Blocked

Recently, themes of forgiveness and reconciliation haven been showing up more often in my encounters. Especially as Peter and I have been understanding our own modes of conflict resolution, these encounters have sparked greater reflection on what it means to forgive. We haven’t had particularly big conflicts, but working through these thought experiments help us to understand each other better and prepare us for when calamity strikes.

There is one particular patient interaction that really brought these reflects to surface. A pious woman, mother, and grandmother, she was the epitome of selflessness. She had placed her life on hold, repeatedly, for the sake of others in her life. It was to a degree that others would soon take advantage of her giving nature. In our appointments, she would often compare herself to a balloon, with barely the buoyancy to support the weight of her grandchildren. After all, she was a single lady with several grandchildren in her custody.

And yet, she would welcome into her life, to her detriment, adults who are clearly threats to her already-delicate system. Whether this took the form of romantic partners or estranged children, the inevitable disarray brought in by these dysfunctional others would lead to collapse. Every time, she would find herself “blocking” them on all forms of communication. And not too long thereafter, she would “unblock” them once she’s determined she has forgiven them. The cycle would then repeat.

I asked her one session, what does it even mean to forgive someone? Of course, she immediately grasped toward religious appeal, citing her faith as the reason, but never directly answering the question. Surely, she’s forgiven so many people that she must know what it actually is. After some excavation, she reveals one of the most common pitfalls and misconceptions surrounding forgiveness: that it somehow also confers reconciliation.

Peter and I share the understanding that forgiveness and reconciliation are two entirely separate processes. Forgiveness is a process that is entirely internal, whereas the latter is entirely external. That one is not a requisite for the other challenges the societal notion that forgiveness is something to be bestowed on the offending party. Perhaps this is where the notion that forgiveness implies reconciliation is born.

There are obviously many instances in which the two go hand-in-hand. The emotional labor of forgiveness is a journey in which we barter within ourselves to find peace. It is a process that absolves us of the strong emotional valence once attached to a person, object, or event in order to move toward a position of acceptance. It does not automatically grant the forgiven any access, emotional or physical, to the forgiver. At least, that is the shared understanding that Peter and I adopt on this issue.

Peter has had multiple instances in his life where he has had to forgive other people, all of which happened without the reconciliatory phase. In typical Peter fashion, this compartmentalization always came very naturally to him. To him, interpersonal relationships are no different from one’s relationship with anything else. All relationships, whether between persons or objects, play very particular roles in his life. None are given the automatic privilege of access to his time and energy just solely through existence.

For myself, the roads of forgiveness and reconciliation often converge. The confluence of such is how I envision a more abundant and generous life when it comes to relationships. Of course, this may also mean more legwork when it comes to erecting and enforcing boundaries. I’ve fortunately not had to go through so many challenging situations as my patient has.

For her, the process of “blocking” and “unblocking” serves as a tangible and concrete manifestations of her internal state. Often, when emotions are too difficult to bear, we subconsciously find ways of managing them. Through externalizing and displacement of this emotional turbulence, she is then able to restore balance to her life, albeit temporarily. Though effective as a band-aid, this risks further atrophy of an essential life skill: the ability to hold and process emotions internally.

Certainly, I can understand her plight as she is being guilted by appeals to both moral and religious authorities (which I very much dislike). It is the surrender of agency to some mysterious greater or abstract power that leaves us feeling powerless in otherwise mutable situations. It is often in these contexts that people fall back into their cognitive schemas of what they “should” do. To that, I tell them to stop “shoulding” all over the place.

When Peter and I last talked about this topic, he noted his last instance of forgiveness did not come with reconciliation. Interestingly, he was the one who carried the burden of both forgiveness as well as attempts at reconciliation. The other party bore no interest in reconciliation. Such instances actually give Peter as well as myself a deep sense of liberation and psychic release. After all, we’ve done all we could.

I think in my younger years, these two concepts were more or less married together. As I’ve gotten older, they’ve become ever clearer as distinct processes. Within our own conflicts, forgiveness has always come easily, and always coupled with reparation. Even for the smallest of conflicts, I think it is helpful to sometimes first work through reconciliation. Some of our more difficult conversations have found resolution by this method. We find that union and partnership eases the emotional work required to forgive. After all, a burden shared is a burden halved with the right person (or possibly doubled with the wrong person).