What to Do When Someone Wrongs You

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.”

– Paul Boose

Have you ever felt that someone has wronged you? I have felt this in my own life. I can recall a challenging season where I was seeking to navigate through it the best I could. Another person confronted me not about the situation, but with a list of judgments and assumptions about me. What I needed most was someone to recognize the challenge with me, seek to understand, and process through it with me. But instead, I walked away feeling misunderstood, more alone, and disvalued.

What I experienced can happen in a variety of settings in our lives from personal to professional. I have heard people in work settings express similar types of situations. Work is full of challenges, and stress can rise. But it hurts deeply when others react in their frustration in a way that disvalues us. It then leads to poorer teamwork, less effective problem solving, and decreased results.

The reality lies in that we can only control ourselves. I have seen incredible results when leaders or team members recognize their blind spots and the impact of those blind spots on others. When they apologize for it, we see the team move to new levels of potential. I have also seen individuals, who have felt disvalued, be assertive to confront another about a hurtful situation which has led to relationships healed.

However, there are also situations that don’t have clean cut happy endings. Maybe a person that is causing harm is never willing to recognize, own their behaviors, apologize, or change. It could be a hurt where you don’t feel safe to confront and feel stuck with it inside of you. Or maybe the other person has apologized but you still wrestle with the hurt.

What can you control? Again, only yourself. So, what do we do? After twenty-five years of research and thousands of studies, one of the answers is forgiveness. Now, when I say forgiveness, your immediate reaction may be to cringe. I think that this is because we are not taught fully what forgiveness is or how to do it well. Everett Worthington, Jr. in his article, Six Ways to Deal with Someone Who Wronged You, discusses the compilation of this research and also provides practical steps. I am not saying this in the end all answer, but it can be a start. He also discusses how there can be other ways to deal with injustices besides forgiveness.

Here is a high-level overview of what forgiveness can provide:

Agency

Forgiveness lets you own your power. It is not about letting the person off the hook. It is about keeping destructive states like bitterness and stress building within you. Recognizing the injustice is important. Condoning or justifying it will not lead to healing. But getting caught in a state of on-going stress can be destructive and is not helpful to you. Bitterness hurts us more than it hurts the offender. Research has found many benefits to forgiveness.

Forgiveness is also a journey, one-time, check the box task. Sometimes forgiveness comes quickly. You will know the peace. However, for some, there is the offending incident but also the on-going impact of the incident on you. This means that triggers can remind you of the incident and bring it all back up. This is where forgiveness and the peace that comes with it is a process.

Develops Our Empathy

I can think of a hurt for me that happened with a person a long time ago. We have been able to work through our relationship. Part of what helped me to do this was seeking to understand the background this person came from. They had some harm in their life that they did not deserve. It helped me to understand what had shaped their behaviors. I also was then able to see where they had changed and grown instead of holding on to a hurt that could blur fully seeing their progress. It gave me compassion and kept me grounded in reality. As I continue to be assertive in my relationship with them, I can do it from a place of compassion. It allows less stress within me and peace. It benefits me and them.

Learning to practice empathy, even in the hard situations, can help us to be better leaders. Empathy has been tied to high emotional intelligence (EQ). Recent leadership literature talks about the high benefits of leaders building EQ.

Helps Us to Set Boundaries

Forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation. Forgiveness can be a building block that leads to reconciliation, but they are not the same thing. Reconciliation should contain behavior changes that create a healthy relationship. Boundaries are what helps us define the level of closeness of a relationship. You may forgive a person and decide that for health and safety there is to be no on-going relationship at all. It becomes a good-bye. Other relationships may require boundaries that test to see if new healthy changes are being made. The boundaries can change depending on how new healthy patterns of relating are shown. Or there could be relationships where trust is fully reestablished.

There can also be work relationships where we accept that the other person is the way they are. They are not going to change. Then we control what we can by making our own plan of what it looks like to still work effectively with them but still be healthy for ourselves. I recommend processing about this plan with a safe and objective person.

Relationships are messy. There is not an exact formula but is a process. Is there anything this article has stirred within you? Do you need to apologize to someone? Do you need to forgive someone? What would this process look like for you? I highly recommend reading the article link I provided above. It can provide more details, and it also provides a link to a free evidence-based workbook to take you through a process of forgiveness.