{"id":540,"date":"2010-04-13T23:10:16","date_gmt":"2010-04-14T03:10:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/?p=540"},"modified":"2010-04-13T23:10:16","modified_gmt":"2010-04-14T03:10:16","slug":"making-peace-with-no-forgiveness-and-mental-health","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/2010\/04\/making-peace-with-no-forgiveness-and-mental-health\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Peace With "No" — Forgiveness and Mental Health"},"content":{"rendered":"

Frederic Luskin<\/a>, Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects, reminded a packed house at the ABA Dispute Resolution meeting in San Francisco that a 2-yr old who is told “no” screams and yells when she doesn’t get what she wants, but then eventually stops and moves on to the next thing.\u00a0 By contrast, a 40-year old who doesn’t get what he wants can persist in expressing his anger and\u00a0indignation for many, many years; in some cases, he will never stop.\u00a0 In this lies the attraction, for some,\u00a0of the American civil judicial system.<\/p>\n

Dispute resolution professionals often encounter\u00a0people\u00a0whose wound has morphed into an attribute of their very life.\u00a0 Who they are is fundamentally tied with the claim.\u00a0 They are no longer wife or butcher or brother or son; they are The One Who Was Wrongly Dealt With<\/strong>.\u00a0 Dr. Luskin asked us whether we might consider not just helping that person to\u00a0“resolve”\u00a0the dispute, but facilitating the removal of the conflict as a central mechanism of\u00a0the relationship.\u00a0 Might we help to guide wounded people past their wound?<\/p>\n

Dr. Luskin is a psychologist, and\u00a0the basis for his conviction of the utility of forgiveness is not religious but, rather, empirical and theraputic.\u00a0 He has conducted controlled studies that measured the outcome that people given as few as five hours of forgiveness training were happier than those who had not received the training.\u00a0 He terms the process of “making peace with ‘no’,”\u00a0of accepting that you have been and will henceforth always be unfairly denied something you want and deserve, as “forgiveness.”<\/p>\n

It will surprise no one who knows me that each year, around Pesach\/Easter, I set aside other matters for an afternoon and either listen to, watch or attend a performance of Wagner’s Parsifal<\/em>.\u00a0 The core of that work is the power upon a community of an insight called “mitleid” — literally, “with-feel.”\u00a0\u00a0The word is usually translated as\u00a0“compassion” or “pity.”\u00a0 But in the play it\u00a0refers to\u00a0a profound type of empathy — an emotion by which\u00a0Parsifal doesn’t merely pity someone who is wounded, but actually feels that person’s wound himself.\u00a0 The quotation is “Durch Mitleid, wissend.<\/em>”\u00a0 “Through with-feel, wisdom.”\u00a0 (The musical setting is suitably ethereal and other-worldly; see below starting at 8:40)<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

Dr. Luskin speaks similarly of the benefits to the individual and the community of forgiveness.\u00a0 It directly heals both the forgiven\u00a0and the person doing the forgiving.\u00a0 It is the product of a hurt person’s deciding that she doesn’t want to be crippled by bitterness for the rest of her life, and acknowledging that the sun rises every day “on the just as well as the unjust.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

It is not condoning bad acts — if the acts were condoned then there would be nothing to forgive.\u00a0 It is not a determination that the bad act wasn’t bad — the child is still dead, the opportunity is gone forever.\u00a0 But it is a decision no longer to allow that bad act to disrupt one’s own life; to invite emotional placidity and kindness into one’s daily expectations.\u00a0 It is an acknowledgement that having been wounded is not a reason to wound others.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Edward Burne-Jones, “The Tree of Forgiveness”<\/em><\/p>\n

How can dispute professionals take advantage of these insights?\u00a0 Dr. Luskin warns us not to be scolds.\u00a0 But being ourselves an exemplar in the resolution process is a good first step. \u00a0“Too little attention,” said Dr. Luskin, “is paid to the power of goodness to influence people.”\u00a0 The message we might\u00a0communicate is not “I think you should forgive and move on” but rather “What might it mean to picture yourself down the road without bitterness and anger?\u00a0 How might you get there?”<\/p>\n

He urges us to hold people who are trapped and stuck with a measure of compassion, kindness,\u00a0and even mercy.\u00a0 He urges us to use simple language to offer alternatives: to practice gentler, less angry, discussions and to invite some distance between the bad actor and the wounded person’s future hopes.<\/p>\n

People become wedded to their “grievance story,” says Dr. Luskin.\u00a0 (How many of us can attest to the truth of that?)\u00a0 He urges us to watch for opportunities to encourage disputants to alter that deeply-rutted tale.<\/p>\n

I add that, “touchy-feely” though they may seem, I am more willing to accept any of\u00a0Dr. Luskin’s\u00a0propositions than the proposal that they do not apply to business disputes.\u00a0 Have any of us ever seen a business conflict that was not attributable to, and whose resolution did not hinge upon, people?<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Director of the Stanford Forgiveness Projects offered an insight at the recent meeting of the ABA Dispute Resolution Section into the role that forgiveness can play in the process of getting disputes not just resolved, but behind us. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,35,32],"tags":[8,12],"class_list":["post-540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conflict-resolution","category-ethics","category-religion","tag-adr","tag-culture"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.businessconflictmanagement.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}