Forgive For Good Center For Forgiveness Education

The Forgive For Good Center For Forgiveness Education offers training, certification, and mentoring on Forgiveness. It is a proven prescription for health and happiness and is based on the scientific research of Dr. Fred Luskin who authored two best sellers "Forgive For Good," and "Forgive For Love."

The trainings use a cognitive/behavioral and systemic approach for focused solutions. It covers steps for "positive refocusing" through understanding mindful use of narrative and guided imagery, reversing grievance formation, dealing with resistance, achieving gratitude, and professional/personal applications of forgiveness.

Offerings:

• Presentations to organizations, business and educational settings.
• Certification as a Forgiveness Trainer
• Training for government, schools, social and law enforcement agencies
• Counseling
• Consulting and mentoring

Staff:

Dr. Fred Luskin, Director, is an author and senior consultant with the Health Promotion Project at Stanford University. He developed the Forgive For Good methodology and has been featured on major media outlets, journals and PBS (www.learningtoforgive.com).

Jed Rosen, M.S.W., L.C.S.W., Clinical Director, has been practicing and supervising, family, marital, and individual and group psychotherapy for over twenty five years. He is an instructor for continuing education at The Graduate School of Social Work for Rutgers University, Bryn Mawr University and Adelphi University (www.rosensaul.com/).

Dr. Ken Silvestri, Educational Director, has published over fifty articles and conducted numerous workshops on family therapy, homeopathy, and alternative education and communication skills. He has been in practice for thirty years and is an AAMFT clinical member, approved supervisor and an active black belt student of Aikido (www.drkennethsilvestri.com).

Nine Steps To Forgiveness

From Dr. Fred Luskin's Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription For Health and Happiness (HarperSanFrancisco, 2002)

1. Know exactly how you feel about what happened, and be able to articulate what about the situation is not okay. Then tell a couple of trusted people about your experience.
2. Make a commitment to yourself to do what you have to do to feel better. Forgiveness is for you and not for anyone else. No one else even has to know about your decision.
3. Understand your goal. Forgiveness does not necessarily mean reconciling with the person who upset you or condoning their action. What you are after is peace. Forgiveness can be defined as the peace and understanding that come from blaming less that which has hurt you, taking the experience less personally, and changing your grievance story.
4. Get the right perspective on what is happening. Recognize that your primary distress is coming from the hurt feelings, thoughts, and physical upset you are suffering now, not what offended you or hurt you two minutes or even ten years ago.
5. At the moment you feel upset, practice the Positive Emotion Refocusing Technique (PERT) to soothe your body's flight or fight response.
6. Give up expecting things from other people, or life, that they do not choose to give you. Recognize the unenforceable rules you have for your health or how you or other people must behave. Remind yourself that you can hope for health, love, friendship, and prosperity and work hard to get them. However, you will suffer if you demand that these things occur when you do not have the power to make them happen.
7. Put your energy into looking for another way to get your positive goals met than through the experience that has hurt you. In other words, find your positive intention. Instead of mentally replaying your hurt, seek out new ways to get what you want.
8. Remember that a life well lived is your best revenge. Instead of focusing on your wounded feelings, and thereby giving the person who hurt you power over you, learn to look for the love, beauty, and kindness around you.
9. Amend your grievance story to remind yourself of the heroic choice to forgive.

Training Program In The Practice Of Interpersonal Forgiveness

This forgiveness workshop is designed to teach participants the basics of the training methods used in the Stanford Forgiveness Projects. This is done through the integration of the principles of cognitive therapy with mindfulness and guided imagery practices designed to facilitate positive emotion. The course consists of lecture, discussion and guided practice. The overarching principle of the workshop is the importance of focused attention in the creation of both positive and negative emotional states. In addition, relevant research on the effect of emotional status on physical health is reviewed and the importance of the mind/body link for creating forgiveness is elucidated.

Forgiveness is a practice that has emerged from the teachings of all the major religious traditions of the world. These often esoteric doctrines claim that forgiveness can help heal relationships, soothe painful emotions, and improve self esteem. The importance of practicing forgiveness has been extolled for centuries, but only in the past fifteen years has research begun to demonstrate that forgiveness has a role in the creation and promotion of health. Specifically, research conducted by Dr. Luskin has shown that the practice of forgiveness can lead to increased hope, greater self efficacy, increased appreciation of the spiritual aspects of life as well as reduced stress, hurt and anger.

Course Syllabus: Forgive For Good

• A review of the effect of unmanaged anger and hurt on psychosocial and physical health.
• A review of the effect of positive emotions on psychosocial and physical health.
• Discussion of the importance of present-centered acceptance of life as it is.
• Teaching of the three core components in creating an interpersonal grievance.
• Teaching how gratitude and forgiveness emerge from reversing the grievance process.
• Creating how an understanding of narrative and story can be used as an assessment of self-healing.
• Teaching of the importance of choices in emotional well being and contrasting this with bitterness and holding onto grievances from the past.
• Description of how grievances hinder our present ability to make appropriate life choices.
• Teach the 9 steps of forgiveness.
• Teach methods of cognitive disputation of unenforceable rules.
• Teach appropriate stress management tools to reduce reactivity.
• Application of forgiveness methodology for professionals to utilize with their clients.
• Learn about positive intention and goal setting.

Educational Goals

1. Gain a practical understanding of the core components of grievance and forgiveness related to both self and others for personal and professional use.
2. Learn simple techniques for facilitating self change and emerge with an enhanced repertoire of forgiveness skills to help others.
3. Have an increased understanding of the mind/body connection and how it relates to emotional and physical well being.
4. Learn the nine steps of forgiveness and to teach the forgiveness methodology.