Jun 29, 2023 | Mental Health Ministry, Stronger Together Support Group
Hello friends,
Our conversation this week is about something we all can relate to: being wronged by someone. More specifically, what we do after we’ve been wronged. You probably know where this is going…forgiveness.
We’ve talked about forgiveness before in Stronger Together, but this week we’re going to focus on a particular science-backed strategy called the “REACH” method, which has been shown to make forgiveness a little easier to implement and live with. Here’s a highlight from the linked article:
—
THE REACH FORGIVENESS METHOD
Think about the hardest thing you ever successfully forgave. Remind yourself that you CAN forgive.Rehearse the benefits to yourself of forgiving, and know that forgiveness might help your relationship, if it is safe, prudent, and possible to reconcile.
Work through the five steps to REACH emotional forgiveness.
-
- R = Recall the hurt as objectively as you can.
- E = Empathize with the one who hurt you. Try, if possible, to see things from their viewpoint. If you can’t, use sympathy, compassion, or even love (particularly in romantic relationships) to replace the negative unforgiving emotions.
- A = Altruistic gift of forgiveness. No one deserves forgiveness. Forgiveness is your choice. If you choose to give it, it is an altruistic gift.
- C = Commit to the emotional forgiveness you experience.
- H = Hold on to forgiveness when you doubt that you’ve really forgiven.
Seek to make a decision to forgive, which is deciding not to pay the person back but to treat the person as a valuable and valued person. This is about your intention to treat the person differently.
Try to solidify your forgiveness by applying the REACH steps and making a decision to forgive in several other relationships that are not characterized by full forgiveness.
—
Our warm-up question for this week:
What’s an instrument you wish you could play?
See you soon,
Alex
Jun 1, 2023 | Mental Health Ministry, Stronger Together Support Group
Hello friends,
The first line of our shared article for this week sums up the oft-experienced frustration perfectly:
One of the hardest things for me in the aftermath of a conflict is getting out of my head and accepting that what happened, happened.
Why can’t we just summon up a little bit of Elsa magic and “let it go”? Why do we keep playing and replaying the situation in our minds, analyzing every word we said or should have said, even though there’s nothing to do about any of it?
In this week’s discussion we’ll talk through three practical strategies to reduce these “negative ruminations.” We’ll also watch a very brief video on ways to set better boundaries, which as you’ll see in the article is central to reducing the number of times we find ourselves in the types of conflict that lead to negative ruminations
Our warm-up question for this week:
Which Disney princesses are your most and least favorite? Yes, you read that right.
See you soon,
Alex
Apr 20, 2023 | Mental Health Ministry, Stronger Together Support Group
Hello friends,
We all know what it feels like to hang on to objects longer than we should. Maybe the guest room in our house has become a storage unit instead of a place for guests to stay, or maybe we have a stack of boxes in the basement that haven’t been opened in over a decade. Why do we decide to keep some things and not others, and how do we learn to part with things we no longer need or can sustain?
In this week’s conversation we’ll dive into this topic by listening to
an episode of a VeryWellMind podcast (you can also read the transcript via the link). We’ll explore what makes an item sentimental, what it says about us, and how we can more easily make choices to keep or let go of sentimental items over time.
Our warm-up question for this week:
Tell us about an item with little or no monetary value, but that you value deeply, that you’ve held onto for a really long time.
