To forgive something means to have a complete recollection of a negative event but no negative emotion associated with that memory.
the words forgive and forget are very close and related they come from the same Germanic root, the difference between them is that whenever you forget you have no memory of a certain event and no emotions, whenever you forgive you still fold that memory often with a lot of details but you have no negative emotion associated with it.
If you experience something negative in the past you will feel a negatively charged emotion about that event whenever you remember it, until it will no longer be relevant. Whenever that experience from the past has no longer a negative influence on you in the present, you can finally move on and let that piece of your history in the past.
Because emotions are involuntary, you can't chose what to feel and when to feel, forgiveness needs to be earned, by the person that is responsible. It is not enough to state that you forgive yourself or someone else, that statement has no value if it doesn't mach the emotions and the action of the guilty party.
Often forgiveness is made to be the essential part of therapy, it is presented as the absolute essential process that needs to take place in order for the person who is suffering to be able to move on. This makes people a little rushed to accept insincere apologies and relapse back in to old habits or dysfunctional relationships.
If forgiveness is not earned it is actually not forgiveness just the illusion of it, in order to earn your forgiveness towards your self or someone else. First if it is at all possible, for the person that it is guilty to offer retribution, second you need to be sure that necessary steps are going to be implemented in order to prevent future re-injury.
This two steps makes that negative experience an obsolete threat to the present, so there is no longer a need to pay any extra attention to it.
If you are in a situation where you have to forgive yourself, you are fully responsible of your action and earning your forgiveness. If someone else wronged you, the person who wronged you is responsible to earn your forgiveness.
When the other person it is not particularly interested in taking the necessary steps to earn your forgiveness, it is still possible to forgive it, but it is incredibly pathological to continue a relationship with a person that it is going to continue to hurt you.
Actually continuing that relationship is going to make it impossible to forgive, because the threat it is very real and present, for ass long as you are still in any danger caused by the person that you are trying to forgive, it makes it impossible to forgive.
