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The Forgiving Place: Choosing Peace After Violent Trauma is a self-help book that includes Dr. Gayton's journey to forgiving the people who brutally murdered his wife during a home invasion robbery.

The Phases of Forgiveness

We recover from trauma slowly, in phases, over time. In my own personal experience with murder and in my work with a wide variety of trauma survivors, I have found five phases of healing that must be gone through in order to fully forgive and release traumatic, violent events, thus restoring energy and direction in life. We begin by reacting to the violence with numbness, then grief, rage, fear, and guilt. After the initial shock we take a break from the energy to renew our strength and prepare ourselves for continued emotional work. When rested, we return to remembering the events and feelings connected to the trauma, and in time begin to release painful feelings and memories. The process of remembering and releasing continues until we finally complete the experience of the trauma and come to resolution. As our emotions about the events surrounding the violence resolve, our energy returns and we begin new life
tasks and use our new insights and skills to enhance our lives.

Resolution: Complete Forgiveness

Resolution does not mean finishing with the violence in such a manner that we return to our life as it was before the trauma; we know intuitively that this is impossible and even undesirable, because if we are honest, we recognize that we have made positive changes - changes that have improved our lives. We have learned to accept loss and trauma as natural occurrences, as part of the growth and learning process. They are not abnormal things to be dispensed with as quickly as possible, not diseases to be cured. Major traumatic events, the resulting feelings, and the finishing of those feelings become an essential part of who we are.

Barriers to Forgiveness

We can (and do) stand in the way of the Forgiving self. Not on purpose, but out of habit and lack of awareness of our inner world. Aftr experiencing violence and injury, the status quo (or life as we lived it before the violence) becomes intolerable, for it means blocking the deep reservoir of regenerative power that resides in the higher consciousness, the symbols, insights, and ancient remedies that move us through the phases of recovery and resolution, restoring us after the devastation of a violent parent, husband, or stranger, the suicide of a brother, the murder of a friend. We inadvertently stop our own cure without realizing it by turning our mind against ourselves. During the phases of recovery we learned how Ego beliefs interface with each level of our growth. We now turn our attention to understanding in depth how we sabotage progress.

The Source of Forgiveness

My experience as a psychologist with survivors of violence has convinced me that a belief in a power beyond conscious thought dramatically accelerates recovery to resolution by focusing the person on the source of their inner healing. The twelve-step philosophy of Alcoholics Anonymous provides a concept of the Higher power that encourages us to choose a "power greater than ourselves" to rely upon in recovery. The psychological and spiritual approach makes no demand upon us for a particular religious commitment, but it does encourage our religious beliefs if they ar present and promotes accessing the Forgiving self-healing. When we rely on a Higher power in a health-giving way, the Forgiving self, or "Superconscious mind," as Roberto Assagoli, M.D., has named it, switches on.