Hi Cee :)

Excellent points. I think it’s important to clarify “forgiving” — and the physiological effects of it. Forgiving someone doesn’t necessarily involve letting the person know you’ve forgiven them. In fact, it doesn’t need to involve the other person at all.
Forgiveness, in its healthiest form, is about changing your own chemical (emotional) state, to benefit yourself, and is none of the other person’s business.

Many people see forgiving someone as a precursor to making themselves vulnerable to a repeat performance. For example, forgiving a politician… followed by voting for them again.
Or forgiving an ex… before returning to that relationship.
But, the truth is, forgiveness is an inside job, and needn’t have any effect on decisions and actions taken.

Forgiving someone means I can think of that person and feel no bad emotions. I may still choose to refrain from engaging with them, or voting for them… but my choice is now strategic, logical, and free from emotions.

The reason this is so important is:

1. All negative emotions are a level of the fight-freeze-flight emergency state.

2. As connections are made in the neocortext of the brain (thoughts), they trigger matching chemicals in the limbic system.

3. Negative thoughts trigger stress chemicals.

4. Those stress chemicals cause blood to be redirected from your organs, to your extremities (for “running away” or “fighting” — since the brain and body don’t know the difference between emotional drama and physical danger) — which means your organs aren’t getting the blood-flow they need. They also affect all systems not essential to immediate survival, including digestion and healing. In addition to that, F-F-F chemicals cause the cells of the body to switch from growth to protection mode, and cause blood to drain from the prefrontal cortex of the brain (where we do our cognitive thinking).

Considering all of this, holding onto whatever it is we can’t forgive causes detrimental physiological effects inside ourselves, including impaired cognitive thinking… and does absolutely nothing to the culprit.

So, choosing to let go and forgive is about taking care of ourselves, and no-one else’s business! ;)