I’m Andrea Giles and you’re listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast,
episode number 198, When Forgiving Doesn’t Mean Forgetting.

Hello and welcome to the Heal from Infidelity podcast where courageous
women learn not only to heal from their spouse’s betrayal, but to become
the boldest, truest, most decisive and confident versions of themselves
ever. If you know there’s more for you than the life you’re currently
living but don’t quite know how to get there, you are in the right place.
Stick around to learn how to create a life that will knock your own socks
off. Is it possible? It is, and I’m here to show you how I’m your host,
Andrea Giles. Are you ready? Let’s dive in.

(00:49):

Hello, hello. Welcome back to another episode. So delighted as always to be
here with you today. I’ve got a great episode to cover today, all about
forgiveness and the concept of forgiving and forgetting. Before I dive into
that, I’ve got some important things to share with you. First of all, if
you have not gone over and checked out my heel on the Go channel, it’s over
in Telegram. The link will be here in the show notes. You can find it down
in the show notes. It is an audio experience with me where I drop right
around two audios a week. I try to stick to at least two a week, and they
are deeper. We go on deeper than I do here on the podcast. I talked to both
the person who did the betraying as well as the one who was betrayed.
There’s content for both people.

(01:36):

There it is. Short little snippets of trainings of things that I feel
compelled to talk about that day. Go check it out if you want more content
like this, but that goes in even deeper with more nuance and even more
personal because it’s that kind of a place where I can go in a little bit
deeper than I do here. Go check it out in the show notes. One more super fun
thing that I want to share with you is that I have been operating from the
same branding, the same colors, the same imagery, the same everything, the
same pictures even since 2019. And as I have grown, as I have expanded, as
I feel like I have lived a lifetime since 2019, so much has happened since
2019. I decided it is high time for a rebrand, and so keep your eyes open.
The podcast is getting a facelift.

(02:31):

The cover art, my website, everything that I put out in the world is going
to have a different look, a different feel, new images of me that represent
so much life and growth and experience of coaching so many of you, and
learning so much from you and being with you and hours and hours and hours
and hours of all the different trainings that I have done to grow and to
really expand and the new imagery is going to represent all of that and more
power and ability to help people get into their own power rather than kind
of sitting next to you on a park bench. It’s more that the feeling that I
wanted and that I hope you feel when you are here is that I’ve got you and
that we’re moving, we are going, we not staying in this painful place.
We’re going to go, we’re going to go and we’re going to help you get your
life to where you feel good, where you feel like you can trust yourself
again, where you feel like the world has opened back up to you.

(03:35):

So keep an eye out for that. It’s going to be exciting and I am excited for
you to check it out when it is live. It’s going to be within the next few
weeks that this will be live. Okay, on to our episode today. Here we go.
Forgiveness. Forgiving does not mean forgetting. Why? First of all, have
you ever been told to forgive and forget, forgive and forget, or have you
brought something up and been told? When are you going to forgive that? When
are you going to let that go? When are you going to forgive? If you keep
bringing it up, it means that you haven’t forgiven. I want to say
unequivocally that forgiveness does not require forgetting. In fact,
remembering can be protective wise and very deeply necessary forgiveness.
My definition of forgiveness means dropping the emotional baggage that
we’re carrying with it.

(04:40):

It’s releasing resentment and anger or a desire for revenge. We’ve set it
down. We are no longer willing to carry it. We no longer are willing to
punish ourselves with caring so much. Forgetting means wiping away the
memory or acting as if it never happened. So forgiveness is an internal
process of letting go for forgetting is denying or erasing reality, which
can be quite harmful. Okay? Now, our bodies are so incredibly wise. Our
bodies are so wise, our bodies can hold onto memories when our minds want to
move on. I’m going to tell you something on the personal side without
giving too many details, but in the last while, if you’ve been around a
while, you know that there’s just been some curve balls in my life around
having a baby unexpectedly and just a lot of different things. When you
have 12 children and in-law, children and grandchildren and a busy spouse
and all the moving parts, you’re going to have life.

(05:57):

You have life come up as all of you do, and what I’m kind of in right now
really in is this space of going For a while, I was putting all of my
emotional labor towards some very specific situations in my life towards
solving them, towards getting some peace around them or getting some
questions answered around some specific things. What has been quite
interesting is that as I have healed in these other areas that were
commanding my attention, that were demanding my attention, what has
happened is that some things that I thought that I had totally dealt with
and forgiven and all of that have popped up, and here we are and here we
go. And what I am learning and why I decided to record this podcast is
because what I’m learning is that often what happens is that our mind, our
mind will tell us that we have forgiven something.

(07:01):

Our mind will tell us that we’re good and that we don’t need to visit the
thing that we think we need to visit or that we are good and that we can
just let it go and we can give all the benefit of the doubt to the people
involved in that situation. If there are people involved, our mind can
really take us there and say, oh, you don’t need to feel sad about that. You
don’t need to go there. You don’t need to feel that we’ve got this. It’s
fine. Am really sorry to say that. I am learning firsthand that that’s not
quite how it works. What I am learning is that in these other areas that I
have been facing and really growing in and feeling safe in, now, some other
things are coming up and going, Andrea, now it’s time to look here.

(07:54):

And I’m not going to lie and say that it’s been easy. It’s actually been
quite painful. It’s been quite painful because what it is asking of me is
to actually listen to my body and drop out of my mind and listen to what my
body is saying about the things that my mind are trying to minimize. How
many of you understand this? What are you trying to minimize in your mind
and saying, not a big deal, not a big deal. It’s actually fine or maybe not
fine, but I know it’s not okay, but I’m really strong and so I can handle
that and I was made better for it. It helped me in some way. You’re
intellectualizing something that your body maybe is saying, okay, and we
still have to feel it. We still have to process it. We still have to allow
it. That’s kind of been my year.

(08:55):

It’s kind of been my year. Whoa. It’s kind of been an intense one. It’s
been an amazing year. I’ve had an amazing year because I am more intimately
getting to know myself than I ever have, and on a very somatic level, on a
body level, not just intellectual. In fact, the intellectual part has been
losing its grip more and more and more. Isn’t that fascinating? So when I
have doubts creep in or when I have worries creep in or this and that, my
mind is having less power and less authority and my body is actually really
informing a lot of my decisions, a lot of what I lean into, what I don’t
lean into, so our bodies, bodies are so wise and to that amazing book that
you’ve probably heard me talk about before. The body keeps the score. The
body does in fact keep the score.

(09:52):

The body knows what needs to be processed. The body knows what needs to be
dealt with, and our body knows when it’s safe to let it go. Our body knows
when it is safe to let it go. Unfortunately, many of us have grown up in
various cultures, whether it be family or organizations, church, whatever,
that really promote this. You got to forgive and forget 70 times seven that
we have as many times as somebody offends us, we need to forgive them. The
thing that I find interesting about this is that the person that we credit
to teaching that is Jesus Christ himself. And whether you are religious or
not or spiritual or not, hear me out in this part anyway. This is not about
any specific religion at all. It’s more about understanding some things
about Jesus. And what we know from various accounts is that he actually was
somebody who felt things deeply.

(11:01):

We know that he cried. We know that not only did he cry about his own pain,
but he also cried for others’ pain. He cried when his friends were hurting.
We know that he experienced pain and that he didn’t try to hide it, that he
didn’t try to be manly and not let people see that he was sad or that he
was hurting in some way. We also know that he asked for help and that he
didn’t think that he was above help. And so when we think of this, forgive
and forget, it sounds very stoic. It sounds very godly even. But I think
that we’ve got it wrong. If we can think about everything, every single
thing that we’ve ever been told about how we should be in its purest form,
it comes from a place of love in its purest form. And the problem is that
we have really gone far off the mark from that.

(12:04):

We’ve gone far off the mark in the way of forgiveness in sometimes the way
that we talk about it is it would just be more comfortable for everybody if
you could forgive or you wouldn’t have to feel so bad all the time if you
could just forgive. And the reality is that if we can find the roots of
love in forgiveness, forgiveness is loving to the forgiver, to the person
forgiving to the one who is forgiving. The roots are in love for the
person. Forgiving the other person certainly benefits the other person
benefits, but the person who benefits the most is the one who forgives
because what it really means is that they’re moving past this place of
cognitively forgiving and going, oh, I can see that this person’s really
trying. Or even if they’re not trying, I’m tired of carrying this and I’m
strong and capable and I’m going to move on with my life.

(13:06):

And the deeper thing here is the wisdom in listening to your body and your
body saying, you have carried this enough and you are safe now to let it
go. You are safe now to set this down. You are safe to not keep revisiting
it in the way that you have been. You do not need to anymore. We do not
need to go back to this place anymore. We can remember. We can remember,
but we don’t need to go back to that place. And to me, that is such a gift.
That is such a loving gift. Our bodies can let us know when that is okay to
do. Our bodies will let us know when we can let it down. We can check in
with our body. We can say, Hey, body. Hey, I think that I’ve stayed with
this long enough, learned the things I need to learn, seeing the things I
need to see. Am I okay now? Setting this down and making sure that you know
that setting it down does not mean that we forget and that we can’t talk
about it anymore. Let’s get a little bit more into that. Let’s get into
remembering.

(14:17):

Sometimes we want to remember because our body is having an emotional
reaction. We’re triggered. This can happen any old time involuntarily. And
the beauty in remembering is that remembering can help us to slow down, to
look at what’s in front of us, to go, okay, this reminds me of this. This
reminds me of this. And we can ask ourselves, is it the same? Is it
actually the same? Sometimes is a cognitive remembrance such as remembering
a date? Okay, we can see the date on the calendar and go, okay, that’s the
three year mark. And I remember, I remember, okay, it can be a cognitive
remembrance sometimes it’s a body, it’s a body remembrance. The way that
I’m talking about it here, it is just absolute wisdom. Our bodies helping
us to avoid patterns that will harm us. Again, our body saying, Hey, we
know that you have let this go, that our body has supported us in that.

(15:20):

And I am going to get into that a little bit more so you know more what I’m
talking about. But when we have let go in our body, sometimes our bodies
will let us know, Hey, this is a pattern. And I don’t mean to alert you. I
don’t mean to lead you down this rabbit hole of feeling totally off kilter,
but I just want to remind you that this reminiscent of the old days and how
things work, we don’t want to do that again. Okay? We don’t want to do that
again. So just helping you pay attention and maybe course correct, maybe
there’s something for you to course correct some way of being, some way of
handling things. Maybe it’s in trying to control, trying to control. Maybe
it’s in a way of trying to punish. Maybe it’s in a way of trying to avoid
and your body’s like, we don’t really need to do that.

(16:09):

And then on the other hand, sometimes it’s a little reminder that even
though your body has let you know that it’s safe to let go, our body is
also letting us know a new way of being in the world that often involves
boundaries and upholding boundaries and saying, I am not going to go back
to the way things were because that would basically be allowing myself to
punish myself again, to be setting myself up, to be ultra exposed. And it
doesn’t mean that we don’t run the risk of getting hurt again, but it does
mean that we are doing everything we can, that we can control to minimize
harm, to protect ourselves, to protect our energy. So let me give you some
real examples of what this could look like. Okay, so let’s say that you are
having a conversation with your spouse and you’ve come a really long way to
where most of the time you feel like the conversations are much more
productive, but this one time you see a response in your spouse that is
reminiscent of how it used to be, especially when they were lying to you
and your alarm bells go off.

(17:26):

Your body kind of starts to go, oh, look, here we are. Oh my gosh, we’re
going back. We’re going back. And maybe you say something and they go, oh
my gosh. Well, I thought we were past that. I thought we were moving past
that, but your body is reminding you of this old pattern. Now, in this
moment, we have a choice. We can choose to obey what our body is saying and
obey. I mean, take our cognitive self offline and just let our body run
wild. And often what happens in this space is that we can become ultra
triggered. We can become overly, overly stimulated, very overwhelmed with
the emotion, go into full blown panic where that higher brain, our brain is
very active in all the worst case scenarios and painting all these stories,
but our wise brain is offline. That prefrontal cortex is offline in this
place.

(18:20):

How it can serve us to feel that same feeling is keeping that brain online,
keeping the adult in the room, oh, I’m feeling this feeling. It reminds me
of this. Is it really the same? Is it really the same? And then finding
out. Finding out if it’s really the same, looking at what is very, very
different than what was happening before. Maybe looking at what is the same
and voicing it. Hey, this reminds me of this. We’ve come so far. We’ve
worked so hard and I know I definitely don’t want to go back to that place.
I’m guessing you don’t either. I noticed that you’re responded in this way.
It kind of was alarming to me because it’s not been that way for such a
long time. Can you tell me what was going on with you when you responded in
that way? Okay. This is a way of setting boundaries.

(19:14):

This is a way of raising the bar and saying, we’re not just going to drop
back into these old patterns. I’m going to hold some accountability here
for them. It also can remind us of going in the past when I was afraid, I
would try to control and I would operate from a very fear-based place where
I would accuse or where I would forecast the worst possible thing. And this
time I’m going to keep that wise brain online and I’m going to slow that
down and act deliberately and step into the things that maybe I need to
talk about or want to talk about with confidence rather than fear. Another
place where remembering can be very useful is where we can continue to
integrate what we’ve learned rather than bypassing it. So bypassing it would
go, okay, lesson done, onboarded upward. Don’t need to revisit it.

(20:13):

Integration means we are remembering it so that we can bring it back into
our daily decisions and going, yeah, that’s right. When I did it that way,
this is kind of how it went, and we’re not doing this to punish ourselves
or to punish somebody else. We are doing it so that we can use it, so we
can make it useful so that we can take these things and use them for our
good so that all of it can be woven into more wisdom, into more strength,
into more courage into life experience that we are using the heck out of.
We’re going to use this baby. There’s no way we’re going to just skim over
this and not use the painful experiences that we have to create something
better for ourselves right Now. What about when others say we haven’t
forgiven because we remember, this can be tricky.

(21:12):

Bringing it up however does not mean you haven’t forgiven, okay? It may
very well come from a healed place, especially when there is no emotional
charge behind it. Just clarity, accountability, and truth. The thing that’s
so powerful about this that I want all of you to listen to this piece here.
When we have checked in with our bodies and learned that it’s okay for us
to set it down, that it’s okay for us to release some of the pain, that we
don’t need to keep going back there and feeling it again and again and again
when we have kind of gotten the green light, you’re safe to let this go.
You’re good. This is good. You’re not in danger anymore. You’re safe to let
this go. We can move forward, and when we have a moment that maybe
something is remembered or there is an anniversary date or things like
that, the thing that’s beautiful is that our bodies can remind us that we
already decided that it’s okay to be safe.

(22:18):

We might feel something, we might feel a little bit heightened, and we can
use our bodies and our wise brain to help us get back online. We can use
our wise brain to decide what to do with that feeling like I’m going to go
walk, I’m going to share it with somebody. My fear, I’m going to journal it
out. I’m going, I just want to cry. I just actually need to cry. And we can
revisit these places and have much higher level conversations because they
are not emotionally charged because we don’t have intense emotions running
the show that we can really tap into our wisdom and go, okay, what is this
here and what do I want to do with it? And these are conversations that
maybe need to be had that just because I may be said, I forgive you, doesn’t
mean we never talk about it again and vice versa, but can we talk about it
in a place that the emotions are managed, that we have emotional regulation
around the intensity emotions that we can have these conversations without
falling apart, that we can take accountability for what we bring into these
conversations rather than making other people responsible for the intensity
of our emotion.

(23:37):

This is really, really important. If we continue to hold onto the intensity
of the experience betrayal or the experience of being the one who betrayed
and the shame and guilt and things like that, we are keeping ourselves from
the very things that we say we want. We are keeping ourselves from
intimacy. We are keeping ourselves from even intimacy with our own bodies.
We are withholding that from ourselves, and when we can step into allowing
ourselves to hear what our bodies have to say and what we might need to
still process, we are going to grow so much faster. We’re going to get such
better information, and ultimately, we will get to a place probably much
quicker than when we can let it go and know that our bodies have got us and
that our minds are going to be able to help us with that.

(24:36):

Okay? So if your spouse brings up, if you really forgive me, you wouldn’t
bring it up. Please hold onto this, that sometimes we bring things up to go
back to that place of a boundary. Maybe that needs to be set or a pattern
that you have exposed that you’re not willing to step back into. We can
have these conversations without anger, without resentment, and really just
as honoring your own needs and honoring what is right in front of you today.
What is real in front of you today? Okay, so here are some body signals that
could be telling you that it’s safe to let go. One muscle tension releases.
Your body is softer. Your body is softer. You don’t feel like you’re on
guard all the time. You have more moments of movement. I’ll tell you an
interesting thing that I’ve been noticing. I am not one that’s real
uninhibited around in dancing situations where I just can let loose and
feel totally free.

(25:45):

I wish that I were, and it’s actually something that I’ve been wanting to
move towards is more inhibition and more free movement. Well, guess what?
That is? One of the things that I’m noticing in my body is that my body
just wants to move and it will tell me, I’ll be standing there and feel
stretches that want to be stretched, feel movements that want to be moved.
I’ll be listening to music and it’s like my body wants me to move in
different ways. What this is saying to me is that my body is continuing to
heal and that there are things that I don’t need to carry anymore. Muscle
tension. Releasing your nervous system. This is number two, your nervous
system calming down around a person or a memory that when you go back to
revisit that person or the memory that it’s more neutral, that it’s more
like, yeah, that thing happened, huh?

(26:43):

I actually don’t feel a thing. Who knew? Right? That signals that your
body, your body has held it long enough for you to heal it. Your body has
held it. You’ve processed it enough, you’ve processed it enough. Really,
our bodies will hold onto it, and so we process it in a way that we treat
it with love and care. It’s not just feeling it over and over and over.
It’s letting our body know that an adult has it, that there’s an adult in
the room that is going to protect that part that is so afraid to let it go.
It’s not about endless crying, and I have felt there’s so much, I’ve been
so much pain. Oh, it’s more going. I have felt this pain enough, and I have
informed that part that keeps going to that painful place, that there is a
grownup in the room now and that that grownup will take care of that part,
and so it doesn’t need to be so vigilant anymore.

(27:41):

Amazing, right? So this piece is more about integrating. We have the
memories, but the emotional charge dissolves. Our bodies don’t need to hold
it anymore, and how to remind ourselves we have forgiven. When it gets
hard, you well know that even after forgiving memories can arise. This does
not mean that you haven’t forgiven. When the memory rises, gently remind
yourself, I have forgiven this. I am safe now. I don’t need to hold it
anymore. I don’t need to hold it anymore. I trust that I’ll take care of
things if I need to. I do not need to hold this anymore. Avoid rehashing
painful emotions unnecessarily by anchoring back into your decision to
forgive. Go back to when your body let you know Your body will never lie.
Your body will never lie If your body gave you a sense of peace and calm
and you’re good, trust your body.

(28:45):

Remember, forgiveness is not a one-time event. It’s a continual practice of
releasing the emotional grip each time it surfaces. Okay? Now, a couple
more things before I wrap it up. Forced forgiveness means pressuring
ourselves to forget, pushing ourselves to forget. Why would we do this?
Because we want to go back to the status quo. We want to go back to how
things felt before, and we might think that by forcing forgiveness and
saying, I’m just going to choose to forgive, that we are going to feel
better, that we can move on with our life. This is a lie. It is a
self-deception. Doing this can lead to ignoring and muting and masking your
own intuition. Trying to hurry to an outcome can be going right over the
part of you that actually really, really needs to be heard. Bypassing pain
or fear often just results in repeating patterns again and again and again.

(29:49):

Your body won’t let you. Your body will not let you. But when we use our
mind to force ourselves to forget, it’s like if we have kids that know we
have cookies and we try to pretend like we don’t have cookies, we’re not
just saying no to the cookies. We’re saying, what are you talking about?
The cookies are gone, or There never were cookies. It’s like we’re doing
that to our own body. What do you mean? Yeah, maybe there were, but they’re
gone now. What are you doing? It’s so hurtful to ourselves. It’s so cruel.
We do this from trauma responses of freezing or fawning or disassociating,
and we could call it forgiveness. We can call it forgiveness, but what it
is actually is protective mechanisms. Masking is healing. It’s not true. We
don’t need to force it. We need to grow our awareness of what’s going on
with our body and bring our brains to that, bring our highest wisest self
to what’s going on in our body.

(30:53):

True forgiveness means holding memory with wisdom. We can forgive while
still remembering and honoring what we learned. Remembering is not holding
a grudge. Remembering is holding wisdom. It’s holding wisdom. Okay? All
right. To wrap it up, I want to give you a few prompts, things that you can
journal about and check in with yourself. Where have you tried to force
yourself to forget in the name of forgiveness? What does your body still
remember that your mind wants to dismiss? What would it look like to let
forgiveness and memory work together rather than against each other? How can
you remind yourself you’ve forgiven without needing to feel the pain each
time? Okay. Those are all questions I want you to take your time answering.
You do not need to erase what happened to prove that you’re healed. In
fact, you don’t need to prove anything. Okay? Forgiveness itself is so
honoring.

(32:00):

When our body lets us know, move forward. It’s okay. Go. It honors you and
remembering protects you. I hope that this landed with you. I hope that
you’re able to find areas that maybe you are trying to forgive, but trying
to bypass so you can go back to those places and revisit them. I hope that
you can see areas where maybe your mind has forgiven, but your body is
actually suggesting that something else needs to happen. I invite you into
that. You’ve got this, my friends. You’re doing beautiful, beautiful,
beautiful work that will bless your life and that will give so much to you
and to those that are near you, those that are impacted by you. This is
deep, deep work that we’re doing here. I do want to say that if you want
much deeper support in this, I invite you to go ahead and apply for my
group that get your life back after infidelity.

(33:04):

We do this work together. You get coached individually, but in a group
setting where you get to witness others and be witnessed by others. I can’t
tell you how healing that is. I cannot tell you how healing that is where
we get to do this work together. Go deep and really open up to the things
that need to be seen so that we can let them go. Isn’t that the goal? Isn’t
that goal to be able to let it go? Alright, my beautiful listeners, thank
you so much for being here, and I will see you next time.

Thank you for listening to the Heal from Infidelity podcast. If you would
like to be kept in the know about upcoming free classes, new podcast
episodes, and other ways of working with me, go subscribe to my weekly
email. You can subscribe@andreagiles.com slash lies about dash infidelity
slash. Again, it’s andrea giles.com/lies about dash infidelity slash I will
see you next time.