Thoughts About the "F" Word (Forgiveness, That Is)

I think anyone who has been through abuse can relate to the joke I attempted up there with the title of this post. :)  Humor is one of the ways I cope with this process--some days it's easier to do than on other days, and sometimes the humor can be pretty dark; some days it's not there at all.  I love the days where I'm able to genuinely laugh and have fun, finding the bright humor in everyday situations.

Obviously, you can tell that I'm not in a fabulous place when it comes to forgiveness.  I don't have it figured out yet, and I'm not rushing to it.  I can't count how many times during my life I've focused on needing to forgive, thought I did it, and then realized that obviously I didn't because more pain and anger would come up. I've learned over time that it's because I rushed to attempt forgiveness before going through the rest of the process of healing that needed to come first, and that includes letting yourself feel the emotions that are part of the wound--sorrow, grief, anger, etc.  If you try and rush the forgiveness process you don't fully process those emotions and when they come back up you feel like a rotten person for "holding grudges."  At least that's how it's been for me.

What exactly is forgiveness?  I can tell you for sure what I know it is not, and that is saying that what happened was okay and then pretending nothing ever happened.  And I think one reason this one screws with my head so much is the way it was exercised in my home, especially in regards to how my mom defined forgiveness.

First off, I have never known my mom to take accountability for her mistakes or actions that hurt other people.  Ever.  If someone dares to stand up to her, say she was hurtful or rude, etc. she flies into a rage and/or freezes the person out.  When I was living at home the freeze-out sessions usually lasted for 3 weeks, regardless of how I tried to apologize or desperately tried to communicate with her to reach a better understanding.  It was the definition of walking on eggshells.

There would be many times when I would be upset in my room over something she had done and she would come in (this was usually after she did something that had a traumatic impact) to "talk" to me and tell me that she was sorry she spanked me too hard or whatever, but then pointed out why I deserved it.  Then she would say that she would try harder if I tried harder, and after I said I would then she would say that we needed to "forgive and forget" and pretend nothing had ever happened.  I got duped more than once into thinking that meant things were going to get better. Turns out her definition of forgiveness, at least in action, was "You need to forgive me, but I get to keep doing the same things over and over and you just need to get better at taking it."

How often do parents, when they are teaching their children about apologizing and forgiving, coach their children to say "That's okay," when the other person says they're sorry?  Maybe most other families didn't do forgiveness like this, but this is the language of forgiveness that I heard all the time, not just in my home.  It's the knee-jerk response that a lot of people use when someone says they're sorry about something--"Oh, that's okay."  Now, I try to use phrases like "I forgive you," "Thank you for apologizing," etc.  That phrase, "That's okay," has been a huge trigger for me and has given me real issues when it comes to looking at forgiveness because the things that happened to me are NOT okay.

About five years ago I read a book called Toxic Parents by Susan Forward.  This book was so helpful to me, and I have recommended it many times to other survivors.  The whole book is excellent, but one of the things that helped me the most was her section on forgiveness and how she defines and approaches it in relation to abuse.  In all honesty, my knee-jerk reaction when I read other books and they addressed forgiveness was that I was ticked off.  I did not want to hear another person talking about just forgiving and moving on, because I had tried doing that and it wasn't working and I felt completely invalidated by the whole experience. I also felt that my pain, feelings and other needs were completely disregarded in the process, and this is how I felt during the times I was abused. Talk about adding insult to injury. I was pleasantly surprised and intrigued by the title of this chapter in Toxic Parents--"You Don't Have to Forgive."  Wha-whaaat???  What I found in this chapter was a version of forgiveness I could live with.

Early in her professional career she, like many others in her profession, encouraged clients to work on forgiving cruel or abusive parents.  She also had clients who entered therapy claiming they had already forgiven their toxic parents, but she found that more often than not, they didn't feel any better for having forgiven.  They still had their symptoms, "forgiving" hadn't created significant or lasting changes for them, and often they felt even more inadequate than they had before.  As she re-examined forgiveness, she came to the conclusion that there are two facets to it; giving up the need for revenge or getting even, and absolving the guilty party of responsibility.  The first is pretty important to work on, mostly because revenge keeps stirring up the emotional chaos for the survivor and wastes your energy and time.  Letting go of this aspect is difficult, but is clearly a healthy place to get to.

The second aspect, absolving the guilty party of responsibility, is another issue altogether and gets pretty complicated.  In cases of abuse particularly, the danger there is that it can actually become another form of denial, creating that scenario where you pretend that what happened wasn't so awful.  It undercuts your ability to let go of your pent-up emotions.  As she puts it, "How can you acknowledge your anger against a parent whom you've already forgiven?  Responsibility can go only one of two places:  Outward, onto the people who have hurt you, or inward, into yourself. Someone's got to be responsible.  So you may forgive your parents but end up hating yourself all the more in exchange (page 179)."  Another dangerous aspect of this to me is that you are then vulnerable to repeatedly going back for more because you feel like you don't have any right to refuse being around the person. Forgiving someone doesn't mean that you are obligated to hang out with them; in fact, if you do that you are sending them the message that you are fine with that kind of treatment and you are opening yourself up to be abused again. It really screws with your boundaries.

There is much more in the book, so if this resonates with you I urge you to obtain a copy and read it.  I bought my own so I could highlight the things that I could relate to and things that were helpful to me.  The bottom line that I took from this particular chapter was that I could work on letting go of a need to get even, but that I needed to be free to assign responsibility where it belonged, rather than carrying blame that belonged on someone else's shoulders. Another aspect of this that is important to realize is that shifting blame and guilt onto the victim is something that the abuser does on purpose.  You have to be free emotionally to reassign that squarely back onto their shoulders. You don't necessarily need to do this through confrontation or telling them, but you need to do it within yourself.  I can't describe how freeing it was emotionally for me to embrace this approach to forgiveness.  I still hate lessons on forgiveness in church, etc. because most people don't grasp this and the discussion can get so condescending, but I am at least at peace with this approach.  I hope that what I have shared here can help you, too.