia, and welcome to the High Functioning Human podcast. This is where you learn to connect with yourself as a high-functioning human. In recent episodes, we’ve explored emotions like “Grief” and “Anger” and we’ve discussed how they affect your body and how they also affect your mind. And a key piece in both of these podcasts is talking about how emotions are valid, if they’re managed correctly, can be something to learn from and grow from. And today I want to speak about the next stage of this growth, and that is forgiveness. And this process takes you from suppressing those difficult emotions and holding them in your body, to finding peace through forgiving both yourself and others. To forgive is to let go, is to give yourself back your power around something that has a hold over you.

And this is a super important step to becoming a High Functioning Human, because it’s about learning to live in the present instead of being stuck in the past. 

Why do some people resist forgiveness? Maybe you’re actually stuck in a cycle of reliving the past, dwelling in a past hurt or injustice, and it’s a bit like picking at a scab. It can keep you stuck in a repeating pattern of pain and resentment and prevent you from healing. And this can feel addictive, almost like a compulsion, something that I’ve spoken about before in “Pain vs Suffering”. And when you recognize this cycle of forgiveness, it can help you to step out of suffering and reclaim your power. Forgiveness is as much about yourself as it is about the other people involved. 

Often when you come to terms with another’s actions, you can hold fast onto resentment or judgement or anger towards yourself as a way of almost measuring yourself against others, holding yourself to impossibly high standards as a form of punishment for the situation that you found yourself in. 

Maybe you’ve been conditioned to see yourself as unworthy or undeserving due to previous experiences, and holding onto those feelings of guilt or shame help you to stay stuck in those situations. In these situations, forgiving yourself feels a little like letting yourself off the hook too easily, even though you’re only trying to connect to healing in yourself. Once you realise that holding onto guilt or anger is actually stopping your growth, you can begin the journey towards your self-acceptance and understanding. 

And as you do all the emotional work, it’s important to acknowledge that there are also often physical symptoms of resentment that show up in your body. As with all unprocessed emotions, unforgiveness becomes trapped within your body, causing what I call Thought-Knots in your fascia that can worsen over time. Tangled emotions can restrict your movement both physically and emotionally, leading to numbness and warped ways of thinking. Forgiveness allows you to release these trapped feelings and emotions, providing immense relief and also freeing your fascia.

Avoiding forgiveness can also be about control. You know your pain, you know your anger, you know your grief, but what happens when you move past them will you know yourself? This really is an important piece of the puzzle. So I’m going to take a whole episode to talk about the bliss and peace that comes from the other side of forgiveness in an upcoming podcast on the Pleasure Principles. 

So let’s look at some of the actionable steps that you can take towards forgiveness. Where you can start today. 

• Let’s start by reframing blame. So stop blaming yourself for the pain caused by others. Forgive yourself to reclaim your worth and your strength. Write down the things that you’ve been holding onto mentally and release them, or set them on fire by this symbolic fact of burning the paper that you’ve written them on. 
• Grieve the past. It may be that a disconnect with a version of yourself that was taken away is blocking your forgiveness. Grieve for that person, give them love, and recognize that you’re still the same person, even if things have changed. Accepting and mourning the past helps you to embrace your current journey. 
• Find connection. Trauma often makes connecting with others really challenging, so start with small steps by reaching out to loved ones or trusted friends and build up that sharing in a safe space. Make sure that you’re rekindling and nurturing healthy relationships. This will help you to regain the confidence in others.
• Make sure that you’re doing fascia release. Support your body with regular fascia work practices to help you untangle those thought knots and release the emotions that are stuck in them.
• And obviously, practice gratitude. Be grateful for yourself for overcoming the challenges that you’ve been through and for getting through the difficult situations. Forgive yourself for making choices under stress and appreciate the growth that you’ve experienced. 

Forgiveness, at the end of the day, is a choice to put down an emotion that no longer is serving you, that, in fact, is hindering you. So be brave, forgiving yourself and others reclaims your identity, your self worth. In this way, forgiveness is the ultimate strength, letting you live fully and freely without letting emotions or physical pain define you. 

If you’re on this journey to forgiveness and seeking support, my Your Face Symmetry program is super helpful in providing a gentle, holistic guide to working through stuck emotions using fascia release techniques. And by releasing these burdens physically, you can create a path to release them emotionally too. 

Remember, trust your instincts and follow your intuition because the world needs your voice and the magic it brings to us all. 

Jump on my mailing list to stay reminded and connected with all of your intuition, plus some special tips that I will only share in my emails. 

I look forward to chatting with you next time on High Functioning Human podcast. Take care and talk soon.

As always, I remain a cheerleader for your inner self-worth,