Why Is It So Hard to Forgive Someone? | Pt 2

0:00The kids really love that playhouse, huh? Yeah, it's not just a child's playhouse. It's a rental property. Kids, off-carries, Ruth! Someone lives in there? Lives, works, and thrives. Your wife, I reaches all the way to the playhouse? We're good ghillie nairs. It reaches everywhere. Can I check it out? Sorry. Booked solid, but the treehouse just opened up. Live without limits. Get home internet from AT&T and cover your whole house. Even your playhouse turned rental property. AT&T Extended Wifi-Covard Service Required. Limited availability. Visit ATt.com-forwardslash-internet to learn more. Hello, hello. This is Brookdivard, host of the Naked Beauty Podcast. And I want to talk to you about Lexus. At Lexus, master craftsmen called Takumi are involved not just in physical craftsmanship, but in all of those sensory details. These masters evaluate things like how a door closes, the click of a switch, the acoustic feedback of controls. Instead of just instruments, Takumi craftsmen rely on human perception and intuition to create what sounds and feels right. Out of all of the tools that Lexus uses, the most powerful one is

1:02understanding what will make us feel something. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments, but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like, and that's exactly what growth therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments, you just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability,

2:06and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growthherapy.com. Start now. That's growtherapy.com. Slash start now. Growtherapy.com. Slash start now. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. Hi everyone. Welcome back to part two where we're talking all things revenge. Which is pretty intense. Revelement. So yeah, in part one we talked about whether revenge is ever good for you and where it comes from in evolution, what it looks like in the brain. And today we have quite a philosophical listener dilemma from the audience. Do all of a sacks, what a name that is. It's not like a really like knowing name.

3:07Yeah, all of a sacks. Sounds smart. He really does. And he is a very smart guy. So is there evidence to back up all of a sacks' claim that it is easier to accept and forgive nature than humans. And if so, why, what can we learn from being better at forgiving one over the other? Before we go, before you go into the research, I actually think that really struck with me because it's like that is so true. I actually was like that is so tragic. I don't know exactly what you're going to go into next, but I really feel that that is true. Like often you look at natural disasters and you almost like, you just see them as something almost inevitable, almost like tragedies, almost like something that happens to you. But in a way that you don't feel like someone's trying to hurt you, whereas I think with a human thing, even if there's been an accident, you feel that someone needs to be blamed. You don't feel like that with the weather, do you? You just go, oh my god, this has happened. If anything, when there's a natural disaster,

4:08you blame the humans that didn't prepare for it well enough. Which maybe it's the right, I don't know, but I really think that's true. Yeah, I think that's one of the cool things about making this podcast is that I'm like learning so much about how we operate and like navigate the world, which things I just like didn't really even get into before, but it is it is true. So the quote from the book, it's from Oliver Sacks's book, Hallucinations. What a man. The full quote is the amorality of nature is accepted, whether it takes the form of a monsoon and elephant in mousse. I actually, it's so smart that he's using words like, you don't brush in the bush. In the bush. In the back. Or a disease, but being subjected helplessly to the will of others is not. For human behaviour, always carries or is felt to carry a moral charge. So the point here is, why does it hurt so much when we're hurt with intent? And it's easier to make peace with bad luck than it is when someone has wronged you and why is that? And essentially, this is supported in the evidence. So people see transgression as worse if they believe the harm was intentional.

5:12And people display less retaliation with animals or with children, like let alone in nature. So people that we deem as like less responsible for the intent that they've caused. And it's mostly about how your brain is processing it. So when a storm blows down your house, for example, we process that as a misfortune. There's no betrayal of trust or malice to understand or person to be outraged at. So the difference is that when a person hurts you, three different things happen. The harm itself, the intent and the violation of this implicit social contract that you have between you, where you like agree not to hurt each other by being friends or having a relationship. So forgiving nature only involves forgiving the harm itself. Has none of that intent or social contract underneath it. And this is kind of explained by attribution theory, which explains how we decide whether a behaviour or an event stems from internal factors.

6:17That's like personality and intent or external factors, which is look and environment. And basically, we are going about life and our brain is trying to attribute cause to everything that we see, whether it be external or internal, because that's literally how we make sense of the world. And we're also driven or wired to find meaning and intent as well. Hmm. So interesting, isn't it? It's kind of like, yeah, with a human being, you feel... I guess the nature will not ever decide to wrong you in a sense. Exactly. It's just acting out of nature. And even if a lie in attack to you, I mean, I mean, the lines never attack me, so I can't really compare, but you don't feel like... I don't know, you feel anger at the lie in. Yeah, because there's no intent there. It's just doing its natural duty. Natural duty. Whereas the human, you feel like they have gone out their way to do something wrong. And therefore, I think it's hard. I think it would be harder to let go of when someone has

7:24wronged you versus a nature of any of your house. I'm not going to say something happened, but my house blew down. I'm trying to imagine my house blowing down. I feel like you'd be very upset at the loss of your possessions or whatever happened and receiving everyone was fine, obviously. But I feel like you would kind of would get over it, maybe. Yeah. You know what I mean? But I feel like once you dealt with the issue at hand and found any place to live, you'd move forward. Whereas if you've found someone burnt your house down, I don't know how you'd get out. That'll be very hard. And then I guess the second part of the question is what can that teachers about the way that we interact with each other and the way that we might forgive each other? No, forgiveness is clearly important. I guess it'd like to teach even like part one to now. I mean, it's forgiveness is really important. And actually you might have to by letting go it all gets done. It's kind of there's something really in that. Forgiveness is more than just like a passive process, isn't it? It's an active one. Forgiveness involves uncovering the anger. So I think you have to acknowledge that you feel

8:28angry about it. There's something that you feel because sometimes it's quite difficult. What you don't really know what you feel, you just, you know, I definitely find it hard to recognize what I'm feeling. Deciding to feel, I think it's an active process. You're making a conscious decision that you're going to move forward here and you're going to forgive even if at the time you don't feel like forgiving. You're like, I'm going to forgive this person. The feelings will take time, but I'm making a decision to move forward. And then anything is working through it. So it's trying to understand even if they've wronged you, even if they are wrong what they've done. It's understanding their side of the story, seeing things or trying to sit from their perspective, usually helps as well, try and put yourself even, you put yourself in their shoes, even if they have done the wrong thing, what are the circumstances that led to that that behaviour. And I think it is remembering as well that ultimately, even if you feel that someone is really wronged you and they're not a nice person, whatever it might be, forgive for you, not for them maybe. And the worst case scenario is that you're actually forgiving so that you can move on with your life because when you are holding a grudge.

9:34Therapy's biggest impact doesn't show up in some dramatic breakthrough. It shows up in the smallest moments. You bite your tongue instead of escalating. You put your phone down instead of firing off that text. You say what you actually mean instead of what would hurt someone else the most. Nobody applauds those moments but they quietly change your life. That's what growing feels like and that's exactly what growth therapy is here for. Grow is therapy that works, covered by insurance. Sessions average $21 with insurance and some pay as little as $0 depending on their plan. There are no subscriptions, no long-term commitments, you just pay per session. Grow connects you with thousands of high-quality licensed therapists across the US, offering both virtual and in-person sessions, nights and weekends. You can search by what matters, like insurance, specialty, identity, or availability, and you can book a therapy session in minutes and begin in as little as two days, not the national 48-day average. See if you could pay as

10:35little as $0 for therapy in seconds at growtherapy.com slash startnow. That's growtherapy.com slash startnow. Growtherapy.com slash startnow. Availability and coverage vary by state and insurance plan. This is Litt Perez from Let's Get Dressed and one thing fashion has taught me is that the smallest details are often what makes something feel truly special. The weight of a fabric that click up a clasp or the way a beautifully tailored piece moves. Lexus approaches craftsmanship the exact same way. Their master craftsman called Takumi evaluates sensory details like the sound of a door closing, the click of a switch, and the acoustic feedback of the controls. They use human perception and intuition to create what feels right and that's engineering to be felt. Because a car that doesn't make you feel something is a car that stops short of amazing. Experience amazing at your Lexus dealer. When you're holding a grudge you are not able to move forward. You can't. You can't. When you're

11:39holding onto the poison, the resentment like Mandala said, it's like you're drinking you every day taking a sip of the poison. And this kind of plays out in real life as well because think about how well when I was researching this I was thinking about how much easier it is to let something go when you are first really hurt by something that someone's done and you feel like you know they intentionally have hurt you and they betrayed you. And then you from talking to them learn that it was just a mistake or an accident and they didn't mean anything malicious. Like how much easier that is to just drop and to move on. Then it is if you haven't had that conversation or if the person like hasn't apologized or if you haven't been able to like iron out that intent. What if you find out what have you speak to them and they turn around and say actually I hate you I wanted to hurt you I was feeling revengeful. Well yeah I think that would be so much harder to let go because it has that intent it has the breaking of the social contract and you can't find a reason why because they haven't given

12:40you a reason it's just that they wanted to know that so much harder to move on from. Well we know that forgiveness promotes well-being improves your health even harder to ask for health and we know that it helps people live longer and that's what a piece of research. Forgiveness interventions have actually been developed to support people through harmful events or interpersonal conflict. So the idea is that it helps you reduce anxiety, depression, your blood pressure, even how do you mean functioning. And you know the effects of interventions around forgiveness forms of therapy and otherwise they help to help you let go for the long term as well. And then you see this when you when you have forgiven someone you've moved past you do feel like you've moved past it. Yeah. I generally want to forgive and stuff. You know sometimes you might get a blep and thing like that was annoying what they did but it's momentary. You generally when you move past it you feel a release that you have actually moved past that experience. That's why it's an active process isn't it because you can't just like forget out of nowhere like you have to choose to like you explain like choose to understand it choose to forgive and then reflect

13:48what the position it might be for them where it might come from but it's so interesting that a grudge can literally like embed itself in your body and like be seen through like these physiological issues like you know lower blood pressure and better immune function from learning to forgive someone compared to if you hold onto that resentment like that's wild. And even in your imaging you can see that there are three areas in the brain three systems of the brain they're activated during forgiveness and these are the areas involved in empathy and perspective taking coping and reinterpreting information and making social decisions. So it makes sense as part of the brain that's kind of going like okay how do we make sense of this and how do I move forward in my life? How do I move forward with this with this person? You know forgiveness is a difficult skill to develop. I think it is one of one of the important ones I talked previously about rumination being something to tackle but if you're someone that really holds a grudge speaking for someone that does hold on to I don't hold a grudge but I hold on to everything that includes sometimes other people's behaviors but if you're able to let go it allows you space in your brain

14:55and your life for joy for happiness for things that matter. And also that yeah of course people do terrible things and I understand that so I'm not trying to trivialize it but you know life is very short. Yeah very short so if you can then do forget. But something is that we can't. Don't have to forget. Change someone's behavior. No. And we can't change. Yeah. The forgiveness also doesn't allow people back in. You can forgive someone and never speak to them again. Yes definitely. You don't have to. We can forgive someone and always know that they've done a wrong thing. You don't have to forgive us I think sometimes forgiveness is confused with a clean slate or just like saying forgive you now we're going to be best buddies again. It can be like I forgive you for that. Have a good life take care. Separate. I would do it. It would be helpful in future to like think about that all of a sat's quote and think like the next time you feel her or feel you need to forgive someone how would you react if it was nature. Although I actually would give an example where I actually like this contradict this once when I was like it was at university so

15:58didn't have much money and I and I I'd been wearing these trainers into the ground for I completely into the ground and so I went out and bought a pair of supergurs remember those. Yeah. Supergurs. A bought a pair of trainers and I felt like the coolest thing ever was my first day I had them black pair with the white souls really cool and I went to the beach took them off put my feet in the water came back and a seagull had poohed down into the shoe. Deep a deep deep poo. It's supposed to be good luck or is it any of it last but not a head? I picked them up and I put them that foolishly straight in the bin because I'll surf set. Oh no. I've gone the car barefoot and drove home and I'd never forgive that seagull. You've still got to stay on the line. Seagulls live a long time and I've never forgiven the seagull. I've never forgiven it. I didn't buy another pair of supergurs afterwards I was like I can't. Oh that's such a shame though. Seagulls the most hurt by that I would say you. Yeah with a seagull at a great time. He was relieved literally he was relieved by his experience. I was devastated. Yeah but I think what we've learned from that story is that if you

17:00had found a way to seagull as you're out there mate I ain't forgotten you. Yeah. If you'd have found a way to forgive then you probably want to feel in better about it and you could have kept with trainers because I just washed them. I never forget. I don't forget to abs. I don't forget. Okay let's sum up shall we because I've got some kind of wild myths in the in the next part. Wild ones. Yeah so it is harder to forgive people in the nature because of the intent and the breaking interest, the breakiness and implicit social contract that we have with people. And this is largely because we're programmed to find meaning and to assign cause to events which is why that intent can be so painful. But on the flip side and I think like this is a really I think this is a really helpful thing to learn. Well it was for me is that forgiveness is an active process and it actually promotes health like it can it will embed into your like well being and into your health. So if I learn how to forgive someone I'm only going to feel better in myself. Yeah absolutely as well.

18:04A great note to end on. Thank you for the question. It was a great who said in this in a question if you're watching. Yeah I think they were. Hopefully you're watching. Thank you. It was a friend of mine. It was a really okay was there a very smart friend. Yeah um my friend that I did my PhD with and he's so well read and asked all of these deep questions that usually I can't answer but I had a day to research either just be friends with Catherine to submit your questions or as we have done by people of DM their questions in or emailed at hello at figuring out pod.com. So emailing your question um whatever way that you submit them please do because it makes the podcast much more interesting than if we had no questions. So thank you. It's been a joy answering it. We'll see you in part three for myth fact and it's complicated. See you there. Hey it's Tony from Tony told me on a yana the inside fix a podcast from own a yana vanzan revisits the stories teachings and insights that made her show fix my life a

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