Introduction

I have been thinking about forgiveness lately.

Not forgiveness in the abstract, but the way we have come to position it as an almost inevitable destination in the healing process.

We hear that we need to forgive in order to move forward. Resentment, we are told, keeps us tethered to the past, while holding onto anger gives another person continued power over our lives.

I understand the wisdom behind those ideas. I also think they deserve closer examination.

There are things in my own life I have forgiven; experiences I can look back on with greater perspective, relationships I understand differently now, and grievances that once occupied far more emotional space than they do today.

Other things I have not forgiven.

And somewhere along the way, I began questioning whether I needed to. This began to change the way I thought about healing.

What if forgiveness is one possible outcome of healing rather than evidence that healing has occurred? Could acceptance, boundaries, understanding, meaning-making, and emotional freedom exist even when forgiveness does not?

Perhaps a more revealing question I could share is not whether I have forgiven what happened to me, but how much authority I am still willing to give it over the life I am living now.

DAY ONE: An Invitation to Explore with Me: You Don’t Have to Forgive Everything to Heal

For much of my life, I understood healing in a fairly conventional way.

Something happens. We experience it, process it, and eventually, if we have done the emotional work, we forgive and move forward.

It is an appealing narrative because it gives pain an endpoint.

Human beings rarely organize themselves quite so neatly.

The older I become, the less convinced I am that every painful experience needs to arrive at forgiveness in order to reach some form of resolution.

Certain experiences have changed me. They have altered the way I understand trust, relationships, boundaries, loyalty, vulnerability, and even myself.

I cannot return to the person I was before them, nor am I certain that returning should ever have been the objective.

Psychological healing is different from restoring something to its original condition. We absorb experiences into the larger architecture of who we are. Ideally, we learn from them without allowing them to become the entirety of our story.

When I consider the things I have not forgiven, I no longer automatically interpret their existence as “unfinished emotional work”.

I find myself more interested in what healing might look like without requiring absolution.

DAY TWO: What Do We Actually Mean by Forgiveness?

The more I considered forgiveness, the more I realized how much we ask one word to contain.

When someone tells me I should forgive, what exactly are they suggesting?

Am I being asked to relinquish anger or resentment? Perhaps forgiveness means developing enough understanding to see why someone behaved as they did. For others, it may involve compassion, releasing the desire for accountability, restoring a relationship, or eventually reaching a place where what happened no longer carries the same emotional significance.

Those are entirely different psychological and relational processes.

I can understand why someone behaved a certain way and still believe their behavior was unacceptable.

Recognizing the experiences that shaped another person does not require me to assume responsibility for what they chose to do with them.

Compassion for someone’s humanity can coexist with the decision that they no longer belong within the intimate boundaries of my life.

Understanding is not the same as excusing, and compassion does not require access.

DAY THREE: Acceptance Has Become More Interesting to Me Than Forgiveness

I have become increasingly interested in acceptance.

Not the passive version that asks us to tolerate what should never have been tolerated. I mean the psychological acceptance of reality.

Something happened that I wish had been different. Perhaps it should have been different. But it wasn’t.

There is something powerful about no longer requiring the past to change before giving ourselves permission to inhabit the present.

For me, that feels different from forgiveness.

Acceptance does not require rehabilitating someone’s behavior in my mind or creating a more comfortable interpretation of what occurred.

It allows me to stop negotiating with reality.

And sometimes that is enough.

DAY FOUR: Anger Is Not Always Evidence That We Are Stuck

I think we have an uncomfortable relationship with anger, particularly within conversations about healing and personal growth.

Its continued presence is often interpreted as evidence that someone has not moved on.

I am no longer sure that is always true.

Anger can carry information. It may tell us that a boundary was violated, something we valued was disregarded, trust was broken, or an experience crossed a line we now understand more clearly.

Jungian psychology offers an interesting way of looking at this.

Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow asks us to examine the parts of ourselves that do not fit comfortably within the identity we have constructed.

For those of us who value compassion, emotional intelligence, personal growth, or the ability to understand multiple perspectives, anger can be particularly inconvenient. It may conflict with the person we believe we should be.

We can find ourselves moving toward forgiveness before we have listened carefully to what the anger is communicating.

Perhaps we explain what happened, contextualize someone’s behavior, search for meaning, or work hard to see the other person’s perspective. Any of those things may offer insight.

Yet there are moments when the most psychologically honest sentence is considerably simpler:

What happened was not okay with me.

I have learned that I can allow that sentence to exist without building a permanent home inside the anger surrounding it.

Maybe integration looks something like that.

The emotion gets acknowledged. I listen to what it has to tell me. Then I decide what I want to do with what I now know.

DAY FIVE: Forgiveness Can Become Another Measure of How Well We Are Healing

One thing I find increasingly interesting about contemporary wellness culture is how easily personal growth can become another form of achievement.

There is always another part of ourselves to understand, another pattern to recognize, a trigger to regulate, a wound to examine, or a relationship we believe needs resolution.

I believe deeply in personal growth. Much of my life’s work revolves around curiosity about the human experience and our capacity to become more conscious participants in our own lives.

At the same time, I am wary of turning healing into another standard we are expected to meet.

Forgiveness can become part of that standard.

Before long, we may find ourselves evaluating whether we have sufficiently processed an experience, released the resentment, evolved beyond the anger, or arrived at the compassion we associate with emotional maturity.

These days I find myself leaning into a different question:

Do I genuinely feel called toward forgiveness, or have I absorbed the idea that a healed person is supposed to forgive?

Through my lens, those are two very different things.

There is no universal timetable for making peace with experiences that changed us, and I am not convinced there is a particular emotional posture that proves the work has been completed.

DAY SIX: Boundaries Can Be Part of Healing Too

There have been relationships in my life that I understand far better from a distance.

Seeing the humanity of another person can become easier when I am no longer continually exposed to the behavior that caused the injury.

It has changed the way I think about boundaries.

A boundary does not necessarily mean I am angry, just as distance does not automatically indicate bitterness. Choosing not to restore a relationship is not evidence that I remain psychologically trapped inside what happened.

Sometimes distance is simply information put into practice.

I know something now that I did not know before, about the other person, the relationship, and myself.

Why wouldn’t that knowledge inform the decisions I make next?

Reconciliation also requires more than my willingness to heal. Accountability, changed behavior, honesty, repair, and the gradual reconstruction of trust may all be necessary.

Those conditions are not always available. And I don’t believe my ability to heal should depend entirely upon whether another person is capable of providing them.

DAY SEVEN: A More Holistic Understanding of Healing

Holistic well-being has influenced how I think about all of this because we are not only cognitive beings.

Something can make complete intellectual sense while our emotional life remains unsettled. Understanding someone’s behavior does not necessarily resolve grief. Anger can recede while a boundary remains firmly in place. The body may continue responding to an experience long after the mind has developed a coherent explanation for it.

Compassion and caution can occupy the same psychological space. And I’m finding that I have become more comfortable with these apparent contradictions.

Healing takes place across many dimensions of being human: emotional, relational, physical, intellectual, social, spiritual, and existential.; keeping in mind they do not necessarily move together.

The mind may understand long before the emotions catch up. A relationship may be over even though compassion remains. The body can remember what our conscious mind has already placed in context.

I no longer expect every part of myself to arrive at exactly the same conclusion.

What interests me more is whether I can make room for the complexity without feeling compelled to resolve every contradiction.

What Psychological Freedom Means to Me

These days, when I think about healing, I am less interested in whether I have reached the correct emotional destination.

I am interested in freedom.

For me, that means being able to remember without continually reliving. It means establishing boundaries without organizing an entire life around defense. Anger can be present without directing my choices, while difficult experiences can be acknowledged for how they changed me without defining everything that came afterward.

Most importantly, I want to know whether I can continue creating a meaningful life that becomes larger than what hurt me.

Those questions tell me far more about healing than whether I can say, I forgive you.

There are things I may eventually forgive. Others may remain outside forgiveness entirely.

I am comfortable leaving room for both. And I no longer believe healing requires me to transform every painful experience into compassion for the person responsible.

Understanding may be enough in one circumstance. Another may require accepting what cannot be changed. There may be grief that deserves room to exist or a boundary that needs to remain exactly where it is.

Over time, something that once occupied an enormous amount of emotional space can become one chapter within a much larger life.

I consider that healing too.

Jungian Coaching Reflection

When I bring a Jungian lens to forgiveness, I find myself less interested in whether we should forgive and more curious about what our relationship with forgiveness may uncover.

Perhaps there is an identity we are protecting when we insist that we are fine. Certain emotions may feel incompatible with the person we believe ourselves to be. At times, compassion can even provide a way around anger when anger feels too uncomfortable to acknowledge.

I also wonder how often being understanding requires us to abandon our own perspective.

Hummm…here is a question I keep coming back to:

What would I actually feel if I stopped trying to feel what I believe I should?

I don’t think there is a universally correct answer.

Forgiveness may emerge. Anger might still have something to communicate. Beneath either one, there may be grief, disappointment, betrayal, or something we have not yet found language for.

I would rather know what is genuinely there than force myself toward an emotional conclusion simply because I have learned to associate it with healing.

Pause. Notice. Choose.

I still believe in forgiveness, and I have experienced its capacity to release emotional weight and change the way I relate to the past.

I simply no longer believe it should be compulsory.

Some experiences may eventually be forgiven. Others may become understood, accepted, grieved, integrated, and placed where they belong, in the past.

Perhaps that is enough.

Because the question I return to now is not:

Have I forgiven everything that hurt me?

It is:

Does what happened still get to determine who I become next?

That is the kind of healing that interests me now.

I want a life in which the past can be acknowledged without being granted permanent authority. There should be room for boundaries alongside compassion, anger alongside understanding, and memory alongside possibility.

Forgiveness may become part of that life, but I no longer need it to prove that I have healed.

How about you?

All images courtesy of WanderKin Photography. All rights reserved.

A Note About These Reflections

The Becoming Series explores the inner architecture of who we are through Jungian psychology, holistic well-being, and reflective self-inquiry.

Through My Lens offers a more personal perspective within that exploration—an opportunity for me to examine the questions, experiences, and evolving ideas that have shaped my own understanding of what it means to become more fully ourselves.

These reflections are educational and contemplative in nature and are not a substitute for psychotherapy, medical care, or individualized mental health treatment.

Introduction

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we continue exploring the internal narratives that influence how we understand ourselves and our lives.

In the previous reflection, we considered how these stories gradually develop through experience. Over time, the meanings we assign to events can become internal narratives that quietly guide our expectations, decisions, and relationships.

The encouraging reality is that awareness of these narratives can open the door to new possibilities.

When we begin to notice the stories we carry, we also begin to recognize that they are not fixed or permanent. They can evolve as our understanding of ourselves grows.

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Introduction

I have always been drawn to people who seem entirely comfortable being themselves.

Not necessarily the most standout personalities in the room. Not the most successful, fashionable, accomplished, or conventionally confident.

I mean the people who seem unmistakably their own.

Iris Apfel fascinated me for this reason. So did Bill Cunningham.

Neither appeared particularly interested in making themselves easier for the world to categorize. Her clothing and accessories and his photography was certainly part of what made them recognizable, but I think what interested me was something underneath the layers.

There was an authorship to the way they lived.

Their individuality did not feel constructed for attention. It seemed to emerge from years of paying attention to things that interested them, what delighted them, and that which felt authentic enough to retain.

I recognize something of myself in that.

I have spent much of my life walking to the beat of my own drum. And the older I become, the less interested I am in apologizing for it. ….though I’m not sure I was ever one to apologize for it in the first place.

Here’s an interesting psychological question beneath the familiar advice to be yourself.

Who, exactly, is the self we are being asked to be?

In an ideal state, we are continually learning. Relationships, loss, experience, and age change us. New environments reveal qualities we did not know we possessed. Parts of ourselves that once seemed central may become less important, while aspects we barely recognized earlier in life might now be what we lean in to.

If we are always “becoming”, perhaps being ourselves cannot mean remaining the same.

Perhaps becoming comfortable in our own skin has less to do with establishing a permanent identity and more to do with learning how to inhabit the whole of who we are becoming.

This is something I believe sits remarkably close to the heart of Jungian psychology.

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Jungian Psychology: Becoming Comfortable in Your Own Skin

Carl Jung used the term individuation to describe the lifelong psychological process of becoming more fully oneself.

It is sometimes interpreted as a journey toward discovering your “true self,” but that language can make the process sound more fixed than Jung intended.

Individuation is not necessarily about locating one authentic person buried underneath everything else.

It is a process of becoming increasingly conscious of the complexity already within us.

We have the person we learned to present socially, the persona, and qualities that have remained outside our preferred identity, the shadow. Alongside them are contradictions, desires, values, fears, capacities, memories, instincts, roles, relationships, and possibilities that do not always mesh cohesively together.

And life continues adding material, this makes the familiar instruction to just be yourself somewhat complicated.

Which version?

The person you were at twenty? The one your family knows? The professional or private self?

And what about the person you have already been compared with the person who may only now be emerging?

Jung’s work offers another possibility.

We do not necessarily have to choose.

Psychological maturity can involve developing enough awareness to recognize that different aspects of ourselves can belong to one human life.

Some will evolve or eventually be outgrown. Certain qualities may remain remarkably consistent across decades, while others appear only when circumstances finally give them room to emerge.

The goal is not to arrive at one single self, it is to have greater consciousness of what belongs to us.

This may be one reason individuality can become more freeing with age.

When I look at someone like Iris Apfel, I do not see a woman who woke up one morning and decided who she was.

I see accumulation: decades of preferences, curiosity, travel, taste, experience, experimentation, along with countless things embraced and discarded along the way.

The oversized glasses, extraordinary jewelry, layers of color and texture eventually became recognizable signatures, but what made them compelling was the human being who had spent a lifetime developing the confidence to trust her own eye.

Bill Cunningham embodied individuality differently.

His blue work jacket, bicycle, camera, and apparent indifference to status became part of his public identity. Yet his distinctiveness seemed rooted in something deeper than appearance. He knew what interested him and organized much of his life around paying attention to it.

Two radically different people, each still unmistakably themselves.

Becoming more fully ourselves does not require becoming more eccentric, expressive, adventurous, or unconventional. Those are still identities we could adopt because we believe they signify authenticity.

The deeper work is learning to recognize our own inclinations without immediately filtering them through the question of whether they make sense to everyone else.

From a holistic well-being perspective, identity influences far more than how we describe ourselves.

It shapes the environments we choose, the relationships we cultivate, and the boundaries we establish. It influences how we use our bodies and our time, what we create, what we tolerate, and where we experience vitality or disconnection from our own lives.

There can be considerable psychological effort involved in maintaining a version of ourselves that is no longer consistent with where our life has taken us.

We may continue occupying roles that once served us or carry identities built around other people’s expectations. Interests can be dismissed because they seem impractical, while qualities that complicate the person everyone has come to expect remain unexplored.

We can even mistake familiarity for authenticity simply because we have been a certain way for a very long time.

Individuation asks us to remain curious about all of it.

We can begin noticing what still feels genuinely ours, what has become habit, and what we may only now be discovering.

You might notice questions like these arising during periods of change.

A relocation or new relationship can alter the context in which we understand ourselves. So can a career transition, significant loss, illness, creative pursuit, or simply growing older. Experiences that interrupt familiar roles can also interrupt familiar assumptions about who we are.

When familiar roles loosen, other dimensions of the self sometimes become easier to see.

Perhaps this is one reason becoming comfortable in our own skin is not something we accomplish once.

Our understanding of ourselves has to remain spacious enough for the person living inside it to continue developing.

Jungian Coaching Reflection

Consider the version of yourself you currently recognize as you.

• Where did that understanding come from?

• Which qualities feel genuinely chosen, and which were reinforced because they helped you belong, succeed, remain safe, or meet expectations?

Now consider the parts of yourself that have become more visible over the past several years.

Your interests may have changed. Your tolerance for certain environments may be different. Priorities can reorganize themselves as experience gives us new information about what we find meaningful.

You may care less about something that once defined you and considerably more about something you previously dismissed.

Rather than asking whether these changes mean you are becoming a different person, consider another possibility:

• They may be revealing more of the person you already contain.

You might also think about the people who fascinate you. Not simply people you admire, but those whose way of inhabiting the world catches your attention.

• What draws you toward them?

Perhaps it is their independence, their curiosity, or the freedom with which they express themselves. Maybe they seem unusually comfortable trusting their own judgment even when other people do not understand it.

Sometimes what attracts us in another person can offer information about qualities we value, including qualities we may be ready to give greater expression in ourselves.

But ultimately, this reflection returns to you.

Perhaps the invitation is to begin by becoming more intentionally interested in your own complexity. To notice where an old understanding of yourself still fits and where it has become too narrow for the life you are living now. There may be qualities you have carried forward for decades, others you have outgrown, and aspects of yourself that could only become visible through the particular experiences that brought you here.

Keep in mind that Jung’s concept of individuation gives us a way to hold all of this without demanding a final answer to the question, Who am I?

The answer is allowed to remain alive.

You can know yourself deeply without reducing yourself to a definition, and honor what has been consistent while allowing experience to revise what no longer feels true. You can also discover something new about yourself without treating the person you were before as somehow less authentic.

Perhaps that is what it means to become comfortable in your own skin.

No “ah ha” of certainty about who you are, but a growing capacity to recognize yourself across change. To trust what you know, remain curious about what you do not, and allow your understanding of yourself to become more expansive as your life does.

Being yourself, then, is not a commitment to remain who you have always been. It is a commitment to remain in honest relationship with the whole person you are becoming.

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A Reflection to Sit With

Perhaps becoming comfortable in your own skin does not mean finally deciding who you are.

Maybe it means becoming increasingly willing to meet yourself as you continue to change.

There are qualities worth carrying forward, others we eventually outgrow, and parts of ourselves that may take years before we are ready to recognize or express them.

Contradiction can belong alongside growth. History can coexist with possibility. The person you once were does not have to disappear for someone more expansive to emerge.

The goal is not to aim for a “final version of you”, remembering that from a Jungian perspective, that may be precisely the point.

Individuation is a lifelong conversation between the person we have been, the person we understand ourselves to be, and the person still becoming.

So perhaps the invitation is larger than be yourself.

Maybe it’s to know yourself well enough to keep becoming yourself.

Introduction

In these reflections, we explore the inner patterns that quietly shape how we think, feel, and move through the world through the lens of Jungian psychology, holistic well-being, and self-awareness.

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we explore the internal narratives that gradually form over time and influence how we interpret our experiences.

Carl Jung believed that human beings are natural storytellers. We constantly interpret events, relationships, and challenges in ways that help us make sense of our lives. Over time, these interpretations can become quiet narratives that influence how we see ourselves and the world around us.

Understanding these internal stories can be an important part of developing deeper awareness and meaning.

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A warm welcome from me, Erica Schwarting Harrison.

This is an Inner Session.

There’s nothing to solve here, just space to notice.

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Introduction

In these reflections, we explore the inner patterns that shape how we think, feel, and move through the world through the lens of Jungian psychology, holistic well-being, and self-awareness.

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we explore the difference between reacting automatically and responding with greater awareness.

Carl Jung believed that psychological growth often begins when we become conscious of patterns that once operated automatically. The more aware we become of our inner responses, the more freedom we have in how we choose to engage with the world around us.

This growing awareness is closely connected to two important dimensions of well-being: self-regulation and resilience.

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Introduction

In these reflections, we explore the inner patterns that quietly shape how we think, feel, and move through the world through the lens of Jungian psychology, holistic well-being, and self-awareness.

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we explore why certain moments can feel emotionally larger than the situation itself might seem to warrant.

Carl Jung observed that strong emotional reactions often serve as psychological signals. Rather than being random or irrational, these moments can sometimes point toward deeper patterns within the psyche that are asking for attention.

Understanding these reactions can become an important part of developing emotional awareness.

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Introduction

In these reflections, we explore the inner patterns that quietly shape how we think, feel, and move through the world through the lens of Jungian psychology, holistic well-being, and self-awareness.

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we explore a psychological dynamic Carl Jung called projection. Projection refers to the ways we sometimes see qualities in others that also exist within our own psychological landscape, often outside our conscious awareness.

These moments can reveal something meaningful about the relationship we have with parts of ourselves we have not yet fully recognized or integrated.

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A warm welcome from me, Erica Schwarting Harrison.

This is an Inner Session.

There’s nothing to solve here, just space to notice.

Read more

Introduction

In these reflections, we explore the inner patterns that quietly shape how we think, feel, and move through the world, through the lens of Jungian psychology, holistic well-being, and self-awareness.

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we will explore the concept Jung called the “shadow.” The shadow refers to the parts of ourselves that remain outside of our conscious identity, qualities, emotions, or impulses we have learned to hide, suppress, or disown over time.

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Introduction

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we will explore what happens when the persona, the role we present to the world, becomes heavier than it was meant to be. While the persona helps us navigate society and build connection, constantly performing competence or strength can eventually become emotionally exhausting.

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A warm welcome from me, Erica Schwarting Harrison.

This is an Inner Session.

There’s nothing to solve here. Only space to notice.

Read more

Introduction

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we will explore the “persona”, the self we present to the world. Through a Jungian lens, the persona is not something false or deceptive. Rather, it is a natural social adaptation that helps us navigate relationships, communities, and the expectations of the environments we move through each day.

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Introduction

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we will explore how to recognize which inner voice is speaking in moments of decision or uncertainty. Not every thought carries the same wisdom. Some arise from fear. Others are shaped by past conditioning, intuition, or a deeper sense of perspective formed through lived experience.

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A warm welcome from me, Erica Schwarting Harrison.

This is an Inner Session.

There’s nothing to solve here, just space to notice.

Read more

Introduction

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we will explore why the mind often feels like it contains multiple inner voices. Through a Jungian lens, this lends itself to pause, and shines a light on something asking to be noticed. It reflects the natural complexity of the psyche and the many perspectives that develop within us as we learn to navigate life.

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Introduction

In this Jungian Coaching reflection, we will explore an important distinction within our inner dialogue; the difference between constructive reflection and internal hostility. While both may appear after mistakes or setbacks, one supports growth and learning, while the other subtly erodes confidence and emotional resilience.

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