HN Books @HNBooksMonth

I always recommend The Grief Recovery Handbook. Disclaimer: the authors are Christian and that informs a bit of the book, but I would recommend you at least check it out and flip through it.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0061686077/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_glt_...

My therapist has recently recommend "The Grief Recovery Handbook"[1] to me to deal with a breech of trust in my life. I never thought of that as "grief" but as we went through it, it's really put a new perspective on things.

The book also talks about the importance of forgiveness and explains it this way:

"Since you cannot go back in time to change the past, forgiveness is about giving up the hope of a different or better yesterday. It relates to forgiving actions that were taken, that gave you the feelings of loss of control over your happiness. It’s about acknowledging those things that another did or said that caused pain and making the decision that you are not going to let that hurt or control you anymore.

Forgiveness can be very empowering. It can give you the chance to be free of another person’s emotional control. It has nothing to do with the other person. As was said before, it is something that is for you and you alone."

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Grief-Recovery-Handbook-Anniversary-E...

⬐ ta17711771

This is controversial, but on topic: name the crime (e.g. my partner cheated on me, etc).

Don't be ashamed. You're the victim, and you're supported, mate.

⬐ barrkel

I personally frame it as taking responsibility for your feelings - recognizing that you have in large measure conscious choice over the way you feel and can will it differently - and I think of it in opposition to what I perceive as a modern vogue for playing the victim, or worse, stacking up victimhood cards like they are spell multipliers and using them in a social competition to prove how much bigger of a victim you are than other people. But victimhood, as I see it, surrenders your well-being to forces external to you.

That all sounds pretty political, but everything social turns political above a certain scale.

Forgiveness is underrated, for sure. Take control over your self.

⬐ throwanem

This sounds like a recipe for redirecting the grudge toward some other external target, instead of letting it go. Not to say you shouldn't do what works for you, as long as you don't hurt anyone else in the doing of it - but to find it as you've put it here gives it the sense of general advice and recommendation, and in that sense it seems very much wanting.

⬐ nitrogen

This sounds like a recipe for redirecting the grudge toward some other external target

I think that's antithetical to the term forgiveness, so I suspect that's not intended by the parent comment(s). In fact, the exact opposite is how I read their comment, that is that you take your grudges toward external targets and let them go.

⬐ throwanem

I don't know. Framing it in terms of opposition to a perceived political trend doesn't read that way to me, and my own relevant experience includes nothing to suggest that framing forgiveness in any way related to any kind of political anything would be a useful way of dealing with the ramifications of past emotional trauma.

Perhaps the original commenter will come along and clarify.

⬐ barrkel

I'm not trying to frame it as oppositional to a political trend, but rather that it's unfashionable an angle to take, to not take up the mantle of victimhood. I was commenting on the relative location of my position because I'm aware of its unfashionability as I write.

If anything, I was being peremptorily defensive, not redirecting to some other external target.

⬐ throwanem

That's fair, but I'm still very unclear on how the one relates to the other.

How is this idea, "to not take up the mantle of victimhood," meant to be useful in, for example, forgiving my grandfather for what he did that one afternoon when I was still a small boy, and everyone else was out on a day trip somewhere? - that one afternoon much of which I'm totally unable to remember, but still, thirty years on, makes me queasy to think about.

To be sure, what happened that afternoon is between me and my grandfather and not likely ever to be reconciled in detail, especially seeing how he died a couple of decades ago. But the facts of the situation are fairly obvious, especially since I'm not the only one in my family with a story like that. So I think it makes a pretty good worked example, or the basis for one at least.

If nothing else, I can attest that dealing with the emotional ramifications of having an afternoon like that in one's past is a long process - I've been working at it for some years now, and even that's just since I realized I needed to start trying. So what I'm asking is, what is "not [taking] up the mantle of victimhood" meant to have to do with a process like that? In what way is it meant to make that easier, or even make that possible?

I mean, this is a fair question, right? Maybe I've misunderstood somewhere, but as far as I can tell you've framed it as a general prescription, so it seems reasonable to think it should be applicable here. But I have to admit that I'm not seeing how.

⬐ barrkel

Not forgiving someone means holding on to a grievance and adopting the identity of a victim. That's mostly what I mean. But there's more.

There's an emotional comfort that lies in wallowing in grievance, and a variety of social rewards from sharing it with others - attention, commiseration, and a kind of cathartic semi-religious feeling of confession from the recital, which takes on the form of a kind of ritual if you've done it enough times; you need to set it up right so that the payoff delivers.

Of course I don't mean to deny your lived experience, and when I say "you" above, I don't mean you specifically. I'm simply aware, and wary of, the psychological traps that lie down similar roads. I especially don't want to let people who've hurt me in the past to get to define my identity or mental or emotional state; or I simply become a fragment of a mirror of their life, and not my own.

⬐ Godel_unicode

Forgiveness can be succinctly summed up as putting something behind you by deciding that it's over and you're moving on. I think the key phrase you perhaps missed in GPs comment is:

"...that you have in large measure conscious choice over the way you feel and can will it differently"

They then contrast this with gathering victimhood cards (my favorite example of this is the scene from Scrubs where Turk and Elliot are arguing over whether black doctors or women doctors have it harder, then both agree that their black woman colleague has it worst of all), which I think you would agree is the opposite of forgiveness.

I'm not sure I agree with their tone about victimhood cards, as another way to phrase that would be that some people have traumas they haven't fully processed. Sounds different when cast in that light.