If you’ve ever searched how to forgive, chances are you’ve been carrying the weight of something painful and important for a long time. Perhaps someone betrayed your trust, said something hurtful that you can’t get over, or disappointed you in a way that changed how you see them. Or perhaps the person you’re struggling to forgive is yourself. Whatever the situation, you’re probably not looking for another reminder that forgiveness is important. You’re looking for a way to experience the peace and freedom that forgiveness is supposed to bring.
Many of us have been told that forgiveness is a choice. We hear phrases like “let it go,” “move on,” or “forgive and forget.” While these ideas may be well intentioned, they often leave us feeling frustrated when they don’t seem to work. If forgiveness were simply a matter of making a decision, most of us would have done it already. The fact that we haven’t suggests there may be something more happening beneath the surface.
What if the challenge isn’t that you’re unwilling to forgive? What if something within you is still automatically reacting to the experience as though it were happening today? If that’s true, then perhaps forgiveness isn’t where the journey begins. Perhaps it begins with understanding what is still being activated within you.
Why Forgiveness Can Feel So Difficult
One of the things I’ve come to appreciate through my work with Logosynthesis® is that our reactions don’t always disappear simply because we understand them or decide to move on. This includes the thoughts that race through our mind, the emotions that seem to take over, and the physical sensations that arise in our body. We may know why someone behaved the way they did. We may even recognize that holding onto resentment isn’t serving us. Yet despite our best efforts, the same reactions return. The hurt, anger, guilt, disappointment, or sadness can feel just as real as they did the first time the event occurred.
It’s almost as though these reactions hijack our body and mind before we even realize what’s happening. In response, we often justify our reactions by focusing on what the other person did wrong. While their behaviour may indeed have been hurtful or inappropriate, our continued distress suggests there is something more that deserves our attention.
This isn’t a sign of weakness or stubbornness. Rather, it suggests that something about the experience is still activating our original stress reaction. We often assume we’re holding onto the past, but perhaps we’re actually being influenced by the memories and beliefs that continue to be triggered in the present.
That distinction is important because it shifts our attention away from trying to change the past or another person and toward understanding our own experience in the present moment.
What Is Still Being Activated?
When people ask me how to forgive, I often find myself wondering if a different question might be more helpful.
Instead of asking, “How do I forgive?” what if we asked, “What is still being activated within me, and how can I shift my reaction to it?”
That simple shift invites curiosity instead of self-judgment. Rather than criticizing ourselves for not being able to forgive or remaining stuck in unhelpful patterns, we begin exploring our reactions with openness and compassion.
Perhaps you still picture the expression on someone’s face when they spoke those hurtful words. Maybe you hear the conversation playing over and over in your mind. You might imagine what you wish you had said or replay all the different ways the situation could have unfolded. Alongside these memories may be beliefs that formed during the experience, such as, “People can’t be trusted,” “I deserve better,” or “It was my fault.”
Although the event is over, these internal experiences can continue to influence how we think, feel, and react today.
How Logosynthesis Offers a Different Perspective
One of the reasons I value Logosynthesis is that it doesn’t ask us to force forgiveness. Instead, it helps us identify and resolve the mental imagery connected to our experiences. This may include the memories we replay, the beliefs we formed, the scenes that remain vivid in our mind, and the words or conversations we continue to hear internally—all of which can trigger stress reactions in the present.
Mental imagery is one of the ways we continue to experience the past in the present. A painful memory may not simply be something we remember; it can become an experience that we continue to relive. These internal experiences influence how we react, even when the original event happened long ago.
As the mental imagery shifts, the emotional intensity and physical sensations connected to these past experiences begin to soften. People often notice that something changes naturally. Issues that once felt overwhelming begin to lose their hold. Resentment eases. Anger or sadness no longer feels as consuming. Sometimes forgiveness emerges as a result. Other times, what people experience first is a sense of peace, freedom, or acceptance.
For me, this is an important distinction. The goal isn’t necessarily forgiveness as something to be achieved. The goal is to feel more present, resourceful, and able to respond to life as it unfolds. As memories and beliefs shift—layer by layer—forgiveness often emerges subtly and gracefully.
Forgiveness Doesn’t Mean What Happened Was Okay
One of the biggest challenges with forgiveness is thinking that we need to approve of someone’s behaviour or pretend that what happened didn’t matter. In my experience, neither is true. Forgiveness doesn’t excuse harmful actions, erase responsibility, or require you to trust someone who has repeatedly broken your trust. It doesn’t mean abandoning healthy boundaries or ignoring the need for justice.
Instead, forgiveness is about changing your relationship with the experience. The memory may still exist, but it no longer has the same power to trigger distressing reactions that harm your health and relationships. The event loses its ability to control how you feel.
That is a very different kind of freedom.
My Experience
When I was introduced to Logosynthesis in 2013, I was in a busy phase of life filled with important relationships. I’ve come to appreciate that in every relationship, experiences shape how we react to one another—sometimes in helpful ways, sometimes not. We don’t need to resolve every uncomfortable interaction. However, when an experience continues to create distress, we have an opportunity to explore what is happening within us. As we do, we often gain a more compassionate understanding of ourselves and others.
One experience from those early days stands out. My mom had recently been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease. Although we had begun noticing some of the symptoms, we were still enjoying time together. One afternoon, we went out for lunch at a local restaurant. Sitting in the middle of the dining room, she made a rather loud comment about the woman at the next table being overweight. Whether the woman heard her or not, I was furious.
“How could you say that?” I thought.
I didn’t pause to consider that this might be part of the illness or that my mom may not have realized her words were inappropriate. Instead, I was immediately brought back to earlier times when she had made comments that I found hurtful or embarrassing. The irritation stayed with me long after we left the restaurant. I couldn’t get the scene out of my mind, and my thoughts kept reinforcing how insensitive her words had been.
When I got home, I decided to use the Logosynthesis Basic Procedure. I worked first with the restaurant scene itself and then with the perception of “her hurtful words”, which shifted earlier experiences that I did not specifically recall in the beginning.
Noticing What Shifts
What shifted? It’s not that I suddenly thought her behaviour was acceptable—it wasn’t. What changed was my experience. My body became calmer. My mind grew quieter. I found myself feeling greater compassion rather than anger. I also recognized that perhaps a busy restaurant was no longer the best setting for us to enjoy time together. Her comments were likely a reflection of the changes occurring because of Alzheimer’s Disease, not an intentional effort to hurt someone.
Today, that memory no longer activates me. Instead, it reminds me that awareness and compassion often become possible when we first resolve what has been activated within ourselves.
Looking back, I wonder if we’ve been asking the wrong question. Rather than asking how to forgive, perhaps we need to become curious about our automatic reactions whenever we think about the situation.
As we learn to shift the energy, forgiveness often becomes less about trying and more about noticing that something has changed. The other person may not have changed. The past certainly hasn’t changed. Yet your relationship with the experience has changed, allowing you to respond from a place of greater calm, clarity, and choice.
For me, this is one of the greatest gifts of Logosynthesis. It reminds us that lasting change doesn’t always come from trying harder or thinking differently. Sometimes it comes from resolving the memories, beliefs, and mental imagery that continue to keep us connected to stress.
If you’re struggling with how to forgive, perhaps your next step isn’t to force forgiveness. Perhaps it’s to become curious about what is still being activated within you. As those memories and beliefs gently shift, forgiveness may no longer be something you have to achieve. Instead, it can become a natural expression of the freedom you experience.
Experience What Can Shift for You
To support you in taking that next step, I’ve created a guided Logosynthesis exercise that you can experience below. As you follow the guidance, notice what happens when you gently bring your attention to what is still bothering you. You may discover that when the memories gently shift, forgiveness no longer feels like something you have to force. Instead, it becomes something that unfolds naturally.
