Something You Should Know - SYSK Choice: How Your Home Impacts You & The Forgiveness Myth

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Starting point is 00:00:31 Today on Something You Should Know, if you want someone to go on a date with you, is it more effective to call and ask or send a text? Then, the contents of your home. They say a lot about you and influence what you do. There's this very interesting Italian study actually of couples who had TVs in their bedrooms and couples who didn't. And the couples who did not have a television in their bedroom had twice as much sex as

Starting point is 00:00:57 the couples who did have TVs in their bedroom. So it's certainly something to think about. Also, what's the one big thing in your life that will make you either happy or miserable? And how do you forgive the unforgivable? Well, maybe you don't have to. The traditional model is that forgiving is the one and only way. In other words, you have to forgive or you can't move on. And what we're suggesting is that the goal is to heal.

Starting point is 00:01:20 And that forgiving is one very excellent way to heal. But many of us can't or won't forgive. All this today on Something You Should Know. Bumble knows it's hard to start conversations. Hey. No, too basic. Hi there. Still no. What about hello, handsome? Who knew you could give yourself the ick?

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Starting point is 00:02:10 Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. Hi, welcome to episode 538 of Something You Should Know. And we've barely cracked the surface of all the things you should know. And we start this episode today with me helping you get a date, if you want one. What do you think is more likely to get you a date? Making a phone call or sending an email? You probably would think that a phone call would be more personal and more appropriate. But in a study of 72 teenagers, researchers found that people who sent romantic emails were more emotionally aroused,

Starting point is 00:02:48 used stronger language, and more thoughtful language than those who left voicemails. The result was they were more likely to get a date. Voicemail messages are usually spoken off the top of your head, and there isn't a lot of thought involved. However, email messages can be written, rewritten, edited, and made to be much more impactful and persuasive. This was true for both men and women. The findings run counter to something known as media naturalness theory, which is a commonly held evolutionary standard that suggests that the further we get away from face-to-face communications, the less natural and less effective it becomes. But in an age now where electronic communication

Starting point is 00:03:33 is the norm, we may need to reconsider that. And that is something you should know. If I were to open the front door of your home and walk in, what would I see? Not so much what things would I see, but what would I perceive? What assumptions would I make about this home and the people who live here? It's an interesting question because the way your home looks is uniquely your expression. In every room of your home, what's in there and how it's arranged, everything about it is all you. You have created a feel for your home by what you put in it,

Starting point is 00:04:13 and to some degree, it reflects who you are. Behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher has taken a look into people's homes and talked with architects and designers to write the book called House Thinking, a room-by-room look at how we live. Hi, Winifred. So, why is this important? Why is the inside of my house worth thinking about and talking about? The inside of your house is a particularly important environment because it's one of the few places in your life where you have more or less absolute control. The feeling of control is arguably the most important empowering psychological gift that you can

Starting point is 00:04:56 give yourself. It's just very good for you all across the board. So control is important. Personal expression is really important. Your living room, for example, is kind of a shrine in the home where you're supposed to celebrate who you are and who your family is and what's really important for you. It's not meant to be a photo shoot for a shelter magazine, but the space that expresses your identity. So in your living room, you should weed out any elements,

Starting point is 00:05:27 like a chair that your grouchy Aunt Ida gave you or something that reminds you of your parents' divorce, and substitute things that you associate with happy times, you know, the Moroccan pillows you got on vacation or the ottoman that makes you feel like you're in the country or some artifacts that your kids made in arts class at school. It's also the most social room in the home so that you shouldn't have your furniture lined up against the walls,

Starting point is 00:05:55 as a lot of us do, as if we worshipped the television set or as if we were in a funeral parlor. You should draw your furniture into a circular arrangement towards the center of the room that says, this is a place where we want people to feel welcome and friendly and engaged with others. The entrance to your home is extremely important. When you come home from a hard day at work or school,

Starting point is 00:06:25 your home's entrance really sets the stage for the experience to come. So is the message that you're getting when you open the door is that you're entering a private haven or a dumping ground for junk mail and coats and all kinds of unsightly gear? If it is the unsightly entry, you need to remove the clutter, maybe install a rack for sorting mail so the junk mail doesn't even get into the house. And you also need to highlight your entry's appealing features. If you have like a pretty door or a nice window, or add something that sets the tone for your home, a plant, a painting. In fact, in the course of doing house thinking, we actually moved our piano into our entry hall, which did a lot of great things. It relieved the living room of being almost entirely taken up by the piano. And it also is the first thing that

Starting point is 00:07:20 people see when they come to our house. So they get a little subliminal message that, gee, here's a place where people value music and singing and having a good time. It's just a nice way to enter our home. Well, it's interesting what you say about the entryway, because I know, you know, in many homes, and I've lived in homes where the entryway is really for other people and that the people who live there don't even use it. I mean, we pull into the garage, go through the cluttered garage, up through the basement and come out into the kitchen, and that's how we enter the house, which is very different than the very elegant front entryway. And that's a really wretched experience.

Starting point is 00:08:03 And if I could wave my magic wand and fix one thing in American homes, I would get rid of all the... When I go visit my mom, she has a very pretty house with a lovely front door. But you drive into the garage, you get out of the garage, you smell all the yucky garage smells, you sort of wade through all the tools and the recycling. Then you go through an ugly metal utility door into the laundry room where there's more piles of stuff. And then you go into the kitchen. This is a really dismal way to come home that basically just reminds you of all the chores and tasks that need doing. I think, of course, it's hard. People who have a big load of groceries are not going to drive up to the front of the house

Starting point is 00:08:49 and inconvenience themselves coming in that way. But what is interesting to me is that an awful lot of architects now are recognizing this problem and recognizing the fact that we are a very car-dependent culture and coming up with what are sometimes called second entries, which are kind of nice, well-thought-out transitions between car and home, or even ways that the second entry door from the garage somehow joins you into the central hall that the front door opens into so that you do get some of that kind of grand,

Starting point is 00:09:26 a little bit of that grand experience when you come home. Well, I know for me that, you know, when I walk into the house, if the house is clean and decluttered and neat and organized, there's a very different feeling that overcomes me as opposed to the feeling I get when I walk into the house and, you know, there are backpacks on the floor and there's stuff on the counter and it's a more cluttered mess. That doesn't feel good. I mean, literally doesn't feel as good as when I walk into that nice, neat home. I think this is particularly acute in the bedroom. One of the interesting things I found when reporting for the book is that in our supposedly sex-crazed culture, we pay little or no attention to creating the right atmosphere for sex in the bedroom,

Starting point is 00:10:17 which is the place where most of us have sex. I found that no architect that I talked to, in fact, they were all amazed when I asked the question about whether clients ever say that they'd like to have a nice bedroom as sort of a private retreat for them and their partner and a nice place to make love. No one has ever asked them that. When I talk to architectural historians about the home, there's almost no references at all to sex in the bedroom other than physicians' admonitions back in the 19th century that parents of newborns should not have the baby in bed with them and that husbands of pregnant wives should sleep in a separate room. To have a sexy bedroom, that doesn't mean something that looks like a bordello or something, you know, from Vegas, but kind of a serene room that's clutter-free, that's soundproof, that's deeply comfortable.

Starting point is 00:11:12 And hopefully one of the sexiest things you can have in your bedroom is a bathroom that directly connects to it so you don't have to make a long drafty walk in the hallway with all the kids milling around in your towel. A beautiful view and a fireplace would be nice additions. The worst thing you can have in your bedroom from a psychological point of view, along with clutter, would be TVs and exercise machines. This is not the place to go on the treadmill. Your bedroom should be a private sanctuary where you get away from all that. I'm speaking with behavioral science writer

Starting point is 00:11:49 Winifred Gallagher. She is author of the book House Thinking, a room-by-room look at how we live. This is an ad for BetterHelp. Welcome to the world. Please read your personal owner's manual thoroughly. In it, you'll find simple instructions for how to interact with your fellow human beings and how to find happiness and peace of mind. Thank you, and have a nice life. Unfortunately, life doesn't come with an owner's manual. That's why there's BetterHelp Online Therapy. Connect with a credentialed therapist by phone, video, or online chat.

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Starting point is 00:13:29 So, Winifred, it's interesting what you said about the bedroom as it relates to sex, because that's what all the sleep experts I've ever interviewed or talked to say is conducive to good sleep, what you just described. You know, get the TV out, get the exercise equipment out, that the bedroom needs to be a sanctuary for sleep. Comfort, really, is the word for the bedroom. When I think of a great bedroom, I think of a place that's kind of cushiony and padded and cozy and, you know, just right.

Starting point is 00:14:00 And, in fact, for many of us, the bedroom has become sort of an extended closet that's just filled with piles of junk. So when you go in there, instead of feeling relaxed, you feel overstimulated instead. There's a very interesting Italian study, actually, of couples who had TVs in their bedrooms and couples who didn't. And the couples who did not have a television in their bedroom had twice as much sex as the couples who did have TVs in their bedroom. So it's certainly something to think about. You mentioned at the beginning that the living room should be a place where people feel welcome and sit down and be friendly and talk and all that, but it seems that the kitchen has become that place for a lot of people in a lot of homes.

Starting point is 00:14:51 Yes. The kitchen is a fascinating room. The kitchen, one of the most interesting things I found in my reporting is that the kitchen has, the status of the kitchen has directly paralleled women's status throughout history. When women had little or no status, the kitchen was a dirty, dangerous, inefficient place. One of the first things to change in women's lives and in the home as women began to acquire some power in the late 19th century and female reformers started speaking up and becoming popular heroes, kitchens started to improve. Today, many women are well-off professionals, and not coincidentally, the kitchen is now often the home's most lavish room. So it's still reflecting women's history, but in an odd turn, if you're a professional woman, married or single, and you mostly eat out or order in, do you really need this $100,000 kitchen, which may actually, as some of my friends have said, makes them feel

Starting point is 00:15:53 guilty because they actually don't cook very much. But the big kitchen has become kind of a status symbol, really, for women and for the American home, whether it's very much used or not. Renovating the kitchen is the commonest renovation in America, and it's worth thinking about whether you really want to spend that $50,000 or $100,000 on a kitchen if you don't use it that much. Well, but I think a lot of people renovate the kitchen because it improves the resale value. Yeah, and that's true. That's another very interesting development in the American home, which just relatively recently in history has been thought of as an investment,

Starting point is 00:16:35 sometimes even before a personal environment, and that's a big change. What about the bathrooms? A lot of people spend a lot of time in there. Yeah, they sure do and interestingly again, the high technology of the bathroom, now it's not at all uncommon to have doctor scales and illuminated magnifying mirrors and that kind of thing, that corresponds to a spike in psychiatric problems such as anorexia, bulimia, and body dysmorphic disorder or thinking there's something wrong with you when there isn't. For most of history, of course, very few people had the privacy or technology to do much monitoring of their appearance and their weight.

Starting point is 00:17:19 A mirror used to be something that only the very, very, very wealthy had. Most people just simply didn't know very, very much about how they looked. So if you'd actually prefer your bathroom to be a peaceful kind of sanctuary spa rather than a laboratory, you can get rid of the bathroom equipment that makes you feel unhappy. I got rid of the scale in my bathroom that tells me that I more or less always need to lose five pounds. And I haven't gained any more weight. And I feel better every morning when I go into the bathroom that I don't have to look at the scale and think about whether I should lose that five pounds. So here again, it's your home, you're in control. You can replace things

Starting point is 00:18:04 in your home that you don't like that put you in you don't like, that put you in a bad mood, with things that put you in a good mood. Like I moved a beautiful orchid plant into my bathroom, and I much prefer that to the bathroom scale. Well, it's interesting if you remember or go into older homes, there weren't so many bathrooms. There weren't that many bathrooms at all. People shared bathrooms, and so consequently, no one person had a whole lot of time to sit in there and ponder how they looked. They had to get in, get out, because the next person had to get in. Yeah, and I think everybody was healthier and happier as a result. It's interesting that the more we obsess about

Starting point is 00:18:41 our appearance and weight, the fatter we become. So I think you can't make the argument that all this bathroom technology is actually making us happier and healthier. If anything, it's making us both more self-conscious and more overweight. Yeah, and I think people just don't really think that way, that the bathroom or the number of bathrooms or the equipment in the bathrooms can have a negative effect. In fact, all those bathrooms are a good thing. Well, and what's in your bathroom, it's a status symbol.

Starting point is 00:19:14 It's not at all uncommon now for wealthy people to have gyms in their homes. I mean, you know, really full-scale gyms, like you could do a workout. And it's just interesting to see this proliferation of body monitoring technology in a culture that's just becoming less and less fit. It seems that many homes today have an office, a home office, where one or more people work part or full time out of. And that's a big change because, you know, home was where you went to get away from the office and now we've moved the office into the home. It's a huge change in the American home that I don't think has gotten nearly enough attention.

Starting point is 00:19:57 About a third of Americans, which is a lot of people, now do at least some of their work at home and many more would like to. It's a growing group. There's good news and bad news. The home office means that you have more control over your life, which is always a good thing. You decide when you want to have lunch, when you want to go for a run, how you want to do your tasks, what you want to dress, how you want to dress for your workday. So those are all good things, and you don't have amazingly good, you don't have to worry

Starting point is 00:20:26 about a commute. The bad news is that being able to work almost any time, indeed, almost all of the time, and pretty much anywhere, whether you're in your home office or in your car, is a mixed blessing at best. It used to be that people came home from work and they left the office behind and their home life was sort of enforced togetherness with their loved ones or some relaxation on your own. Now, it's not at all uncommon for people to go back to work after dinner or to be so interested,

Starting point is 00:21:07 if you're sitting around with the kids at the dinner table, if you can actually get them all at the dinner table, that everybody is wanting to bolt their meal and get upstairs and instant message with their friends. So the introduction of all of this, what had been workplace technology into the home, is a big change and something that people should consider before they decide whether it's really right for them. Another big change that people often lament, although not about the home itself, is about the neighborhood their home is in.

Starting point is 00:21:38 There isn't the sense of neighborhood that there used to be in so many parts of the country, and I suspect the world, where people just don't, you know, go to the neighborhood barbecue with their friends. Everybody kind of goes at home and shuts the door and leaves the rest of the world out. Yeah, if you talk to sociologists about this, they will immediately point out Americans' extraordinarily high rate of mobility, which means the number of times you change homes. We move a lot. So you have people switching jobs, working for a big corporation, getting transferred here, transferred there. They move into a big kind of McMansion-type home in a new subdivision that's much like the one that they had in their

Starting point is 00:22:23 last job in a different part of the country. And then in a few years, they're going to move again. So mobility is a big, big factor, and I think that's one reason why people, so many people like these big mansions, because they don't have extensions into the neighborhood. It's all, whatever you have, whatever you do, is going to be done within your own kind of family fortress. So these fortresses are becoming more and more elaborate as if to sort of make up for the fact that we don't have interactions with neighbors. Another big factor here is the car. For the first time in history, we now have, Americans have more cars than drivers. Most Americans drive to work, drive everywhere. So it's, and it's perfectly possible now to get up in the morning, leave your home, go right into your garage without going outside,

Starting point is 00:23:10 get into your car, drive to your office or the shopping center, and return at the end of the day. And you've never actually set foot in your neighborhood. So, you know, these are two very simple but very important factors that really reduce community. To have a sense of community, you just simply can't move all the time. You just don't get to know the people around you. And to have a sense of community, you really need to kind of walk around your neighborhood and bump into people. Lots of studies show that we are friends with people that we bump into. That's why so many of us have friends from work. We don't bump into people. Lots of studies show that we are friends with people that we bump into. That's why so many of us have friends from work. We don't bump into people in the neighborhood the way we used to. Which is too bad. And I wonder if that isolation plays a part in the increased hostility

Starting point is 00:23:58 and the confrontations that we see. My guest has been behavioral science writer Winifred Gallagher. The book is called House Thinking, a room-by-room look at how we live, and there is a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes. Since I host a podcast, it's pretty common for me to be asked to recommend a podcast.

Starting point is 00:24:18 And I tell people, if you like something you should know, you're going to like The Jordan Harbinger Show. Every episode is a conversation with a fascinating guest. Of course, a lot of podcasts are conversations with guests, but Jordan does it better than most. Recently, he had a fascinating conversation with a British woman who was recruited and radicalized by ISIS and went to prison for three years.

Starting point is 00:24:43 She now works to raise awareness on this issue. It's a great conversation. And he spoke with Dr. Sarah Hill about how taking birth control not only prevents pregnancy, it can influence a woman's partner preferences, career choices, and overall behavior due to the hormonal changes it causes. Apple named The Jordan Harbinger Show one of the best podcasts a few years back. And in a nutshell, the show is aimed at making you a better, more informed, critical thinker. Check out The Jordan Harbinger Show.

Starting point is 00:25:14 There's so much for you in this podcast. The Jordan Harbinger Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, everyone. Join me, Megan Rinks. And me, Melissa Demonts, for Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? Each week, we deliver four fun-filled shows. In Don't Blame Me, we tackle our listeners' dilemmas with hilariously honest advice.

Starting point is 00:25:36 Then we have But Am I Wrong?, which is for the listeners that didn't take our advice. Plus, we share our hot takes on current events. Then tune in to see you next Tuesday for our Lister poll results from But Am I Wrong? And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong? on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. At some point in your life, you have had to forgive someone,

Starting point is 00:26:12 or at least try to forgive someone, and no doubt you have asked someone else to forgive you for something you did. But what does it actually mean to forgive? Do you forgive to ease the guilt of the person who did you harm? Or do you forgive so you can feel better, so you can move on and not carry around the pain from the hurt you suffered? Forgiveness is an important and fascinating topic, but it can get pretty sticky and complicated. And here to help me uncomplicate it is Gary Eggeberg. Gary is a speaker, educator, former prison chaplain in California,

Starting point is 00:26:46 and author of the book, The Forgiveness Myth. Hey, Gary, so I think most people believe that to forgive is to let go of something. Is that a good definition of the word? Not necessarily. The trouble with the definition of letting go for forgiveness is that many people can't or won't do it. And if you can't let go of something with the definition that that's what it means to forgive, then the person is pretty much stuck. I've always thought of forgiveness as something you do for yourself, that by forgiving someone, you stop wasting time, energy, and thoughts

Starting point is 00:27:23 on something that happened to you by someone who probably couldn't care less anyway. Right, and I think that's the underlying understanding of forgiveness. The trouble with that model is it works in certain situations. We think there are times when forgiveness is absolutely the best way to heal. First and foremost, if you want to be in relationship with the person who hurt you. Secondly, if they express some sorrow and remorse for what they've done. Thirdly, if they are willing to make amends and correct their behavior and commit themselves to not doing it again. But again, as you said, if they could care less that they even hurt you, then it's a little bit hard to forgive someone who's not even being accountable.

Starting point is 00:28:03 And what we suggest is that when that's the case, that the goal should be to focus on healing. And forgiving by its nature implies that if you hurt me, Mike, that I have to somehow generate goodwill toward you or let go of what you did to hurt me, whereas if I focus on healing, I'm keeping the focus on myself and asking, you know, what do I need to heal? What do I need to move on? What do I need to move on? What do I need to move forward with my life? And I'm not focusing on you.

Starting point is 00:28:29 The trouble with trying to forgive someone else in order to set yourself free is that every time we remember how someone hurt us or we're upset with them, it can actually increase our anger. So the very attempt to forgive could either increase your anger toward the person or make you feel more depressed about the hurt because they never apologized or made amends. And this is one of the tricky things about forgiveness, because you talk about people who cannot forgive, but what's the upside of holding on to it? What's the upside of

Starting point is 00:29:01 not letting go? I don't think there's really an upside in not forgiving. I think, again, the myth is that forgiving is the only way. And I would suggest all of us know somebody who is struggling to forgive, either themselves or someone else. Probably some of your listeners, even as we speak, may have experienced a hurt in the workplace or in a primary relationship today or in the recent past.

Starting point is 00:29:23 And there's no benefit, and they're not letting go just for kicks and giggles. They're struggling to let go because there hasn't been justice or there's not accountability or there hasn't been some kind of restitution. So I don't think any of us purposely is holding on, but I think it almost goes back to our days of little kids playing in the sandbox. If someone hit us, our instinct was to hit back. And there's something that's right about that, something in our human condition that we, you know, we want some quid pro quo, or we want some fairness. And forgiveness, for many

Starting point is 00:29:55 people, seems like it's unfair. And that's the problem, makes it difficult to let go. But as you said, no one is purposely hanging on to it or, you know, letting a resentment live for years and years and years just because they want to hurt. I think it's because they don't know that there are alternatives to forgiveness. So then what do you say to someone who's holding on to resentment and won't forgive someone for years and years and years, and that person who they refuse to forgive has long since forgotten about it, has moved on, is out of their life, never gives it a second thought. What do you say to that person who just can't let go?

Starting point is 00:30:34 You know, what I would probably say is, first of all, I would listen to what they have to say, because I suspect that a lot of these people have been told all their lives, you know, you should let go, you need to let go by now. In fact, in our book, The Forgiveness Myth, we tell of a story of a woman in her 80s whose husband continues to cajole her to forgive and let go because the person that hurt her has been dead for 20 years now, but she still can't. And sometimes this automatic encouragement to forgive or let go just heightens a person's sense of inadequacy

Starting point is 00:31:06 as a human being or sense of failure that they're not living up to their religious beliefs. Obviously, they're holding on for a reason, and I would suggest the fact that it is that they never got justice or that they never were able to bring satisfactory closure with the other person. And sometimes the word forgive is so loaded, there's so many moral overtones with that, or there's so much familial and religious baggage with it, that to suggest to someone to forgive is, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:37 just make them more angry or more depressed or feeling more like a failure as a human being. But to not forgive, to not be able to take that hurt from long ago and put it in a box and put it out of the way, at least some of the time, all that does is hurt you. Yeah, I think it does. And again, what we suggest, the traditional model is that forgiving is the one and only way.

Starting point is 00:32:01 In other words, you have to forgive or you can't move on. You have to forgive or you can't let go of your bitterness. you have to forgive or you can't move on. You have to forgive or you can't let go of your bitterness. You have to forgive or you can't be happy again. And what we're suggesting is that the goal is to heal and that forgiving is one very excellent way to heal in certain situations when there are certain criteria present that many of us can't or won't forgive, again, when there's not a relational investment, when the other person isn't accountable.

Starting point is 00:32:30 So we'd really like to focus on healing. And we offer 25 alternative phrases to forgiveness in our book, The Forgiveness Myth. And most of these are phrases that most people have not heard before, such as, instead of, if you were hurt and you came to me and I just can't let go of this, instead of me telling you the traditional mantra, well, why don't you just forgive, why don't you just let go, which you probably already know that you should be doing, if I say to you instead, you know, why don't you consider making a fresh start right where you are?

Starting point is 00:32:59 Or why don't you consider keeping the focus on yourself and your needs? There's no shame or anything in that. That allows you to move forward, to make some choices today. And as you keep the focus on yourself and move forward, then hopefully over time the resentment is going to not come to mind as often. It's not going to stay in your mind for as long a period of time when it does come to mind. We use a metaphor in the forgiveness myth of aspirin.

Starting point is 00:33:26 You know, aspirin is great for a headache, but it doesn't work if you have asthma or if you're suffering from depression. And yet the only suggestion from every type of hurt, from the most minor to the most heinous, is that you have to forgive. And healing is a different word. You know, what if all the different scriptures and the different world religions said, I invite you to heal rather than forgive. I think that's a little more open-ended.

Starting point is 00:33:51 And then it allows people to forgive when they can forgive, and when they can't or won't forgive, to choose it differently. You're absolutely right. To be resentful of someone who's been dead for 20 years is not a good use of energy. And our whole focus is to help people to reclaim their personal power, to stop dwelling upon this person or this incident that you can't change, so that you can make a contribution and be happy again. But when people say they can't forgive, I mean, that's a bit of a misnomer.

Starting point is 00:34:20 It's really that they choose not to forgive and they may have very good reasons and very valid reasons for choosing not to forgive but it is a choice right that's a that's a very fine line because you know what what uh makes it difficult is we all hear stories of uh for instance the mother of a son who was murdered who forgives the murderers in the courtroom and then the rest of us we're sitting there feeling like you know we're about two inches tall because we can't forgive our office worker who, you know, does something to hurt us that's so much more minor. But there are, you know, to expect, you know, victims of sexual abuse or betrayal in marriage or whatever who've been abused, mistreated, treated very unfairly and hurtfully to forgive, I think there is an element of can't-ness to it.

Starting point is 00:35:08 In fact, brain researchers have showed that in our brain we have the frontal lobe, which is where we make our choices, intellectual choices, but that a lot of hurts trigger something in the amygdala, which is in the mid-portion range of the brain. And I'm not an expert on this, but sometimes the trauma that we experience gets caught up in the amygdala, which is really inaccessible by our frontal lobe. So there really is a cant element to it for many people. Good answer, by the way. You hit my question right out of the park. And you're right, I think. I mean, it's hard for me to understand the feelings of that woman in the courtroom

Starting point is 00:35:47 who forgives the killer of her child. And who knows what even happens then. I mean, she might say that in a moment of emotional catharsis and truly mean it, and then three months later she's finding herself filled with hatred again. And that's one of the traps of being stuck with forgiveness is we feel like we should complete it at some point in time, whether it's five minutes or 50 years after you've hurt me. And then what causes a lot of confusion for people is when the memory comes back

Starting point is 00:36:15 and they do find themselves feeling resentful or angry or like they'd like to get some kind of vengeance, then they question themselves and say, well, gee, I thought I had forgiven so-and-so. I really did my best, and now I'm feeling these painful thoughts and feelings again. I must have failed, or I'm not good at forgiving what's wrong with me. And we suggest that if you were to divide your brain in half, and one half, of course, don't do this, take us literally here, but as a metaphor, if one half of your brain consisted of your pleasant memories and one half of your brain consisted of your painful memories never does a painful memory move into the pleasant category for instance you just don't look back on something

Starting point is 00:36:55 that was hurtful and say uh that was good or or i feel neutral about that which is what i think people think are hoping when they forgive that they will either feel positive about it or not have any emotion. And a painful event that was hurtful 20 years ago, when you recall it now, is still painful. And it's normal to feel some anger and resentment. And what the goal is then is when the memory does come back, to say, okay, I realize that I can't forgive this or I'm going to choose to re-forgive this again, or I'm going to choose one of the healthy alternatives and quickly regain my focus and power so that I can live my life today rather than get caught up for too long in that painful memory.

Starting point is 00:37:36 Well, you're so right. And, you know, I never really thought about this before, but it is kind of the unwritten rule that when you forgive someone, you know, you can't take it back. You can't unforgive them because you've forgiven them. That's right. And one of the reasons many people resist forgiving, especially more serious hurts, is that, and I've had abuse victims tell me this, that if they say I were to forgive you, they're somehow saying that what you did, that I'm now okay with what you did to me. And that's very difficult admission, and that seems to come with, be one of the connotations of forgiveness. There's all sorts of hidden messages and messages in our heart, or beliefs in our heart, that we associate with forgiveness that we just don't have when we use a word like heal.

Starting point is 00:38:20 You know, if I say, well, I'm going to try to heal from how you hurt me, that doesn't in any way suggest that I'm communicating to you that I'm somehow now okay with what you did or I've made peace with the past. It just means I'm going to reclaim my personal power and try to move forward and not let this incident be the last chapter in my life. But the one thing I want to get clearer on that you said is that if you can't forgive or you won't forgive, you should focus on healing. But how do you heal when you've got this big open wound that you won't or can't close? Well, the purpose of healing is to begin to close that, to close that to whatever extent is possible. In fact, that's one of the alternative phrases we use in the forgiveness myth, is to bring closure to this chapter of my life.

Starting point is 00:39:09 There's a couple of things you need to do in order to heal, whether you're choosing the healing path of forgiveness or the healing path of making a fresh start or whatever it might be. And one is you do need to address the hurt. There's no magic pill to avoid addressing the hurt. And you can address the hurt with a therapist, in a support group, through your minister or rabbi, through having coffee with a couple of friends, journaling, what have you. But you do need to take a look at the hurt and talk about it and process it and possibly get professional help.

Starting point is 00:39:43 At the same time, a person needs to move forward with their life. So if I'm reeling from a hurt that I experienced last month and I'm still processing it, say, with my minister, I can still make good choices for myself, such as going to work every day, going for a walk, being involved with my kids' lives, and moving forward even though the hurt isn't completely healed. So it's those two combinations of addressing the hurt and then reclaiming your personal power to move forward.

Starting point is 00:40:12 You know, if a person is really reeling today, even just going for a walk around the block, whatever tangible little effort they can make to take care of themselves kind of shows, first of all, that they can move forward and that if they do that more and more often, they will reclaim their strength. Just like after a physical injury, you know, if you had knee surgery, you can't revert to your old activities immediately. You have to slowly build up your strength. And we would suggest that's true for emotional hurts, too. Can you give me a couple of those phrases, the alternatives to I forgive you?

Starting point is 00:40:45 You said there were 25 of them. Can you recite a few? Sure. Reclaiming your power of choice, cutting your losses, freeing myself from the person who hurt me and for a new beginning in life, affirming that I can move on with some pain. Again, these phrases are not curative or magical in and of themselves, but what they allow you to do is to move away from whatever hurtful connotations you have with forgiveness, or if you can't or won't forgive, first of all, if you don't want to forgive, you're not going to do it. The days I don't want to exercise, I find myself not exercising.

Starting point is 00:41:24 If I can't do something, then I'm certainly not going to be very inspired to do it. And so we believe these other phrases all keep the focus on yourself. Again, where forgiving always implies that I'm directing some energy, some focus on the person who hurt me, and that's why these alternative phrases can be so helpful. And it just provides you with a foundation, a different framework that says, hey, my healing doesn't have to come from focusing on this other person, generating goodwill or forgiveness toward him or her. My healing can come as I choose to make a fresh start, as I reclaim my power of choice.

Starting point is 00:42:01 And then the resentments, the anger, and those kinds of feelings will dissipate naturally, because you have reclaimed your power, and you've discovered that, hey, I can move on without necessarily forgiving. Well, for a topic that affects truly everyone, whether we are the forgiver, or the forgiven, or the not forgiven, this is really important stuff, so I appreciate this. Gary Eggeberg has been my guest, speaker, educator, former prison chaplain, and author of the book, The Forgiveness Myth. And you will find a link to that book at Amazon in the show notes.

Starting point is 00:42:38 Thank you, Gary. If you want to be truly happy, it seems you need one important thing. Psychologist Arthur Aaron has been studying love and relationships for a few decades now, and he believes he has uncovered the single biggest predictor of human happiness. And it is the quality of a person's relationships. That's it. If you have lousy relationships, particularly your love relationship, it affects the other aspects of your life.

Starting point is 00:43:10 And the opposite is true. But happiness and happy relationships are something of a two-way street. Could it be that happy relationships are the cause of happiness, or are happy people just more likely to form happy relationships? Well, it turns out the research shows that relationship satisfaction predicted changes in overall life satisfaction more than the other way around. In any case, there's little doubt that our relationships are important and they have the power to shape our mood and feelings about the world in general.

Starting point is 00:43:44 And that is something you should know. If you heard a sponsor's message in this episode of the podcast that interests you, remember their links and promo codes and everything you need to contact them and check them out. It's all in the show notes. I'm Micah Ruthers. Thanks for listening today to Something You Should Know. Welcome to the small town of Chinook, where faith runs deep and secrets run deeper. In this new thriller, religion and crime collide when a gruesome murder rocks the isolated Montana community. Everyone is quick to point their

Starting point is 00:44:16 fingers at a drug-addicted teenager, but local deputy Ruth Vogel isn't convinced. She suspects connections to a powerful religious group. Enter federal agent V.B. Loro, who has been investigating a local church for possible criminal activity. The pair form an unlikely partnership to catch the killer, unearthing secrets that leave Ruth torn between her duty to the law,

Starting point is 00:44:38 her religious convictions, and her very own family. But something more sinister than murder is afoot, and someone is watching Ruth. Chinook. Starring Kelly Marie Tran and Sanaa Lathan. Listen to Chinook wherever you get your podcasts. Contained herein are the heresies of Rudolph Buntwine, erstwhile monk turned traveling medical investigator. Join me as I study the secrets of the divine plagues

Starting point is 00:45:11 and uncover the blasphemous truth that ours is not a loving God and we are not its favored children. The Heresies of Redolph Buntwine, wherever podcasts are available.

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