Forgiveness in food addiction recovery is essential I would think on many levels. I was watching my local PBS TV station last week and they ran an hour-long program on Dr. Fred Luskin’s program at Stanford University called the Forgiveness Project. Now the folks featured in the program have had some seriously bad things happen to them to say the least. Nothing in my life approaches what happened to these folks. These folks had plenty of good reasons to carry around in life anger, hurt and even rage at what happened to them but those feelings were ruining their lives by their own admission. In spite of knowing these feeling were ruining their lives they could not forgive. Enter Dr. Luskin and his program. Dr. Luskin’s program is now available around the world it is so successful. Here is what you can expect from practicing forgiveness according to Dr. Luskin’s website:
“The practice of forgiveness has been shown to reduce anger, hurt depression and stress and leads to greater feelings of hope, peace, compassion and self confidence. Practicing forgiveness leads to healthy relationships as well as physical health. It also influences our attitude which opens the heart to kindness, beauty, and love.”
Now that sounds like something everyone would want. I do know I have had positive results with forgiveness in my life and they were not big things. I do know many food addicts may be better off practicing forgiveness in food addiction recovery since they have been victims of abuse of various kinds in their childhood for example. Check out Dr. Luskin’s website for the nine steps of forgiveness and see if they can be helpful in your life. We all have small things to forgive in life and these steps help even for the “little things” in life.