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01.01.BG.T01-PRR — Pre-Reading Reflection: Unforgiveness and Emotional Freedom

Purpose
This tool provides an opportunity to reflect on your present understanding of forgiveness, your responses to people who have hurt or offended you and the extent to which past offences may still be affecting your emotional freedom. There are no right or wrong answers. Respond as honestly as possible so that you have a clear starting point from which to consider your growth after reading the Guide.

Part A: My Present Understanding of Forgiveness

1. What does it mean to you to forgive a person who has genuinely hurt or wronged you?

2. What do you presently believe forgiveness requires from the person who has been offended?

3. Are there offences that you presently consider extremely difficult, or perhaps impossible, to forgive?

A
B
C

4. Do you believe it is possible to forgive a person who has not apologised or acknowledged the wrong that was done?

A
B
C

Part B: Looking at My Own Experiences of Hurt

5. Think of a significant offence or hurt that you have experienced. Without giving details you prefer to keep private, what impact did that experience have on you?

6. How do you presently feel when you remember the person involved or what happened?

7. Are there people whose names, presence, success or mention still stir up anger, resentment, bitterness, pain or other difficult emotions in you?

A
B
C

8. Are there people whom you deliberately avoid because of what they did to you?

A
B

Part C: How Past Offences May Be Affecting My Present Life

9. Have you ever found yourself repeatedly thinking or talking about what a particular person did to you?

A
B
C
D

10. Have past offences ever affected the way you relate to people who were not responsible for hurting you?

A
B
C

11. Have you ever made an important decision while you were angry, bitter or deeply hurt by another person?

A
B
C

12. In what ways, if any, have unresolved hurts affected your happiness, relationships, work, health, goals or ability to move forward?

Part D: When I Am the Offender

13. When you realise that you have hurt or offended another person, how do you normally respond?

14. How easy or difficult is it for you to apologise without defending yourself, making excuses or shifting some of the blame?

A
B
C
D

15. Have you ever expected another person to move on from something you did while doing little to make reconciliation easier for that person? What does your answer reveal?

Part E: My Starting Point

16. Which statement best describes where you are at present?

A
B
C
D
E

17. What would you particularly like to understand about unforgiveness and forgiveness as you read this Guide?

18. If reading this Guide were to bring about one significant change in the way you deal with offences and offenders, what would you want that change to be?