Written by: Dr Terence Leong, Senior Consultant Psychiatrist, Promises Healthcare
Translated by: Christian Tan
First published on Wan Bao Fu Kan on 31 May 2020.
“I forgive you.” while on the surface seems to be an innocuous word and easy to say. But in reality, it’s one of the most difficult words to express in our human language. A few years ago, a middle-aged man angrily dragged his 13-year-old son to our clinic, it turned out that Mr Zhang (pseudonym) had discovered his son hiding in a corner of his room smoking, and slapped the boy hard in a fit of anger. Even after being scolded the boy was recalcitrant and didn’t even feel remorseful. In her efforts to appease the situation at home, his wife suggested bringing the son to see a counsellor.
On that day, I happened to walk past the therapy room. I could only hear the loud arguments between the father & son, and loud sobbings of the mom. Just as I stepped into my office, my office phone rang. It was an urgent call from my colleague, the therapist, who alerted that the situation was getting a bit out of hand, and asked for my assistance in the therapy room. Upon arriving at the scene, I could hear the son’s angry retort, “You’ve never loved me since young, why are you trying to control me now? All you’ve ever done was scolding me. So what if I behave myself? Would you even notice?”
It took more than an hour to calm all parties down. After which, I carefully interviewed both Mr Zhang and his son, and I finally got to the root of why the situation had become so tense between father and son.
It wasn’t the 13-year-old boy who had caused the breakdown in their relationship. The issues stem from painful experiences when Mr Zhang was growing up. Mr Zhang had grown up with an abusive father who was not only alcoholic and chain-smoked, who often vented his anger on his wife and children. As a result, Mr Zhang made a vow from young to never touch alcohol and cigarettes. Unfortunately, his demeanour also became very stern with hardly any smile on his face and had high expectations with his own children. Why did it become like this? It was because he had never forgiven his own father. The deeply buried hurts had made him prone to irritability, and thus he didn’t know how to praise or encourage his own child, and only knew strict discipline as his way of bringing up his child. Moreover, his biggest worry had been over his child coming into contact with alcohol and tobacco.
Mrs Zhang explained, her husband was a good man, but was a man of few words, and was not good in expressing his feelings. She knew that he really cares about the child, but it was a pity that communication was poor between the father and son. As a result of a craving for his father’s love and experiencing scolding and punishment from young, the boy had grown to become more rebellious in recent years.
In fact, Mr Zhang’s father had quit smoking and drinking for many years. However, as a result of the poor relationship between Mr Zhang and his father coupled with a break in communications for more than a decade. Mr Zhang couldn’t come to terms with my conclusion initially. But for the sake of his own son, he finally agreed to receive counselling. After several months, he finally understood the root cause. He asked me, “I’ve finally understood that the root cause of my frustrations was the unresolved anger and hatred towards my own father, but what should I do after so many years?”
Fortunately, one day his mother decided to visit their grandson together with his father. Although he felt embarrassed initially, Mr Zhang struck up his courage, squarely faced his dad and said: “I forgive you.” This simple yet miraculous sentence seemed to untie the knots of anger and hurts between Mr Zhang and his father. From that day onwards, Mr Zhang began to smile more frequently face and he could finally express his love fully to his son. As a result, his son stopped being rebellious. Not only did he stop smoking, but also paid more attention to his studies.
As a psychiatrist, I’m truly happy for this family and admire Mr Zhang’s courage in forgiving his own father. They continued with counselling for some time, and finally mended their father and son relationship that was formerly broken.
Therefore, forgiving others is also giving ourselves a chance to receive complete healing.
