Researchers are studying how anger can impede healing. They have shown that when you let go of your grievances you can live a healthier life. When you don’t forgive you release all the chemicals of the stress response. When you forgive, you wipe all of that clean. This is exciting because clients at Seattle Hypnosis with Roger Moore have been learning about forgiveness for almost 19 years.
It is our judgment about an action that eats at us, makes us angry and that decimates our self-esteem. It’s not up to us to judge, and by letting go of the judgment we free ourselves from anger and the continued abuse of the action. One of the beauties of self-hypnosis is that it allows us to get to that quiet place within us to allow emotional healing. Learn how to hypnotize with mindfulness self-hypnosis. Let go of your anger and with hypnosis healing can begin.
The science of forgiveness: “When you don’t forgive you release all the chemicals of the stress response”
Salon, Megan Feldman Bettencourt, August 23, 2015: Enright’s forgiveness model has four parts: uncovering your anger, deciding to forgive, working on forgiveness, and discovery and release from emotional prison. All take place through therapist-patient dialogue. Uncovering anger means examining how you’ve both avoided and dealt with it, and exploring how the offense and resulting anger has changed your health, worldview, and life in general. The phase involves learning about what forgiveness is and what it’s not, acknowledging that the ways you’ve dealt with your anger up until now haven’t worked, and setting the intention to forgive. Next, working on forgiveness entails confronting the pain the offense has caused and allowing yourself to experience it fully, then working toward developing some level of understanding and compassion for the offender. The final phase includes acknowledging that others have suffered as you have and that you’re not alone (for some, this means connecting with a support group of people who have endured a similar experience), examining what possible meaning your suffering could have for your life (learning a particular life lesson, perhaps contributing to one’s strength or character, or prompting one to help others), and taking action on whatever you determine to be your life purpose.
When it comes to determining the existence of a causal relationship between forgiveness and physical health, Enright says the most definitive study he has done was conducted with a team of researchers on cardiac patients. Published in 2009 in the journal Psychology & Health, their analysis found that when cardiac patients with coronary heart disease underwent forgiveness therapy, the rate of blood flow to their hearts improved more than that of the control group, which received only standard medical treatment and counseling about diet and exercise. “It wasn’t that they were cured—these were patients with serious heart problems,” Enright says. “But they were at less risk of pain and sudden death.” Those results echo studies by another Templeton grantee, Charlotte Witvliet, a psychology professor at Hope College; and Sonja Lyubomirsky, a psychology professor at the University of California, Riverside, and author of numerous books on happiness, which found that people who forgive more readily have fewer coronary heart problems than those who hold grudges.
Perhaps the most comprehensive body of evidence showing links between forgiveness and health focuses on mood, says Dr. Frederic Luskin, the cofounder of the Stanford Forgiveness Project, an ongoing series of workshops and research studies at Stanford University. Researchers who measure emotional and psychological health outcomes following therapy that includes forgiveness are quantifying patients’ levels of anger, anxiety, and depression, concluding in multiple studies that forgiveness elevates mood and increases optimism, while not forgiving is positively correlated with depression, anxiety, and hostility. Like Enright, Luskin has developed ways to teach forgiveness in various places and with various groups, including war-ravaged populations in countries such as Northern Ireland and Sierra Leone, and he asserts that anyone—from jilted spouses to widows who have lost husbands to terrorism—can heal.
“When you don’t forgive you release all the chemicals of the stress response,” Luskin says. “Each time you react, adrenaline, cortisol, and norepinephrine enter the body. When it’s a chronic grudge, you could think about it twenty times a day, and those chemicals limit creativity, they limit problem-solving. Cortisol and norepinephrine cause your brain to enter what we call ‘the no- thinking zone,’ and over time, they lead you to feel helpless and like a victim. When you forgive, you wipe all of that clean.”
Read The science of forgiveness: “When you don’t forgive you release all the chemicals of the stress response”
Do you find yourself thinking about all the wrongs of the past? Are you frequently feeling victimized because things aren’t as they should have been? Are you frequently reminded that your dreams for your life did not materialize? You can learn how to hypnotize your self so that you can move out of that anger and victimization trance and live life mindfully in the moment. Mindfulness self hypnosis can help you to forgive your judgements of the past and live in the now so that you can enhance your wellness.
NOTE: Seattle Hypnosis is now Palm Desert Hypnosis
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Read Forgiveness at Seattle Hypnosis
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Your Hypnosis Health Info Hypnotic Suggestion for today:
I forgive my judgements of the past and live in the now.
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