You may recall that in Forgiving the Unforgivable, Dr. David Stoops stated that when we forgive too quickly we merely are excusing the behavior. In other words, our forgiveness is incomplete.
Brian Jones begins Chapter 5 (“Myths”) of Getting Rid of the Gorilla with a quote by Dr. Stoops from his book, coauthored by Dr. James Masteller, entitled Forgiving Our Parents, Forgiving Ourselves. Dr. Stoops stresses the importance of taking enough time to completely walk through the process of forgiveness:
“Forgiveness- true forgiveness- takes time. It is a process you must not short-circuit. When you forgive too quickly, without adequately working through what has happened and how you feel about it, your forgiveness is incomplete.” The key here is that we’re “adequately working” through the process, moving forward in our healing instead of looking backward to the past and turning negative feelings in on ourselves.
