Enright's Four Stages of Forgiveness: Personal Account

Forgiveness is a coin with two sides. One including those who practice forgiveness in conjunction with someone who has wronged them, and conversely, the other side holds those who wish to have forgiveness bestowed upon them by the wronged party. Ideally, forgiveness is the work of two parties, but can work with only one, if need be. Johnson (2012) describes the act for forgiveness as “breaking the cycle of evil”. Interpretively, this simple statement shows that those who have had evil actions committed against them have two roads: the low road which includes laying stagnate in hurt and perpetuating that cycle, and the high road, which includes riding the path of forgiveness and demolishing the low road for a better and more fulfilling route. Through sharing my own personal experience with an unjust and frankly evil leader, I will make a case for the forgiveness high road through the help of Johnson, Enright, and their associates.

To protect the identity of the workplace and persons in the storied example, the workplace will be generalized as “the organization” and the supervisor will be named “the leader”. When thinking about a “bad leader”, one specific person comes to my mind. It was my first real encounter with a leader of ill repute and someone I wish I could forget. While I could devote scores of pages to the analysis of “the leader”, in the interest of time and the topic, I will limit this case study to the end-stage forgiveness I have completed. “Forgiveness is one of the ways in which leaders cast a light rather than a shadow” (Johnson 2012). After experiencing lying, stealing, cheating, betrayal, and outright sociopathic tendencies from “the leader”, I initially didn’t want to forgive, but deep down I knew, forgiveness was in order. In Johnson (2012), a piece about Enright’s four stages of forgiveness is packaged in the text. These four stages include uncovering, decision, work, and deepening. This will be the main focus of the prose, but we will also be looking through the words of Andrews (2000), and her views on forgiveness to round out the piece. Although bad leaders are unavoidable, how you deal with them, even years later, is in your control.

Stage one of Enright’s forgiveness model is the act of uncovering with the stated meaning of refusing to acknowledge the hurt and pain of said actions, and when those feelings are finally acknowledged, the person will dig a hole of despair and depression (Johnson 2012, p. 120). When I went through this stage, I had just moved 1000 miles away after resigning from the organization and I was shell shocked. I felt as though I had to shut down parts of my emotional centers to withstand the tremendous wrongs that were committed against me and my coworkers. Once away from “the leader” and the organization, it took about a month until the floodgates of emotion opened. Once I began to feel “less numb”, I began to blame myself; feeling as described in Johnson (2012, p. 120) “permanently damaged” and often stating that “life was unfair”. I was dwelling in the injury and felt as though I would be never able to move past such an emotionally traumatic event.

Stage two of Enright’s forgiveness model is the act of decision, which is described as the injured party begins realizing that they cannot dwell in the pit of sorrow and starts to consider the act of forgiveness (Johnson 2012, p. 120). Harkening back to my experience with the organization and “the leader”, I realized that this event was starting to affect me in the Biological, Psychological, and Social aspects of my life. My feelings of hurt began to be weaponized against me, I began to become sick, I felt depressed and had anxiety in which I had never experienced before, and I was opting to sleep and forgo social activities. Once I took a personal assessment of my life and why I was being effect in a biopsychosocial manner, I realized that I was holding onto the hurt of this experience and started to consider the thought of forgiving.

Stage three of Enright’s forgiveness model is the act of work. This is described in Johnson (2012) as the wronged party trying to understand the motivations and background of the offending party, during this stage, the forgiver decides to process and endure the pain rather than pass it on (p. 120). For myself, this was the hardest stage to complete. I didn’t want to make nice, I didn’t want to seem weak, and a defiantly didn’t want to let “the leader” win. I lived in this stage for the better part of a year after leaving the organization. It took me longer than I had wished to; to grow, to learn, and to finally view the act of forgiveness as an act of mercy rather than an act of defeat. I had to look at what I knew about “the leader’s” past and see what brought them to the place of being an awful monster. Though it was tough, it was accomplished.

The final stage of Enright’s forgiveness model is the act of deepening. This is described in Johnson (2012) as the outcomes of forgiveness (p. 120). This stage, for me, was reached recently. I had to take stock in what had happened during that time and see it as a place of growth and experience rather than a wasteland of hurt. Through the horrible example of “the leader”, I know I can learn from their mistakes, break the cycle of evil, and make the institution of leadership a much brighter place by putting those bad experiences to rest instead of weaponizing them and continuing the cycle of the evil leader.

During stages one through three Enright’s forgiveness models. I unjustly blamed others close to me that where apart of the organization for the follies of “the leader”. It would be hypocritical of me to go through the process of forgiveness and not ask for forgiveness myself. I knew that was what I had to do, and so, I began the journey.

Andrews (2000) argues with the help of associate Lauritzen, that forgiveness rests upon the change in the wrongdoer. For me, this was especially true. I felt as though I couldn’t ask for true forgiveness until I had fully changed my heart as well. Andrews (2000) also toys with the idea of unilateral and negotiated forgiveness, stating that unilateral forgiveness only addresses one parties issues about the problem. The offending party doesn’t seek to negotiate any part of the blame with the offended party. Negotiated forgiveness seeks to hash out the idea of forgiveness between the offender and the offended, coming to some mutual agreements. With most of the people apart of the organization that I had wrongly blamed for being a part of “the leader’s” problem, we used negotiated forgiveness. Morally, for me, it was important to understand how they felt and how I felt so that we could come to an agreement about the forgiveness. This was the most beneficial to all parties involved.

Going through the stages of Enright’s forgiveness model have allowed me to learn from the experiences I had with “the leader”. It was hell, but instead of being defeated from the events surrounding that time, I was able, through the art of forgiveness, to achieve what I thought was impossible, peace. I have not sought or needed an apology from “the leader”, Johnson, Enright, and Anderson have helped me see that forgiveness so much more that the words “I’m sorry”. It’s not being wounded and hurt, it’s not being weak and defeated. It’s the strongest act a person in a leadership interaction can face. After spending my coin of forgiveness, a denomination of the power currency, I can truly see its value.