Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Self-healing and Peace-making

NYAM Fellow Dr. Ani Kalayjian is a pioneering therapist; educator, director, and author who has devoted her life to studying the impact of trauma and helping others heal.

On December 1, NYAM invited Dr. Kalayjian to speak about her new book, Forgiveness and Reconciliation, as part of the ongoing Author Night series. The book addresses forgiveness and reconciliation as coping mechanisms to move beyond the negative effects of trauma on individuals, couples, families, and communities.

In her deeply moving talk, Dr. Kalayjian recounted her personal history of trauma and how it has shaped her professional goals. Her parents were survivors of the 1915 Ottoman Turkish Genocide of the Armenians, which wiped out two-thirds of the Armenian people, and she grew up experiencing the effects of trauma through her parents' suffering. She also spoke of growing up in war-torn Syria, experiencing gender inequality, facing discrimination in the U.S. after immigrating here at age 15, receiving a death threat in Turkey when speaking about the genocide at a conference, and suffering the loss of her best friend, who was shot by Turkish extremists in 2007.

She also described the lasting effects of the genocide on the Armenian community in her research (two decades ago) in Turkey: “Seventy-five years later, 75% of genocide survivors are afraid to talk about it,” she said. Complicating the matter, “there have been 96 years of Turkish government denial.”
Overwhelmed by the seemingly impossible task of confronting this legacy of trauma, Dr. Kalayjian found a source of inspiration in Victor Frankl, the Austrian neurologist and psychiatrist who was also a Holocaust survivor. When she took a class with him in 1989, a piece of advice he offered stayed with her and ultimately influenced her work: “You have to help them forgive.”

When the products of conflict smolder for years, decades, or centuries, the idea of peace may seem elusive and unrealistic. At the same time, Dr. Kalayjian argues in her book, people and societies need to move beyond these negative traumatic effects so they can heal—and forgiveness is an important part of this process.

“Forgiveness is shifting from the automatic ego reaction—of anger and self-protection, hurting back the other—to a non-reactive conscious response of empathy and compassion,” Dr. Kalayjian explained. Learning to think this way about past trauma is a way of “giving care to yourself and the world, going on with life.”
Dr. Kalayjian expelled many of the myths that exist around forgiveness, including the idea of “forgive and forget” and the beliefs that “forgiving will set the enemy free,” “forgiving will hurt those who died,” “there will be no justice,” and “I will no longer be a victim.” She clarified that her definition of forgiveness means “not forgiving the act itself, but forgiving the person who was not mindful of what they did.”

“Forgiving is a choice, a shift in perception,” Dr. Kalayjian said. Ultimately, she said, forgiveness can serve as “a source of personal freedom.” She has found an integrative model to help guide people into the practice of forgiveness. This model is called the 7-step, Biopsychosocial and Eco-Spiritual Model used in over 30 calamities around the world, as well as in NYC with inner city school children, with LGBT groups in the Bronx, and in monthly empowerment groups for all who want to work through and transform their anger, ancestral pain and humiliation into meaning-making.

Forgiveness and Reconciliation reaches across the spectrum of approaches—socio-psychological, biopsychological, therapeutic, developmental, and spiritual among them—to offer examples of intervention at the individual, community, generational, and national levels. This inclusiveness (and a range of real-world illustrations from U.S. race relations to the Armenian genocide) gives readers access to not only the core issues of forgiveness and the dialogic nature of reconciliation, but also the intersecting psychological and social processes involved as they affect all participants in conflict.

Dr. Kalayjian is a Board Certified Expert in Traumatic Stress, a psychology Professor, a Registered Nurse, a community organizer, humanitarian, international researcher and a Logotherapeutic Psychotherapist in private practice. She has been a UN representative for over two decades, holding a variety of leadership positions. Dr. Kalayjian is the founder and president of the Association for Trauma Outreach & Prevention (ATOP) of Meaningfulworld.com, a not-for-profit charitable organization affiliated with the United Nations. She has organized and led humanitarian psychosocial missions around the globe in over 30 calamities both natural and human-made. She has received an Honorary Doctor of Science Degree from LIU, as well as the ANA Human Rights Award and the Teachers College Columbia University Outstanding Alumni of the year Award. She has been actively representing integrative health and trauma psychosocial recovery in media, newsprint, and radio.

 Print   Subscribe

Posted on December 2, 2011

Contact:
Andrew J. Martin
Director of Communications
The New York Academy of Medicine
1216 Fifth Avenue
New York, New York 10029
212-822-7285
amartin@nyam.org

More NYAM News Articles