Ronald Ramsey: Forgiveness

welcome back to another episode of

christian natural health today i am very

excited to have ronald ramsey with us

ron retired from corporate life after a

25-year career as an organization

development consultant specializing in

large-scale culture change after earning

a doctorate in family therapy he has

worked as a licensed marriage and family

counselor in private practice in 2017 he

completed the requirements of the

association for clinical pastoral

education for hospital chaplaincy with

additional training in palliative care

chaplaincy the majority of his work

since then has been with patients

receiving palliative care and their

families ron is the author of the

powerful book 40 days to forgiveness a

christian's field guide to the

forgiveness journey the book draws from

ron's experiences as an organization

development consultant his knowledge of

the behavioral sciences and theological

studies and his own unforgiveness

challenges to lead readers on a

life-changing forgiveness journey

welcome ron thank you so much for

joining us

thank you for having me yeah thank you

so what led you to write this book on

forgiveness what what kind of made you

feel like this was something that needed

to be out there

well i had to pick a topic for my

doctoral dissertation

and

i'd seen so much

um

grudges and resentment and

people just wanting to get even with

other people in my corporate career that

i thought

jesus this would be something that would

be very interesting to look at

yeah but and i also wanted to do

something that would have the biggest

impact on the culture of the christian

church

and

forgiveness is a is a challenge for just

about everybody

so um

so it worked out to be a pretty good

topic gotcha okay so and what would you

say is one of the main differences in

terms of understanding of forgiveness

from a christian versus a secular point

of view

well for the most part they're the same

thing

the steps that you go through

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to

find forgiveness in the behavioral

sciences

was part of what i based my model on in

my book

where the difference comes in is we have

the benefit

of

uh christ in our life

to help us

develop the heart

of empathy and compassion for other

people

people that are not a christian have to

rely on their own ability

to show empathy and compassion and

my opinion is it's a lot harder to do

without christ in your life yeah is it

even possible that would be really hard

to do i would imagine

well you could try yeah

that's that's true so what what what is

the approach that formed the basis of

your thesis and the basis of your book

for forgiveness how do you kind of walk

people through that process

well my dissertation focused on can

people learn to forgive

and if so

what are the interventions that are the

most helpful okay so

what i did is i wrote this book from the

perspective

of um

almost like a training manual because i

was in the training business for

25 years so that's part of my background

yeah but i tried to incorporate in the

worksheets and the activities in the

book

uh what i felt the best exercises were

based on my

research okay um

i also found that it's helpful to have

something very simplified

so i developed a model for forgiveness

that's based on the word action

and each of the letters in the word

action stands for one of the six steps

in the model okay

so what are those steps the first one

stands for acknowledging

the hurt that's occurred to you and what

kind of impact and influence it's had on

your life what kind of influence it is

having

etc

c stands for

commitment

the research shows that the first step

in the forgiveness process is to make a

commitment to try to forgive

without that it's pretty hard to move in

the direction experience forgiveness

t stands for transitioning

transitioning from a worldly perspective

on what's happened to you to trying to

look at it from the perspective that

christ would

uh so a godly perspective is what we're

trying to transition to

the i stands for internalization

and that really has more to do with

spiritual

sorry spiritual maturity

that chapter of the book has to do with

trying to build your prayer life your

meditation life scripture study and your

fellowship with other people

because it's through spiritual maturity

that we're able to nourish our heart and

to break down the strongholds of

unforgiveness gotcha yeah and then the o

stands for openness

being open to

um

follow

the spiritual path that all the previous

steps have led you to

and then in stands for nurturing

you once you forgive it's not

it's like it's not like you're done

you know as you know from

working with people on their health

finding solutions for health doesn't

necessarily mean

they won't re-experience the problem

again so unless we nourish the steps

that we've taken to be forgiving

we can get triggered and fall back in

to the same unforgiveness patterns that

we came from

so can you give us an idea of what that

looks like that cycle that unforgiveness

cycle

well one of the researchers that i

consulted with on my

dissertation was a christian professor

from virginia commonwealth university

and one of the things he said to me that

really impressed on me

was

forgiveness takes time

he said that

doing a one-day workshop might help

people to

forgive a particular infraction

but it's not going to really build a

long lasting

result

so one of the things i've done is i've

spread out the steps in the forgiveness

process

in smaller bite-sized chunks that last

over the course of 40 days

oh i like it so 40 days doesn't mean

that you do 40 consecutive days what it

means is that there are 40 baby steps

each one has a reading

and some kind of an activity or a

worksheet

a journal entry is what i call them

and

when i went back through the book

and and did all of those myself just to

refresh my memory

because over six years you forget about

what you wrote in chapter one yeah wow

um

it never took me more than about 30 to

40 minutes to do the reading and the

exercise

i felt like that was about the right

amount of time

for people to focus on each of the steps

sure yeah yeah yeah um so it's like when

you're describing that 40-day process

that sounds like just you know from a

neurostat science standpoint it takes

between 21 and 40 days in order well i

guess 21 and 90 days to actually form a

new habit so it's like you're trying to

create a habit of forgiveness would you

say that's accurate

yeah because forgiveness is a is

actually

the mind's inability to stop ruminating

on the narrative that we tell ourselves

about the infraction about the

transgression

and that rumination becomes habitual

and as we ruminate more and more

the narrative takes on new meaning and

it snowballs and we build up we build on

to the story and as we build onto the

story we think more about it as we think

more about it we get more entrenched

so in some ways it is a lot like

a habit-forming

um event

gotcha yeah it makes sense so and what

would you say are some of the myths and

misconceptions that you encounter

frequently with respect to forgiveness

what what blocks prevent people from

wanting to move forward into that

well probably the most profound one is

that is this misnomer that you forgive

and forget

you can't un

experience something that you've

experienced

so you can't forget

about what you've experienced

and forgiveness won't help you forget

that's why the last step in my process

is to continually nourish

and nurture

what your heart has accomplished through

the 40 days but another one that's a big

myth is that

people want to wait

for the other person to come and ask

forgiveness or

apologize or say i'm sorry

and in reality that gives the power to

the other person over our feelings of

unforgiveness it's sort of like

we're drinking poison and we want them

to die and it just doesn't work that way

right yeah

and there are other myths about about

forgiveness it's an unforgiveness that

would

take some time to go into but

the most important thing i think is to

realize that forgiveness

is something that we do for ourselves

right it doesn't require the other

person to do anything

it doesn't require us to go

and talk to the other person you don't

have to announce to them or anybody else

that you've forgiven

forgiveness is is an activity that

happens

between us and god and it's not a

feeling it's an action

that's probably the most important thing

to remember when we think about myths

yeah so along those lines because it is

that not a feeling it's an action and

it's this ongoing thing and there's the

possibility of a cycle how do you know

when you've actually done it when you've

actually forgiven someone

well when the rumination goes away

when you feel in your heart that you're

able to

uh

be a light the light of christ toward

the person or the people

that have transgressed you

um

when we want to do good towards them

when we have compassion for them when we

when we can separate

the action of another person from who

the other person is because every person

is a potential child of god and

sometimes the only

contact people will have with god in

their life is the contact they have with

us

and they have that contact when we

forgive them right even if we don't tell

them that we've forgiven them

they can see it in our heart in our life

and even if they don't we don't

interface with them anymore

we can still demonstrate

forgiveness through prayer

through

holding people's name up to god

and when people have died and you can't

praying for them and isn't going to do

any good anymore

we can pray for the other other people

who may

be committing the same kind of

transgression that the person did that's

no longer in our life

well and you also mentioned that part of

what led you to this was your own

journey with unforgiveness so can you

give us just a little snippet of what

that journey looked like for you

well corporate life was a real challenge

okay i bet

i was in the line of work where

i was a project manager for doing

large-scale change projects

which

means shoot the messenger

so i walked around with a target on my

back

because i represented change that

a lot of times leaders didn't agree with

or didn't want to go through

and so you experience a lot of

negativity a lot of resentment

a lot of grudges

so my own experience in corporate life

did but also my experience with sexual

abuse as a child

and some other things that i've

experienced in earlier in my life

that i've since been able to resolve

gotcha so you definitely have the

experiential side to bring to the table

too there

gotcha yes but it's still a journey of

course

so and tell me a little bit about the

concept of coping style what is that all

about

described

well in order to understand forgiveness

we first have to understand what

unforgiveness is

and coping has to do with unforgiveness

um

when we experience a transgression from

someone else the first thing it does is

it impacts our emotions

and our emotions are the the feelings

that come is standard equipment

nobody teaches a baby to be disgusted or

to cry when they're wet

there's certain emotions that we're born

with that are hardwired into our system

so we ex and when we experience a

transgression the first thing that

happens is our body and our mind reacts

emotionally

and as we think about what's happened

we begin to think about

how it's going to impact us

feelings develop and those feelings

require that we be able to cope with

what's happened or not

so if we're not able to cope with the

infraction that's happened to us

then we go into a state of rumination

about what happened where we rehearse

what we'd like to do what we'd like to

say

how we'd like to

interact with the person that's

transgressed us

and that's what i call negative

intentions

they're negative ways that we would

intend to respond if we had the chance

ah okay and those negative intentions

just build a story

and the story builds rumination and the

rumination requires more rehearsal of

what we want to do and that's just a

vicious cycle so our ability to cope

with the transgression

is sort of the fork in the road

if we can cope

we probably won't fall into a state of

unforgiveness

okay so uh one of the things that like

from my standpoint i've seen that

unforgiveness often can lead to physical

problems there's a decent number

of you know my patients that i feel like

that's at least one of the underlying

issues that with chronic illness so is

that something that you looked into at

all in terms of how does this manifest

in physical health

absolutely

there

there's no end to how unforgiveness can

affect people

physically

i experience that working with patients

in the hospital who are experiencing

unforgiveness and i've been able to see

patients

begin to feel better and get better

whenever we've able been able to help

them

unburden their hearts with some

unforgiveness yes yes so yes it

definitely has an impact on our health

gotcha so is there anything i have not

asked you that you want to make sure

that you leave with our audience

i can't think of anything you ask pretty

thorough questions that sounds good so

where can people go to find out more

about you

well i have a website and there are some

videos on the website that people can

watch

i have a free giveaway i put together a

workbook

and if you go to the website you can get

a copy of that

the website is 40daystoforgiveness.com

and it's important that you spell out

the word 40. if you put a number in

it'll take you to the publisher's

website for me

and that doesn't have the videos and the

free giveaway and all that awesome okay

well i will link in the show notes to

the link for your website so people can

go find the freebies in the videos and

thank you so much ron for your time

really appreciate all your insight well

thank you lauren i appreciate you having

me on

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