Atheism and forgiveness

[Angrboda]

I just try to understand people, because maybe they had a dark past too?

It's been my observation that people will often seek to understand another person's behavior on the premise that if they understand their reasoning and motives, it will either negate the feelings, or make them more managable or easily resolved. In my experience, this doesn't pan out, though I'm not altogether sure of why off the top of my head. Part is I'm sure due to the inability of our reasoning centers to influence our emotional responses, and part is that an emotion once triggered really needs to play itself out, in which case understanding your own emotions might be of more use than understanding theirs. Moreover, it can lead to dysfunctional defenses when you substitute understanding for reacting, try to distance yourself from the feelings, or distract yourself with walls of rationalization (psychoanalyzing, philosophizing, speculating) which make it harder rather than easier to manage and resolve the feelings. (Not to mention, when most people psychoanalyze others, they're doing so incompetently, and in the process 'objectifying' the other in a way which I, personally, consider harmful.)