5 Common Blocks to Real Forgiveness (and How to Overcome Them)

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A major new study confirms that forgiveness is good for your mental health.

That’s not exactly a shocker for Christians, who have been hearing about the spiritual benefits of forgiveness from Scripture and the saints for two thousand years. But before we yawn and move on, consider how those spiritual benefits cascade into every aspect of our lives.

Led by researchers at Harvard and published in ​npj Mental Health Research, the study tracked more than 200,000 people in 23 countries and found that the real benefits come not from isolated acts of forgiveness, but from what researchers call “dispositional forgivingness” — forgiveness practiced as a habitual way of moving through life. People who forgive that way tend to report meaningfully better well-being across a range of measures, especially in psychological health: happiness, sense of meaning, and reduced depression.

Okay, so just like Jesus said, forgiveness is the way to go. Most Christians get that. Where we run into problems, though, is actually forgiving…much less making forgiveness a life habit.

When we run into roadblocks, how do we overcome them to find real forgiveness?

Forgiveness Roadblocks…and How to Overcome Them

Rachael Isaac is a pastoral counselor at the Pastoral Solutions Institute who regularly helps clients work through their difficulty forgiving others. She identifies five common roadblocks that often get in the way…and the strategies that help people overcome them.

1. When You Believe Forgiving Means Forgetting

By far the most common roadblock to forgiveness, she says, is the widespread belief that forgiveness means moving on as if nothing happened.

“A lot of people think that forgiving someone means forgetting everything that they did — being in a relationship and acting like everything’s fine,” she says.

But there’s a real difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness, she says, “doesn’t mean that I’m forgetting everything that they did and I’m relinquishing all of my boundaries and we’re in relationship again. But it does mean I’m not allowing the hurt, the anger, the resentment to dictate my choices anymore.”

In other words, forgiveness is not the same thing as reconciliation. Forgiveness is about getting to a place where you can genuinely wish the other person well — even when you don’t feel like it. Reconciliation, on the other hand, means that the person who hurt you has done the work necessary to be safe around and build a relationship with.

We’ve covered the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation before; you can learn more in our blog archives.

2. When you feel like you need their permission

One of the most subtle and persistent blocks Isaac encounters is what she describes as a felt need for permission — specifically, the sense that you need something from the person who hurt you before you can forgive them. That “something” might be remorse, an apology, or a change of behavior.

“It comes from this place of powerlessness — like, I don’t feel like I have the power to do this on my own,” Isaac says. “I need permission from this other person.”

But when we delay forgiveness until the other person says the right thing or shows the right remorse, we’re really empowering them to control our interior life.

“I’m basing my choices for myself off of my resentment or anger or hurt,” Isaac explains. “I’m letting that other person decide for me rather than me deciding for myself.”

The path forward is recognizing that forgiveness is a choice that belongs entirely to you. Waiting for their “permission” makes you a hostage, emotionally yanked one way or another by the other person’s behavior. Forgiveness, on the other hand, frees you from the emotional control of the other person.

3. When anger feels like you’re doing something

A second block is the unconscious belief that holding on to resentment and anger is getting you somewhere.

“We hold onto anger and resentment because it feels like we’re punishing the other person,” Isaac says. “But really, we’re just punishing ourselves.” Even if the other person is aware of your anger, it almost certainly doesn’t affect them as much as it does you.

And the effect it has on you isn’t good. The Harvard study cited above found that unforgiveness results in higher rates of depression, anxiety, and the negative physical effects of a sustained stress response.

Isaac’s practical tool for cutting through this is a simple self-check: “Is this helping me, or is this hurting me?”

For people who still have difficulty letting go of anger and resentment, she sometimes recommends a “poison pen” exercise — writing a letter to the person who hurt you, saying everything you would want to say, and then destroying it.

“It allows you to process your thoughts and open the drain a little bit on the anger and resentment that’s building up,” she says.

4. When forgiveness feels like surrender

Perhaps the most widespread misunderstanding Isaac encounters is the belief that to forgive is to forget — to lower your guard, drop your limits, and silently signal that what happened was somehow acceptable.

It isn’t. And God himself doesn’t model it that way.

“God doesn’t call us to forgive and forget,” she says. “Yes, he calls us to forgiveness — but so that we get unstuck and can move towards meaningfulness and intimacy and virtue.”

This circles back to our earlier discussion of the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness is about freeing yourself from your desire to hurt the person who hurt you. That desire for retribution is replaced by a desire for the other person’s well-being.

But here’s the key: wanting the other person to be well doesn’t mean letting them off the hook. Instead, it means helping them, when possible, to take accountability for their actions. That’s the only way they will find healing and wholeness.

5. When the hurt keeps happening

In Matthew 18:21-22, Jesus tells Peter to forgive others not just seven times, but “seventy times seven” (or seventy-seven times, depending on the translation).

This can be misinterpreted, though. Jesus isn’t asking us to give the other person permission to keep hurting us over and over. Remember, forgiveness only requires us to let go of our impulse to hurt the other person back.

“Forgiveness is not wishing that person ill,” Isaac says. “But I’m also not going to let you keep treating me that way.”

That might mean requiring certain conditions for the relationship to continue, significantly reducing contact, or in some cases ending the relationship altogether.

These actions could be retaliatory if your reason for taking them is to punish or hurt the other person. But healthy boundaries are sometimes necessary not only for your own well-being but for the other person’s as well. Placing limits on a relationship in order to prevent the other person from sinning against you is entirely consistent with forgiveness.

Isaac recalls working with a client whose husband was so persistently and intentionally harmful that no amount of good faith or effort on her part could change the dynamic.

“You can’t do anything with that, because he’s not willing to do the work it takes to be in a healthy relationship,” she says. “It’s not on her for walking away from that situation. That’s on him.”

Through all of it, Isaac encourages clients to bring God into the ongoing work of forgiveness — actively, not passively. She suggests praying along these lines: “Lord, what’s going to give me clarity? What’s going to help me move towards the healing that you want for me?”

Getting unstuck

Isaac’s clinical experience backs up the findings of the Harvard research on the benefits of forgiveness. When her clients stop giving resentment power over their choices, she says, real change tends to follow.

“Forgiveness opens that door to healthier relationship,” she says. “Forgiving and saying I’m not going to let this person have power over me and my actions definitely leads towards increased mental health.”

For more help working through the practical and spiritual dimensions of forgiveness, check out Dr. Greg Popcak’s God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts! and Rachael Isaac’s digital journal Not Me First, But Me Too — a simple system for honoring your own needs without guilt. And for one-on-one support, reach out to Rachael Isaac or another pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

The Three Essential Steps of Real Reconciliation

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It was bad enough that Julie’s mother-in-law and sisters-in-law disrupted her wedding reception so horrendously that the family had to ask them to leave. But even worse, her mother-in-law kept her distance from Julie and her kids for eleven years. When she finally reached out, her “apology” was brief and breezy: “I’m sorry for everything — let’s just move forward.”

“That’s not a sincere apology to me,” Julie told Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak during a recent episode of their More2Life radio show. Meanwhile, her husband felt caught in the middle, and the wound from that wedding day had never really closed.

Lisa Popcak could empathize with Julie’s situation. “One of the things that’s really difficult is when you feel that the Lord is asking you to get yourself in right order about forgiving someone, about fixing a relationship, and they don’t want to or they don’t have the insight to, then how do you handle it?” she said during the show opener. “How do you work through that with God? I know that had been a process for me. I’m in a really good place with it, but it was a walk that I had to walk with Jesus to get there.”

In last week’s post, the Popcaks explained the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. This time, the Popcaks are going to help us understand what constitutes a genuine, sincere apology that opens the door to reconciliation. It’s a skill that’s useful whether you’re on the receiving end like Julie or you need to apologize for something yourself.

The Road to Reconciliation

Previously, the Popcaks explained the important difference between forgiveness and reconciliation. Forgiveness, they explained, is something one person can do alone — it’s the decision to surrender the desire to hurt someone for having hurt you. Even better, it is about getting to a place where you are able to want the offending person’s well-being.

Reconciliation, on the other hand, is about doing the work needed to repair and restore the relationship — and that requires more than two words (“I’m sorry”) and a change of subject.

When Dr. Greg helped Julie think through what she needed from her mother-in-law, he laid out three components that every meaningful apology requires.

First, a display of empathy. Somehow, the person who committed the offense needs to show that they understand how much they have hurt the other person. 

Second, a display of integrity. “In other words, ‘You had a right to expect more from me,’” Dr. Popcak explained. “It wasn’t just that you have too thin a skin, or you don’t have a sense of humor, or you just have too high expectations. It’s: You’re right, I was wrong. You had a right to expect more from me, and I blew it, and I’m sorry.”

Third, the offending person needs to offer to fix the harm they caused. This might involve making a concrete proposal about what they want to do to make things right, or it might involve asking the other person what would make it right for them.

“The person who committed the offense has to be willing to listen to what we need them to do to heal the wound they caused,” Lisa said. “Asking them to listen to your needs and to do the work necessary to meet them is not refusing to forgive them. It is what authentic forgiveness and healing requires.”

Julie’s mother-in-law was missing all three things in her apology to Julie; she had offered the form of an apology without any of its substance.

“When a person isn’t capable of doing those three things as part of an apology, that means that they’re not really accepting responsibility, and you can’t trust them to not do it again,” Dr. Popcak explained.

Reconciliation Requires Hard Work from Both People

The work of achieving reconciliation isn’t only the responsibility of the person who caused the offense, though. When we set healthy boundaries with people who have hurt us, our Christian faith requires that we also provide them with a clear way forward.

In Julie’s case, the Popcaks’ advice was to sit down and talk with her husband about what that way forward would look like for his mother. “Talk together about, ‘What would we need to see from your mom to relax this boundary and to know that she’s safe to be around us and our kids?’” That sense of safety includes emotional, not just physical, safety.

This not only helps the offending person know what they need to do to restore the relationship; it also helps the person who has been hurt to objectively evaluate whether that work has been done.

“You can ask yourself, ‘Well, has she done the things that we asked her to do to let those boundaries down?’” Dr. Popcak said. “And you can answer yes or no. And then you make your decision based on an objective criteria, not just how you feel about it.”

The Three Steps of a Real Apology

If someone hasn’t accepted your apology — or you sense that what you’ve offered hasn’t truly landed — here are three ways to move toward the kind of accountability that actually opens doors.

  1. Name the specific harm you caused. Vague apologies (“I’m sorry for everything”) signal that you haven’t really reckoned with what happened. Before you approach someone, ask yourself: Can I name exactly what I did wrong? Can I describe how it hurt them? If not, more reflection is needed first.
  2. Accept what they need without arguing about it. Once you’ve acknowledged the harm, the other person’s response belongs to them. They may need more time than you’d like. They may not be ready to reconcile at all. Accepting that without pressure or manipulation is itself an act of love.
  3. Work out a clear path forward. When the other person is ready to reconcile, work with them to name exactly what needs to happen to repair the harm you caused in the relationship.

Then it’s all about following through. The first three steps are the key that opens the door that has closed between you and the other person; this key allows the possibility of reconciliation. But it is consistent, changed behavior over time that makes it real.

Let God’s Grace In

Knowing these basic elements of real reconciliation provides a road map forward. Of course, when the wounds cut deep, moving through these steps can still be very difficult on both sides. Prayer, Lisa said, is essential to help us do what we can’t otherwise do on our own.

“Involving the Holy Spirit in this really matters,” Lisa said. ”We can’t white-knuckle our way through forgiveness or even come up with a plan without the grace of the Holy Spirit being invited into the situation.”

Real reconciliation can’t be forced or rushed. It grows from genuine accountability, patience, and grace.

“Asking for and receiving forgiveness,” Dr. Greg said, “is just the first step on the road back from hurts.”

If you need extra help with the challenges of giving and receiving forgiveness, reach out to the pastoral counselors at CatholicCounselors.com.

Forgiveness Doesn’t Always Mean Reconciliation

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Kara hadn’t had contact with her abusive father for years — an intentional decision she felt was necessary for her safety and healing.

Recently, though, her father reached out, asking to reconnect.

“I’m honestly afraid to let him back into my life,” she wrote in a note to the More2Life radio show hosted by Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak. “I don’t trust him, and I worry about exposing my children to someone who hurt me so deeply.

“When I told him no, he accused me of being unforgiving and unchristian. That really shook me. I believe in forgiveness, but I don’t know if forgiveness means putting myself or my family back in harm’s way. How do I forgive without pretending the past didn’t happen, and how do I honor God without ignoring my own boundaries?”

Kara isn’t alone in her dilemma; many faithful Christians face situations like hers: An ex-spouse who caused serious harm pushes for restored contact. A family member who has never acknowledged the damage they caused demands to be welcomed back in. Remembering Jesus’ command to forgive (even repeatedly), some people may feel pressured to restore a harmful relationship — or, alternatively, might feel guilty for saying “no.”

The key to situations like this, the Popcaks said, is to understand the difference between forgiveness and reconciliation.

Forgiveness vs. Reconciliation

As Christians, we are called to lean into God’s abundant mercy and forgiveness, and then share that same mercy and forgiveness with one another, Dr. Popcak explained.

“But it’s important to understand what that really means,” Lisa Popcak added. “Forgiveness does not require us to pretend that an offense never happened or that things are better than they actually are.”

Instead, forgiveness means wanting to give up the desire to hurt somebody for having hurt you, Dr. Popcak said. It means getting to the place where you can genuinely wish the other person well — even when you don’t feel like it.

Reconciliation is a different matter entirely.

“Reconciliation means that the person who hurt you has done the work necessary to be safe to be around and build a relationship with,” Dr. Popcak explained.

Forgiveness is something you can give unilaterally, in your own heart, regardless of what the other person does. Reconciliation requires something from both sides — most importantly, genuine accountability from the one who caused the harm.

Kara had forgiven her father. That didn’t mean she was obligated to hand him access to her family.

Dr. Popcak pointed to something telling in Kara’s situation: her father’s response when she said no.

“If he was safe to be around, his response would have been, ‘I totally get that, and it breaks my heart that you feel that way, and I hope that someday you might feel differently, but I respect your boundary and I understand where you’re coming from based on the way that I’ve hurt you,'” Dr. Popcak said. “His calling you unchristian and unforgiving and trying to manipulate you into having a relationship speaks to how unsafe he still is.”

Maintaining the safe boundary with her father may have felt uncomfortable for Kara. However, as the Popcaks pointed out, that decision was actually a loving response to the situation.

For one thing, keeping her father at a distance until he is able to handle the relationship safely and responsibly is charitable toward him because it helps him avoid a near occasion of sin — a situation that predictably brings out the worst in us. For example, an alcoholic doesn’t put himself in a bar, and someone who loves an alcoholic doesn’t invite him into one either.

And as Lisa pointed out, Kara’s decision to keep a safe boundary between her father and her children was both appropriate and also a very real expression of love.

Sometimes working for the good of the other makes us feel uncomfortable. But in the end, the true measure of love isn’t how it makes us feel, but whether it truly seeks the best outcome for the other, and all involved — in this case, safety for herself and her kids, and real healing for her father.

Are We Ready to Reconcile? 3 Questions to Ask

If someone from your past is pushing for restored contact, the Popcaks’ framework suggests three honest questions worth sitting with before you respond.

1. Have they acknowledged the harm they caused?

Not a vague “I’m sorry if you were hurt” — but a clear, specific acknowledgment of what they did and how it affected you. A person who cannot name their offense is not in a position to repair it. Accountability is the foundation of reconciliation, and without it, the same patterns are likely to repeat.

2. How did they respond when you said no?

This is often the clearest signal available. A person who responds to your limits with guilt-tripping, pressure, or spiritual manipulation is showing you exactly where they still are. Let the response speak for itself.

3. Are you both strong enough?

Reconciliation isn’t just about whether you can handle it. Inviting someone into a situation they’re not equipped to handle isn’t mercy — it’s setting everyone up to fail.

Even a Closed Door Can Have a Key

As the Popcaks frequently remind, setting and maintaining healthy boundaries does not necessarily mean cutting off all possibility of a relationship. A healthy boundary is like a door that needs to be closed when a situation is not safe or healthy.

But at the same time, you are closing the door on that part of your relationship, you can also give the other person a key, a set of conditions that need to be met before true reconciliation is possible.

Dr. Popcak offered Kara a possible response to her father. Notice how it maintains a healthy boundary while also providing a key that her father can use, if he chooses: “The fact that rather than hearing what I was trying to say to you and responding with sensitivity, you tried to manipulate me and push your way into my life — that says to me that nothing’s changed,” Dr. Popcak suggested. “Until you can really accept responsibility for what you did and acknowledge the pain you’ve caused, it wouldn’t make sense for me to have you in my life. I will continue to pray for you, and I hope that someday you can hear this.”

That is a statement of genuine forgiveness. It wishes the other person healing. It provides the  key to a restored relationship. And it holds a clear line — not out of bitterness, but out of honesty about where things actually stand.

For more help thinking through a difficult relationship, check out Dr. Greg Popcak’s book God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts! Making Peace With Difficult People. And for one-on-one support, reach out to a pastoral counselor at CatholicCounselors.com.

Why They Keep Bringing Up the Past (And How to Stop the Cycle)

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It starts with something small—a forgotten chore, a missed text, a minor disagreement about dinner plans. But before you know it, you’re hearing about that time you were late to their birthday party three years ago, or how you “always” do this particular thing that drives them crazy. What began as a simple conversation has become an exhausting replay of every conflict you’ve ever had.

If this sounds familiar, the good news is that you’re probably not dealing with someone who’s simply being unfair or manipulative. According to Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak, there’s a predictable psychological reason why people drag the past into present conflicts—and once you understand it, you can learn to break the cycle.

The key isn’t defending yourself with facts or logic. It’s recognizing that when someone brings up old wounds, they’re not really arguing about the chore you forgot or the ice cream you finished off. They’re telling you that something deeper is happening, and they need a completely different kind of response.

It Started with Soured Laundry…

A recent caller to Dr. Greg and Lisa Popcak’s More2Life radio show brought up exactly this situation.

During eight years of marriage, Bill made a conscious effort to meet his wife’s needs and requests. So when she went to visit her sister one weekend, he decided to clean out their chaotic garage, a task that she had asked him to tackle.

By Sunday evening, the garage was cleaned up and organized. But in the middle of all that work, he’d forgotten one small thing: moving a load of laundry from the washer to the dryer. By the time his wife returned at the end of the weekend, the clothes had soured.

When she got home and discovered it, she “lost it,” accusing him of never helping around the house and not respecting her. It didn’t matter that he’d just spent the weekend on a major household project.

This incident had become all too familiar in their relationship. “Whenever my wife and I have an argument over something, she brings up a mistake or a slight that I’ve made in the past that might be slightly related to the present argument, but she uses it to prove that I’m ‘always’ against her or that I’ll never change,” Bill said. “It’s defeating, I feel run down, I don’t feel particularly loved, and I don’t know how to get her to break this habit.”

Why Your Good Points Don’t Matter (In the Moment)

A good starting point for addressing this dynamic in a relationship is to understand where the other person is coming from.

First off, it’s helpful to know that when someone’s emotional temperature spikes, their thinking brain goes “offline.” In the midst of this emotional flooding, the person’s “child self” takes over.

Second, when someone habitually brings up past issues, they are often tapping into every similar disappointment they’ve ever felt, Lisa Popcak said—sometimes stretching back to childhood experiences that have nothing to do with you at all.

In this state, your logical arguments feel dismissive of them. If Bill pointed to the clean garage to prove he wasn’t “always” failing her, his wife probably wouldn’t hear “Look how much I care about you,” but “Your feelings don’t matter” and “You’re being unreasonable.”

That’s why the pattern escalates. The more you defend with logic, the more emotionally flooded your partner becomes. And the more flooded they get, the further back they reach for evidence that supports how they’re feeling right now.

Dr. Greg acknowledged that this can be really frustrating; many people wonder, “Well, if I can’t respond to what the person’s actually saying, then what am I supposed to do?”

The Empathy-First Response That Actually Works

The Popcaks recommend a completely different approach: respond to the feelings first, not the accusations. Then, gently redirect the conversation toward finding solutions.

For example, instead of pointing to his work on the garage (a defensive move), Bill might say: “I can tell you’re really frustrated right now, and I’m sorry you’re feeling this way. What can we do together to get to a better place right now?”

This pivot from defensiveness toward empathy and solutions probably won’t have an immediate effect, the Popcaks note. But acknowledging the other person’s emotions and asking them to pivot to shared solutions at least keeps the argument from escalating.

“You’re not arguing back,” Dr. Greg told Bill. “You’re not trying to discount what she’s saying. You’re just validating the fact that she’s in a bad place and that you’re sorry that she’s there and you want to work with her to help her feel better.”

If the other person continues to be emotionally flooded and keeps bringing up past grievances, keep gently acknowledging their feelings and redirecting toward problem-solving.

This approach does something powerful: it validates the person’s emotional experience without accepting blame for things you didn’t do wrong. You’re not agreeing that you “never help” or that you’re “always like this.” You’re simply acknowledging that they’re in pain and offering to work together toward a solution.

Building a Buffer Against Old Wounds

While this “pivot towards solutions” is useful in the heat of a conflict, the Popcaks also suggest two other practices to prevent this unhealthy cycle from happening again.

Debrief and Plan

Once you’ve navigated a tense exchange and emotions have cooled, revisit the conflict in a calm moment, Dr. Greg suggested. Open the conversation with words like these: “Now that we got through this, how could we handle things differently the next time something happens that makes you feel this way?”

As Dr. Greg explained, your success with the empathetic solution-focused redirection approach outlined above gives you the credibility you need to have this conversation. And by inviting the other person into creative, collaborative problem-solving, you are shifting away from a competitive, winner-takes-all conflict style to a more cooperative, “we’re a team” approach.

Foster a Positive Perspective

Lisa Popcak suggested another practice that can help reduce conflict. Each evening, sit with the other person; each of you should write down three to five things you appreciated about the other person that day. Exchange the lists so each person can read the other’s. Then, at the end of the week, get together and review the list you’ve accumulated that week.

This practice creates what psychologists call a “positive sentiment override”—a mental bank account of goodwill that makes it harder for old grievances to completely take over during conflicts. When someone has a running record of your care and effort, they’re less likely to slip into “you never” and “you always” thinking.

Goodwill Makes Healing Possible

If someone in your life keeps reopening old wounds, remember: you don’t have to let the past dominate the present. Start with empathy. Invite them into solutions. And keep building the goodwill that makes healing possible.

For more practical tools for transforming your relationships, explore the Popcaks’ books at CatholicCounselors.com, including How to Heal Your Marriage & Nurture Lasting Love. Or, for one-on-one support, reach out to one of our pastoral counselors today.

After Trauma, EMDR Therapy Offers Hope for Healing

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“Lucy” is 62 years old, but she is still haunted by the physical and psychological abuse she experienced as a child. Although decades have passed, Lucy continues to experience anxiety, periods of deep depression, panic attacks, and other symptoms.

Most of us will experience a traumatic event at some point in our lives. The U.S. Center for PTSD defines trauma as “a shocking and dangerous event that you see or that happens to you” in which “you think that your life or others’ lives are in danger.” Anyone can experience trauma at any age, and for a wide variety of reasons: bullying at school, a car accident, or conflict with a spouse or acquaintance, for example.

Often, people are able to heal following traumatic events. But in some cases, for reasons that aren’t entirely understood, the traumatic memory gets “walled off,” making it difficult to process—and heal. In this case, the trauma can persist for years or even decades.

God Wants Our Healing

But that isn’t what God wants for us, says Dr. Mark Kolodziej, a certified traumatologist with the Pastoral Solutions Institute.

“God wants us all to enjoy our lives,” he said in a recent interview. He tells new patients who suffer from past traumas that whatever happened to them was not their fault, nor was it a punishment from God, nor do they need to carry the pain to be “good” Christians. “God doesn’t want us to be stuck in this negative place in our lives.”

With God’s help and a cooperative attitude, most individuals suffering from trauma do get better. But it doesn’t “just happen,” Kolodziej said. “Time doesn’t heal anything,” he said. “It’s what you do in that time that’s going to heal things.”

And with the advent of a relatively new type of therapy, healing can be achieved fairly quickly—sometimes, in just a few sessions, he said.

EMDR Therapy: Breaking Down Walls

Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) is a specialized form of cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) designed to help individuals process and heal from traumatic memories. Developed by Dr. Francine Shapiro in 1989, EMDR emerged from a theory that the brain processes and stores traumatic memories differently from normal memories. This difference can cause these memories to become walled off from the rest of the brain, leading to ongoing psychological and emotional distress.

During a traumatic event, the brain’s usual networking of memories and sensory experiences can go “offline,” leaving these memories unprocessed. This unprocessed trauma can manifest in various forms, such as anxiety, depression, PTSD, and other trauma-related conditions. The goal of EMDR is to help the brain reprocess these traumatic memories so that they no longer exert a harmful influence on a person’s life.

EMDR therapy does not require the patient to discuss the traumatic event in detail. Instead, the therapy leverages the brain’s capacity to reprocess memories through bilateral stimulation, most commonly achieved through guided eye movements, though other methods like tapping or auditory stimuli—first on one side of the body, then on the other—can also be used.

At the beginning of an EMDR session, Dr. Kolodziej asks the individual to identify a negative thought or emotion that is bothering them, such as anxiety or shame. Then he asks the person to complete a sentence associated with that negative feeling: “I am….”

“And the person will often say, ‘I am a loser,’ ‘I am afraid,’ ‘I am worthless.’ So that is your negative thought,” he said.

Then he asks the person to “float back” in their memory to the point in their life when those negative thoughts started, or to their worst instances. That’s the starting point for reprocessing the traumatic memory.

Next, he asks the person to identify a positive thought they would rather have associated with that feeling. “So right now your negative cognition is ‘I’m not worthwhile.’ ‘I’m a loser,’ right? So what would you like to change that to?” he said. “And they might say, ‘I have a lot to offer’ or ‘I am valuable’ or ‘I am strong.’ Okay, so that’s what you’d like to get to…. So now let’s let your brain work.”

This is where the “bilateral stimulation” comes in. For 20 to 30 seconds, the person follows Kolodziej’s finger without moving their head as he moves it across their field of vision, from left to right and back again several times. This stimulates the right side of the brain, then the left side of the brain, allowing it to more effectively reprocess the traumatic memory—breaking through the protective wall.

During bilateral stimulation, the person lets their thoughts flow in whatever direction seems best. The person might go into more detail about their trauma, or they might go to a completely different place. In either case, by bringing in new thoughts, “they’re reprocessing what happened and coming up with ways of being able to deal with it and cope with it,” Kolodziej said.

At the end of the bilateral stimulation, he asks the person what they are thinking or feeling. Then the whole process starts over again: naming the negative thought, the positive “replacement” thought, and the bilateral stimulation.

“They come up with another thought, and another thought, and another thought,” Kolodziej said. “I’ll have no idea where the thought process is gonna go, but what’s happening as they’re going from one thought to the next thought to the next thought, is they’re no longer stuck.”

‘Healing Can Absolutely Happen’

Over time, as the person’s brain continues to reprocess the memory, the emotional intensity associated with it diminishes. Kolodziej describes this as moving from the stage of having a “wound” to having a “scar”—a memory that no longer hijacks the present and is instead a part of the past.

EMDR is not the only way to address trauma; in certain situations, it may not even be the most appropriate method. But EMDR therapy has been widely embraced by mainstream health organizations, including the American Psychiatric Association (APA), the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and the World Health Organization (WHO).

Whatever approach people take, Kolodziej said the most important step is to have hope that healing is possible. For those who doubt, Kolodziej offers a message of encouragement: “What if you could heal? What would that look like for you? There are so many people who have suffered like you and have found peace. With God at the helm, healing can absolutely happen.”

If you are dealing with the aftermath of a traumatic event, you can connect with Dr. Mark Kolodziej or Anne Brunette–who are both certified in EMDR–or another one of the licensed Catholic therapists at CatholicCounselors.com.

I Said I Was Sorry–Three Components to An Effective Apology

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Do the apologies you are giving or receiving feel empty? Does it seem like the same things are being apologized for over and over again? This often happens when the apology is just saying the words, “I’m sorry,” rather than actually holding meaning and action.

There are three components that make up an effective apology. These components can be remembered by using the acronym EAR. 

E-Empathy: The offender needs to show that they understand the depth of pain they caused.

A-Accountability: The offender needs to acknowledge that the offended party had a right to expect more from them (i.e., not “I’m sorry you’re so thin-skinned/can’t take a joke/ etc).

R-Restitution: The offender needs to demonstrate that they don’t just want to heal the damage done, but actually make the situation better than it was before by working to find ways and create a plan to prevent the offense from happening again.

Do you need help giving or getting a good apology? Are there people in your life who seem like they can’t follow these steps? Check out these resources:

Pastoral Tele-Counseling

God Help Me! These People Are Driving Me Nuts!

How To Heal Your Marriage & Nurture Lasting Love