How to forgive someone who keeps hurting you
It's hard enough to forgive someone in the first place. We've got some specific tips or points for you on how to forgive someone who keeps hurting you.

Before moving ahead, let's define What is Forgiveness?

Forgiveness is not saying that it's okay. It's essential for spiritual growth as well. We were taught this maybe as children that when someone apologizes then we say, "It's okay." Right? It's just something that we naturally might respond to. That's not what forgiveness is. It's not saying it was okay.


What if somebody hurts you, is that okay? No, it's not okay for someone to hurt you. It's going to happen. It's part of our earthly experience. We're going to have it. But it's not okay for someone to hurt you. It's not okay that someone,

a) Abused you
b) Extorted you
c) Took advantage of you
d) Robbed you
d) Beat you up

That's not okay at all its hurting each other.
So, don't say that it is. That's not what forgiveness is all about. Forgiveness does not have mercy on someone for their wrongdoing.

Honestly, you don't have that kind of authority anyway. Are you the highest judge in all of the land? No! The courts may have the authority to pardon someone, the governor, the president may have the authority to pardon someone. God may have the authority to pardon someone but you don't.


Thus, that's not what forgiveness means. You're not forgiving them for their wrongdoing, their crime, or their sin. Forgiveness is also not allowing someone to continue to hurt you or hurting for a very hurtful pain. Notice all of these things stop us from offering forgiveness.

In fact, I think proper forgiveness implies that we'll put in some appropriate boundaries. let's find the steps to help you with forgiving someone who keeps hurting you or how to forgive someone who keeps hurting you.

1) Turn on the Thinking Part of your Brain
 
There are different parts of your brain. Parts of your brain do different things. one part of the brain is completely dedicated to protecting you and ensuring your survival. This part of the brain is on the constant lookout for threats. The threat is anything that represents a danger to you.

When someone hurts you or still hurting, that part of your brain kicks in and tells you to do one of two things.

1) Fight
2) Flight

There are different versions too like freeze.

Fight or flight is your brain's natural response to the threat. It's in order to keep you safe. That part of your brain actually shuts down the thinking part of the brain. This makes sense if you're in total danger.

The front part that does logic, reason, or problem-solving. And that part gets shut down when the fight-or-flight brain is engaged. To keep you safe from the oncoming attack. Most of the threats that we face are more psychological threats than they are actual physical threats.

But our brain handles them exactly the same way. The problem is you're going to need the thinking part of your brain to solve whatever it that's causing the problem in the first place. So, that's why our first step is to turn on the thinking part of our brain.

Advice - The quickest way, how to do this is breathing. Just breathe. Just meditate for a few minutes, for renewing the mind.

This helps to calm down the fight-or-flight part of your brain. Get the thinker engaged because we're going to need that for the other steps as well.

2) Reframe this Experience

Are you familiar with the being hurt experience? 

Reframe this experience in a way that allows you to take it less personally. Everything has two components,

a) Personal
b) An impersonal.

The personal side of getting hurt is that it's you, you got hurt. That's personal. Beyond that, it's not about you. It's usually about the person who hurts you and they're poor choice, that hurts.

Yeah, it feels personal because it is you. As we reframe this experience in a way that allows us to step back a little bit, take it less personally. It could happen to anyone who is in those circumstances. That's how we reframe it to take it less personally.
Family Boundaries
3) Set Appropriate limits

We've explained above that forgiveness is not allowing yourself to continue to be hurt.

So further step or point is to set appropriate limits that allow you to maintain some safety and some family boundaries which make sure that you don't get hurt again unnecessarily.

 A little disclaimer here,

If you're going to be involved in a relationship, you will feel hurt. It's guaranteed,  it's not a bad thing. Close relationships or companionship imply pain. However for you to structure things in such a way as to minimize the risk that you will get hurt.

Paying attention to safety, for instance, one of my friends was struggling with being hurt by her husband. Physically abused by her husband. Which is wrong. It's just not okay for someone to be abused in a relationship.


Now, it happens occasionally. Her setting appropriate limits included moving her body to a different place for several days while he resolved some issues. She physically removed herself from the home. 

This was not saying that his abuse was okay, it was important for her to maintain that love connection because they had a lot of good things going on. It was also important for her to set appropriate limits to send that message, it's not okay for you to hurt me. Part of forgiveness is setting appropriate limits and boundaries.

"How to forgive someone who hurt you

4) Take full Responsibility

Take full responsibility for how you feel. Not for the being hurt part, If someone has hurt you then probably it's a bad choice on their part that causes the hurt. How you feel now is dependent on your own thinking.

I'm not saying you're wrong about how you feel. I'm saying take responsibility for how you feel. Acknowledge your thoughts, your beliefs that caused your feelings.

It's an important step because as long as you're blaming someone else for how you feel, you are giving them far too much power in your life. They're going to do whatever they want to do. You get to control this. 

The real estate that's inside of your own skin is for you to control. Nobody else.

That's why I said to take full responsibility for how you feel, own it. If you want to feel differently, there are things that you can do. You're never wrong about how you feel. Take responsibility for it.


Advice - Try to do things that make you happy and full of energy. The ability to respond, that's going to empower you to do some pretty cool things

5) Work on Renewing or Releasing the Relationship

Renewal because it means that we take something, we transform it into something that is completely new that wasn't there before.

That implies we're going to create something new, A new relationship that looks different from the one that we had before. It might be you work together with that person to create a new relationship.

That's better than the one you had before. It might be, they're not really engaged in the process, it's up to you to create a new relationship which is better than the one before. Include the appropriate boundaries that we wrote in step or point three. This has to look different so you don't continue to be hurt.

How that looks different is up to your creative power now, Renew the relationship.

Special Advice - The other option is to release the relationship. Sometimes this is pretty easily done. If it's someone who hurts you for example. Who is a stranger to you? Do they have a need for an ongoing relationship with that person? No. Probably not. It might not even be someone that they knew before they got hurt. Those are easy to release. The ones that are harder to release are the ones where we continue to have contact with the person.

Either through a working relationship or a family connection or whatever it is. Those are a little tougher, it might take a little bit of counselling. A little bit of help. When we're working on these things inside of our own mind, inside of our own skin, it can get kind of troubling or problematic sometimes. 

To engage a coach if you need to or get a therapist or someone who can give you some feedback about how you're showing up or how you're interacting with this person or what you might be hanging on to that you didn't even see before. 

Remember what forgiveness isn't then, it's easier to take these steps that will help you to forgive someone who keeps hurting you.

Forgiveness is how it frees us up, personally. I hope it provides an idea or points that how to forgive someone who keeps hurting you must include in your lifestyle and feel free from the hurt, for relationship counselling just comment at Games in Love.