In this post, you’ll learn how to forgive.
So forgiveness can be a really challenging subject. On the one hand, forgiving someone can be a powerful path to emotional freedom. But on the other hand, the word forgiveness is often used in a way that’s hurtful or harmful for victims of abuse.
So in this video, I hope to take a nuanced and thoughtful approach to the ways that forgiveness can be helpful for those who’ve experienced abuse or trauma, but also to really clarify for those who might be encouraging others to forgive, how this concept can be misused, mistimed, or misunderstood. And this video is not going to be like a religious perspective on forgiveness, it’s a therapeutic perspective.
Let's Start With A Story
But first, a story. I grew up in a religious home, a religious culture. I’m still actively religious, so the concept of forgiveness has been taught to me very regularly.
But one day I had an experience that completely changed my perspective on it. I had a gap year prior to my master’s degree in therapy and I was volunteering at a local sexual assault domestic violence shelter. And we had a week long training on how to answer the phones when people called in needing help.
And as part of that training, the presenter put forth a story that was something along these lines. She said, a 50-year-old man calls in saying he was sexually abused as a child, and now he wants support dealing with it. What would you say to him? Now no one else in the room really said anything, so I offered up the best thing I could think of.
I said I would talk with him about how to forgive. And I was shocked when the trainer very emphatically said, “No, this is super important. You should never tell someone to forgive when they’re a victim of abuse.” Now, I was shocked, right? First, by how important this was to her, but also by how wrong it seemed.
Wasn’t the problem that he was still upset after 40 years? Wouldn’t forgiveness solve that problem? But I was wrong. I was totally wrong. And I can see that now. Forgiveness can be really healing when the timing is right, but thrusting forgiveness on someone who’s been abused, especially as their first solution, can be really harmful.
And there’s a bunch of reasons for this, including in the example with the phone helpline, I didn’t even know if he was holding resentment. I didn’t take the time to figure out what he really needed. When people have been abused, it’s really common for them to blame themselves instead of the perpetrator.
So telling them to forgive is just telling them one more thing that they’re doing wrong. It essentially piles shame on top of their shame. So we’re adding burdens to victims, we add to their responsibility by even suggesting that they forgive. Of course, the people who do it are well meaning.
They’re trying to help you, but it’s actually hurtful. They may benefit from forgiveness, but it’s not our responsibility to push that upon them. Here’s another reason. Forgiveness might be a great step in the middle of a process of healing, but it’s not, it might not be the first step in healing from abuse.
So we also don’t want to encourage cheap forgiveness as in oh, okay, fine. I forgive you. Instead, we want to encourage people to process their feelings, to create safety and a bunch of other steps as part of the healing process. And then when they’re ready to let go and forgive, forgiveness can be a helpful and healing thing.
I’m not trying to say that forgiveness is bad. I’m trying to say the timing of it and the way we do it matters. So let’s talk about what that healing process might look like and how forgiveness might be a part of that.
Some Misconceptions Around Forgiveness
Okay, so first let’s talk about some misconceptions around forgiveness. Let’s talk about what forgiveness is not. So it’s not saying sorry or waiting for the other person to apologize. It’s not dependent on the other person being remorseful or even being alive. It’s an internal process of freeing yourself from a very heavy shield.
Forgiveness is not condoning their actions. It’s not saying what they did is okay or acceptable. It’s not something we do for the other person. Holding a grudge is sometimes used as a way to emotionally punish someone else for what they did. Withholding forgiveness feels like a power play to hurt the person who hurt us.
And it’s easy to resort to really unhealthy ways of trying to regain power, including trying to use emotional manipulation to try to get other people to change. And sometimes the person we’re upset with doesn’t know or care that we’re withholding forgiveness. And so in the long run, resentment hurts us more than it hurts them. Okay, number four. Forgiveness doesn’t remove consequences or punishments. You can forgive someone while also saying it’s best for you or for our society or for our legal system for you to be behind bars or pay back that money or never get to be around children again. You can forgive someone without removing the consequences.
Five. Forgiveness is not reconciliation. It does not require you to let the person back into your life. I think a lot of times people push for forgiveness because what they really want is for you to let them back into your life. But forgiveness is an internal process and reconciliation is an action we take toward relational closeness.
These are two separate steps and you can choose to do both or just one or none. Forgiveness doesn’t mean that they get to choose the rules for the relationship. Real forgiveness can include boundary setting. So for example, I can forgive you, but for trust to be rebuilt, I need to see the following changes.
Or you could say, I can let go of my resentment, but you aren’t allowed to see my children. Okay, seven, forgiveness is not forgetting. Just to be clear, forgive and forget is not a phrase from the Bible, and you don’t need to forget something in order to forgive it. Let’s talk about what forgiveness is.
Forgiveness is letting go of trying to change the other person or create power or control by harboring negative feelings or emotional blackmail. Number two, forgiveness is creating actual strength instead of false manipulation. Actual strength in boundaries and community and personal health. Instead of feeding the cycle of revenge and pain in a feeble attempt to create safety. Forgiveness is letting go of the need to be the judge, letting go of trying to make the universe fair by exacting revenge or being the source of justice.
It’s acknowledging that you are not that higher power and letting go of trying to play that role and focusing instead on what we can change. Forgiveness is freeing ourselves from the poison of resentment. As the popular phrase goes: Holding a grudge is like taking poison and waiting for the other person to die.
Now we’re going to talk a little bit later about how to let go of that emotional burden so that you can live your life. But let’s get on to number five. Forgiveness is giving ourselves power back for our own feelings. It’s not constantly bringing to mind our hurt and giving others responsibility for our feelings.
Like as in this example, See, the reason I’m miserable is you. Instead, forgiveness gives us freedom and power to be healthy and happy and at peace. So even if you have been abused, violated, or traumatized, forgiveness can be one part of your healing process. And there’s so many examples of people who have benefited from forgiveness.
I’d like to share just a couple really quick. Corrie Ten Boom experienced the freeing power of forgiveness when she met a guard from the concentration camp where she and her sister had been held and her sister was killed. Chris Williams forgave the young drunk driver who killed his pregnant wife and two of his kids.
In this mind blowing TED talk, Thordis was able to have a conversation with the man who raped her and they liked lots of conversations and they wrote a book together, where she was freed from the shame by giving him full responsibility. And he was also freed from shame by taking full accountability for his actions.
And then another example is this Harvard educated doctor, Izzeldin Abuelaish he discusses his path to emotional freedom from hate in the book, I Shall Not Hate. His three daughters were killed by an Israeli strike on his home in 2009. and instead of sinking into hate, he calls upon both sides to talk and to reconcile and to live in peace.
So forgiveness can be a powerful way to regain emotional freedom and let go of pain. Some people are able to just quickly let go and forgive, but for most people they need to go through an intentional process which I’m hoping to share some steps of that process with you today. But first, you’ve got to be safe.
So before we focus on managing emotions or dealing with resentment, let’s make sure that you’re out of the dangerous situation. So if a child is being abused, let’s get them safe before we talk about forgiveness, right? If you’re still in the middle of something, let’s create an internal and external source of safety.
Now, I do know that people can forgive even in the middle of trauma or abuse. I’m just saying that as a therapist, my first focus would be getting people safe. Okay, the process of forgiveness, it can include four steps. There’s probably more out there. These are the four that I think of So for people who are holding resentment for a past hurt, step number one might be to acknowledge, to say out loud I was hurt and instead of just suppressing that feeling, we’ve got to recognize that anger and resentment serve a function. They’re hot, agitated emotions meant to spur us to action to create safety and fix problems. We can’t just suppress those feelings. We can’t just allow them to smolder inside of us.
We have to acknowledge them and listen to them and hear what they have to say, and then intentionally choose how to act. And this is called emotion processing. I made a whole course on it. Okay. Number two, admit that hanging on to hurt or anger or revenge hurts you. So holding anger as your shield gets very heavy over time and you can’t use your hands to do other things.
Okay. But we do it for a function. We’re doing it for something. We’re trying to protect ourselves. We need to clarify both what we’re trying to protect ourselves from and the cost to yourself of carrying that grudge around. How does resentment hurt your body? How does it impact your sleep? How is it affecting your relationships?
How is it impacting your thoughts or feelings or sensations? Where do you feel it in your body? So it might help to ask yourself or journal about the following. What am I trying to communicate with my resentment? Another way of asking this is like, when you wear your anger around like a t-shirt, what message is it sending?
So I think, you look at people who maybe have been divorced, a really acrimonious divorce. And if they were to say their resentment on a shirt, it might say something like, see, it wasn’t my fault. He’s so bad. She’s so awful. He’s so narcissistic, whatever it is. And that resentment is a message to the world: I have to hang on to this resentment to make sure that this never happens again. I will show you with my emotional pain, how bad they were. Now, this step involves honestly admitting that resentment hurts you. And then letting go of the unhelpful strategy of making yourself suffer to prove a point oh, that they are bad or that it’s not your fault or that everyone else should know that you’re a victim.
So that kind of looks at the function of resentment for you. The third step is clarifying responsibility. In the TED Talk, Rape and Reconciliation, Thordis tells how after she was raped, she felt like she was drowning in shame, and she felt like it was her fault. She racked her brain to think of ways she could have prevented Tom from raping her.
Oh, not drinking so much, wearing different clothes, making sure to stay in a large group. As she healed and processed her trauma, and I think this is like over a decade and as she got clarity, she came to the truthful realization that the only person who could have prevented her rape was Tom and that he was fully responsible for his actions.
So as part of truthful healing, we need to be willing to ask the hard questions. Who is truly responsible for what happened? And one way I like to think about this is to take a piece of paper, divide it into two sides, write what each person was responsible for, and then tear that paper in half and [00:13:00] don’t hold on to the half that isn’t yours.
Just because you have some responsibility on one side does not mean that you caused the actions of the other. So this is a really tricky topic that can take months to In therapy to sort out. And I do want to be clear. I am not and I will never blame the victim, especially in abuse and assault.
We don’t need to blame ourselves. That’s not where we’re going here. But true authenticity and internal peace can come from the process of being really willing to look at yourself and this can help you forgive yourself. And so you might ask as part of this process of creating clarity, how might I have contributed to the situation?
Did I play some part? Let’s say in a divorce, did I play some part or is there some action that I need to take? And again, this does not mean that you caused it or that it was your fault. It’s looking to see how can I move forward? So in holding resentment, we may focus on the faults of others. We may cling to that [00:14:00] anger as a way to protect ourselves from asking ourselves these questions and really clearing up our own sense of guilt.
Anger can be a cover up for more tender emotions, so it’s easier to feel angry than feeling hurt or scared or weak. But we can’t heal anger with blame. We can’t heal shame with blame. We heal shame with sunlight, shining a bright light of honesty upon ourselves and others. I am not saying that you’re responsible.
I’m saying that the process of asking this question and really looking can be healing. Okay, one way of moving toward forgiveness is to clarify boundaries, which is the invisible line between you and other people. Setting healthy boundaries means focusing on what actions you can take and letting go of trying to change other people.
Clear boundaries allow the other person to be responsible for their choices and actions, even if they are not mature or healthy enough to acknowledge their part in your hurt. I’m talking about an internal process here, I’m not talking about what you say to them or what you do to them, right?
When you are clear about the other person’s actions that would have happened no matter what you did, you stop beating yourself up for things that you had no control over. And it also becomes easier to accept that your abuser might never change, and you are choosing to change yourself and move past being their victim.
Okay, and lastly, as we process through anger and hurt and resentment. you’ll start feeling lighter and more positive. One stage of healing can include doing something really purposeful with all that activated energy. So we can choose to take the emotional energy that we used to turn inward into resentment or anger or grudges.
And now we’re going to channel that into something positive. This could sound like saying, what they did will always be wrong, but I’m going to put my energy toward making a safer world for my children. Or you’re going to say, I’m going to share my story so that others can learn from it. Thordis, Corrie Ten Boom, and Dr. Abuelaish they each found ways to share what they’ve learned from their experiences, and millions of people have benefited from their stories. So I think it can be helpful here to visualize a future for yourself without that anger, but strong, safe, secure. What would that look like? Sometimes all that activated energy can be channeled toward peacefully and powerfully setting boundaries. I will call the police. I will file a report. I will build up a safe and secure future for my family. Instead of these feeble and frantic efforts to create power by holding a grudge. It’s I’m going to take intentional action to protect myself and my community.
Now, remembering old hurts can be used to channel that hot activated energy toward value based actions. For example, when we remember the holocaust, we can be motivated to avoid racial or religious discrimination or hyper nationalism. We use those memories [00:17:00] not to fuel resentment and hatred. But to fuel growth and healing.
And lastly, forgiveness is a courageous choice that says, I will not fight darkness with darkness. I will fight it with light. I will not fight hate with hate. I will fight it with love. And when we make an active choice to channel our pain into something positive, we choose to free ourselves from pain.
Okay. So going back to the hypothetical question in my training, if I were that man’s therapist now, I would take a very different approach without actually knowing his entire situation, right? I’m going to make some guesses here. Now. I would start the process by asking, how are you hurting now? And we would explore how that trauma impacted his life, whether that be shame or self esteem or physical symptoms, intimacy issues, PTSD, anxiety, or anger.
And I would listen and validate and highlight his courage in facing those memories and those feelings now. W e would spend some time working through shame and clarifying true responsibility, which is, it was not your fault. And we would talk about how to let go of shame. And in the end, if anger and resentment really were a big part of why he was in therapy, we would start asking some questions oh, how is that impacting you now?
We would explore valued action what do you want to do with that? What actions do you want to take? Do you want to file a report? Do you want to confront him? Do you want to write a book? Do you want to take action to join other children? Do you want to join bikers against child abuse? And this process of exploring this would probably have taken weeks or months.
Not a quick phone call where I jumped right to you should forgive someone. Forgiveness might be an essential part of his healing process or not. But now I know that it also probably isn’t the first step. The root of this is saying, I’ve been hurt, but holding that hurt isn’t helpful. This wasn’t my fault, but it is my responsibility to build the life that I desire.
Take Back Your Peace With Forgiveness
Now, how can I move forward in the direction of the life that I want? I truly believe that forgiveness, when done correctly, can be one of the most powerful ways to take back your peace, to regain power in your life, and to take your life in the direction that you really value. But we shouldn’t force it upon survivors, and instead we can honor their process and help build up a safe and supportive community where real healing can happen.
Okay, I figure this topic might be a bit controversial. Let me know your thoughts in the comments. I’d love to hear them. Thanks for being here. Take care.
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