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A great deal of therapeutic effort goes into struggling with anger and resentment, because this unfinished business causes so much difficultyboth for the person who has it and for other family members, friends, and associates. All of us can think of people who spend much of their time preoccupied with old hurts and injuries, interfering with their ongoing relationships and preventing them from getting on with their lives. How often have you wished that there were a quick and easy way to help a someone give up this preoccupation with the dead past and refocus on present and future living?
In a fascinating and elegant videotape made in 1986 (5), family therapist Virginia Satir demonstrated that it is possible to resolve long-lasting resentment quickly. Linda, the 39-year-old client, started with great anger and resentment toward her mother. But at the end of the 80-minute session she feels only love and compassion, and says, I think you're right that I won't ever be able to look at my mother in the same way again. I feel clearer, and much more loving. I'm in love with everyone in the room. In a three-year follow-up interview, Linda goes into great detail about how well she got along with her mother after the session. At one point she says, In fact, I felt like I was her best friend, which was really something I would never ever have said before.
Some might be tempted to dismiss this as only a single case, that it was a result of Virginia's consummate skill, impossible for ordinary therapists to emulate, or that Virginia got lucky, and that Linda was an easy client. But although Linda was cooperative, she was a very tough client, as a careful review of the videotape will show. At one point Virginia says to Linda, One of the things I sense about you is that you have a highly-developed ability to stand firm on things. (How's that for a reframe of being stubborn?)
Another way to think about this session is that Virginia showed us that it is possible to deal with a client's long-standing resentment in a very short time, and then go on to wonder, What are the crucial elements in her work that could be discovered, tested, and taught to others? About ten years ago, my wife Connirae and I, along with participants in an advanced modeling seminar, discovered the essential components in the process of reaching forgiveness, and developed a pattern, or experiential recipe, for teaching people how to do this.
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