As We Forgive Part Three: Unforgiveness

Earlier, I reviewed the phenomenal book As We Forgive by Catherine Claire Larson. You can read my review here.

Catherine will spend the remaining three Mondays answering questions regarding forgiveness and reconciliation.
On page 158 you describe fear conditioning. What is that?

Most of us studied Pavlov’s experiment at some point. You’ll remember that the dogs in the experiment would hear a bell (originally a neutral stimulus) and then receive food. The food (an unconditioned stimulus) would cause the dog to salivate. Well, after enough times of repeating the experiment, just ringing the bell would be enough to cause the dog to salivate. The neutral stimulus became a conditioned stimulus.

The same thing can happen with something fearful in our lives, only depending on the severity of the shock or pain we may not need repeated conditioning. So for instance, let’s say that a father with a severe anger issue severely beat his daughter for leaving her shoes where he tripped over them. If that happened repeatedly, or if that trauma happened just once, but was severe enough, that grown daughter might find herself experiencing a physical response of fear if she’d left something out of place, and her boss or her spouse arrived home to it. You can see how someone might even develop a kind of obsessive compulsive disorder or something along those lines, given a severe enough situation in the past.

What is a trigger?

So a trigger can be anything similar to that conditioned stimulus (the bell in the Pavlov experiment example). It can be a smell, a sound, a certain look, a type of weather, anything that you associate with that fearful or traumatic situation in the past. But that once neutral stimulus has now become a conditioned stimulus.

How does the way we think about a situation help us or hurt us when we’re trying to heal from a past wound?

On the one hand, these conditioned responses can protect us from future harm. On the other hand, sometimes these conditioned responses can inhibit us in new relationships.

Understanding how fear has conditioned us can be an important part of learning to cope in new situations where we have no need for that fear from the past.

Also, if we find ourselves consumed with negative emotions from the past that keep us often preoccupied, these emotions can actually take a physical toll on us, depressing our immune system.

Define unforgiveness.

In As We Forgive, I quote Dr. Everett Worthington who defines unforgiveness as a powerful emotional cocktail composed of “delayed emotions involving resentment, bitterness, residual anger, residual fear, hatred, hostility, and stress.” (Five Steps to Forgiveness: The Art and Science of Forgiving, New York: Crown, 2001).

Why do negative emotions inhibit our ability to experience positive ones?

Emotions are experienced in a whole body fashion. Neurochemicals in the brain and hormones in the blood are working to create those whole body experiences. We find our facial expression and body positioning reflecting those emotions. When we have very similar emotions like anger, bitterness and fear, for example, the emotions are able to blend. But when we have a very dissimilar emotion, we may be able to experience it momentarily but then our body returns to the state of the predominant emotional mixture. That’s why, if unforgiveness is strong in our lives, it may inhibit us from an in-depth experience of those positive emotions. And it may also take a very physical toll on our health.