Forgiveness?

[radical]

Beautiful, Woodsgnome.

Words do get in the way.

I'm going to try and be careful here, forgive me, Nicole and others who feel as you do,  if some of the reactivity I feel about the subject leaks through.

First, I don't think what you are describing is forgiveness, Nicole and I think the way language has been altered on this subject is important because it means that so many people are using a word and meaning so many different things.  I believe I do get where you are coming from with this.  I understand the need for deep acceptance and compassion for ourselves, and for the imperfection of others - usually.

When I forgive myself, I acknowledge wrong-doing to myself, I acknowledge harm to others, to the world, or to myself.  i accept that I let myself and other people down, I accept the need to change.  If there is something that causes me to behave in a way that is harmful, I try to work on it.  Most of all, I try to do better in the future, not by brushing it aside, which pretty much guarantees, I won't.  It's not about beating myself up, it's about acknowledgement and making amends - change.

I don't need to forgive myself for harm that others have done to me, I have to understand that it was never my fault, I need to put the responsibility where it belongs, take it off my shoulders.  To me, that is not forgiving myself.  Using those words is counterproductive to releasing myself from responsibility that was never mine to begin with.

I do understand where you are coming from about letting go of grievances that we can do nothing about.  There are some people in my life now, who have enabled and "forgiven" the latest abuser in my life for decades.  I am quite close to them, but their minimisation and denial gets in the way of our ability to be close. I cringe at things they casually say, I feel humiliated by the way they see me as not credible, but "forgive" me for what I have said, which they understand as exaggerated and distorted due to my "mental illness" from past abuse.  They have never even let me tell the whole story because they showed such distress with the little I did describe.   In my opinion, this has led to cognitive dissonance, not just about the me, the offender, and the situation, but about their religious and philosophical beliefs about essential human goodness, and love and forgiveness being an answer in and of itself, to what they would describe as evil (though not in this case, because they can't accept someone they have trusted as having behaved in such a way).

On a good day, I feel affection and compassion for these people.  I accept where they are, who they are, I feel love for their goodness and kindness.  I want to let it go, - forgive and forget, for my own sake, in order to enjoy a relationship with them. i don't want to cut off my nose to spite my face.  I'm not going to change them, so I have to accept them, or to walk away.  So, I need to remember they are not offenders, they are people who can't accept the truth.  But if I can't find a way of stopping them from foisting their "forgiveness" on me, of trying to rewrite history for their own comfort, but at my expense,  the distance will remain, I will be forever licking my wounds after spending time with them.  I'll be in an endless loop of forgiving them for behaviour that hurts me, that they can't acknowledge. 

This has helped me, I know what I need to do about this situation, the general direction anyway, to get past this, or to walk forgive and walk away.

[Cc]

For me forgiveness is a very personal thing that for a while I tried to push on myself because I felt thats what good people do ... they dont hold grudges, they forgive. They try and understand, have compassion.

I wasnt clear for a long time on what forgiveness implied... did it mean reestablishing the relationship? Forgetting all that had happened?   I now know that for me it has nothing to do with those things, for me it is making a decision to let go of the anger associated with the event... a sort of letting go.

But, having cycled through the grieving process from so many angles the only forgiveness I needed to give was to myself , forgiving myself for just being a child, a teenager and then a young woman who still carried the wounds of her past.  For knowing only what I knew, for doing the best I could, and making decisions based on that knowledge and negative beliefs.

It was letting go of that self blame and hate, directing it towards those people who hurt me and then letting it go because holding on to it only causes more harm to me that has felt like forgiveness, a letting go.

Dont get me wrong I have felt enormous compassion for the people who have hurt me, I have even cried for their hurts, but that will never make their wrongs ok and the best I can do is to say (after a long period of being very, very angry) that I dont want their wrongdoings to bring me down anymore. I choose to let go of the hate...

Its something I still have to remind myself of, a conscious decision, particularly when Im processing stuff , but it does feel healthier to feel it, accept it then let it go.

[joyful]

I also struggle with forgiveness. i feel like it's a one time thing, that once i've done it i'm like promising that i'll never hurt over the incident again, which isn't true or reasonable. i'm definitely still struggling to understand what is DOES mean.
one thing that really has helped me is something that i heard from someone who also is recovering from traumas and has helped me a lot. its a quote by an unknown author, it says "keep a place in your heart for forgiveness, and when it comes, welcome it in." i love that. i don't have to forgive immediately, i can take all the time i need. but someday, i think that forgiveness will come. right now all i say is that SOMEDAY i will forgive you. i'm not ready to right now, but that doesn't mean that i never will, and it also doesn't put any deadline on it. just kind of an i will forgive you when I am ready to.
that's kinda my take on it.

[Dee]

Radical,

Your post touched me.  It reminded me of how I feel that my family has forgiven me.  It is a horrible thing to be, the forgiven one.  There is always a sense that I owe them and I am less than them.  This has forever distorted any view they have of me.  It has colored any accomplishment that I have made.  It tarnishes all of the good things in my life.  It makes me undeserving of their company, they tolerate me and am nice to me, out of forgiveness.  I feel for you.  It is so difficult, to be the forgiven one.  It is such a lonely place.

[2Spirits]

your thoughts help me a lot in refining my idea of forgiveness, what it is and what it is not.
And I find that I have to forgive myself a lot, an awful lot. When i was small, i couldn't handle what happened and so i made lots of efforts to perfect myself, to become more lovable, to be a good child. And I became angry at all those aspects of myself that caused so much trouble, that lead to ridicule and being shamed.
And all that anger is still here, alive and I beat myself up over and over again for not being good enough, lovable enough, ....
And for that I forgive myself, as good as i can. I forgive myself for not having invented a better strategy, I forgive myself for making a habit of it and i forgive myself for taking so long to realize it.
And i forgive myself, as good as I can, for being so hard on myself, for killing so much joy in my life, for the pain I caused myself.

I currently do not want to use my energy for being angry at the parents who were a part of this. I choose to use my energy for comforting an saying sorry to myself, for inventing new strategies for dealing with being not-perfect, for finding ways to reduce the inner antagonism between people-pleaser-partial-self and the needy-and-wanting-to-be-validated-partial-self. I choose to use my energy for creating and conjuring images of grown-up people that say to me: "You are doing a great job!", "You are such a dear!". And it helps, each and every thing.

Does that mean I have forgiven my parents, especially my father? I don't know, but they are not in the focus of attention right now and that in itself is a relief.

This little forgiveness meditation did me a lot of good, and i can understand from my own experience that the topic touches so many buttons that i only go near it when i am ready to be stirred up...

[sanmagic7]

possible sexual triggers:

i'm still on the fence about forgiveness, even after reading all these warmly sincere posts.  at this moment, i can still say with a certainty inside me that i will not forgive my ex-hub for lusting after our daughters.  he had already known he was a sex addict, had been to meetings, knew the steps, and stopped going when i left because he was only going to please me.  he's also an alcoholic and foodaholic, so he knows about addictions.   he was also married to a therapist (me) who worked with addicts, so there was a lot of talk about addictions.   he knows that unchecked, they will escalate.  he had been confronted about a remark he made when our daughter was 6, it was brought up at our couples' session and the therapist told him 'that's not appropriate'.  he was let off the hook (i didn't know better at the time) and he chose to keep going forward in his addictive behavior.  he cheated on me nearly every night of our marriage w/ porn, although he was holier than thou about cheating with a real woman (among all the other things).    such is the mindset of a misogynist narc.

i won't forgive him.  and i don't believe i have anything to forgive myself about, either.  i couldn't do what i didn't know to do.  there is nothing to forgive.  am i still mad about it?  at him?  o yeah!  i may never find peace within me because of this.  but, i don't care.  i have my own creation of the universe that i hand him over to every time he comes into my head to deal with him as she will.  that is how i feel justice will be done.  and, as i said before, i will let the powers that be forgive him if they deem it worthwhile.  he's out of my hands, out of my life, and i'm more than fine with that.  but when my daughter tells me that she saw him and i think about him hugging her, my skin crawls.  that will never go away, forgiveness or no forgiveness.

i agree with what was said about the differing meanings people may have about forgiveness.  i think such concepts have personal meanings, like what the concept of god or the universe is.  i personally think that i have to come to my own terms with all this the best way possible for me.  and, i respect the same for everyone else.  i really don't think there's a wrong or right way to feel about or accomplish (or not) forgiveness.  i hope i'm not being overly harsh.  i've heard too many 'shoulds' about this subject, and was in a stranglehold with it for a long time.  breaking out has been difficult, and, since i still see 12-step people, the subject still comes up from time to time, and i have to steel myself all over again not to feel guilty if i don't forgive.  ugh!

[Boatsetsailrose]

*TRIGGER WARNING *TOWARDS THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST
Hello 2 spirit thank you for your post as this is the very subject I want to share on this morning ...

Quote ' forgiving him that he could not give what he didn't have, taking the responsibility for my life and telling him he no longer was/is responsible, listening if he had something to say to me, saying something to him if i felt like it, letting go of anything i want to let go and then saying goodbye'

This really struck a cord for me
Isn't it wonderful that we are given tools to aid us to heal and grow more ...

I have worked on forgiveness with my dad through 12 step recovery .. I cut him out of my life for some years and was in deep pain.. I went back and said I was sorry for cutting him out and that I was wrong ..
this felt a natural thing to do, I felt more grown up and the child pain had lessened .. I was and am so pleased that we are now connected and have a relationship ...
It's not always easy and I do find I have to work hard at patience, tolerance and setting boundaries sometimes but my heart loves him and that over rides the difficult stuff ...
I have learnt how he was abused as a child and how he has suffered rejection from people throughout his life ..
I've learnt that he as the quote says 'he could not give what he didn't have ' taking back the responsibility for my life - my emotions and freeing him from the responsibility that I placed on him as 'you should have been xyz as a father ...
I would say that the quote 'listening if he had something to say to me ' bit , whilst valuable to hear someone it was important to me to not have any expectations around this .. because my whole life I've been waiting for acknowledgement of the damage that was caused to me and I have worked hard to lessen that need ... I may very well reach my grave with no one in my family acknowledging what happened to me and for me it is important to accept that as a reality ...
the acknowledging is the stuff that goes on in myself, the acceptance and subsequent compassion that I am starting to have for myself ...
My dad gives love and care in his own way today and when it comes my way I enjoy it ... for the many times he can't meet me ( emotionally and internally I work to accept it 'forgive him for what he does not know

Now onto my mother 'a different story '
I went back to her after years of cutting her off ... I wasn't in 12 step recovery then and went back with a suitcase of expectation and hope ... it didn't work out
I cut ties again and it has now been 8yrs of no communication... ( apart from each time I move she gets my address and sends a card maybe at Christmas
' forgiving her that she could not give what she didn't have, taking the responsibility for my life and telling her she no longer was/is responsible, listening if she had something to say to me, saying something to her if i felt like it, letting go of anything i want to let go and then saying goodbye'

Im not quite at the place to do this .. even in meditation ... but lately My heart is missing her and I have had thoughts of 'should I make contact'. This is slippy ground and I need to talk to my sponsor about it ...
The problem is 'I do hold her totally responsible for her mistreatment towards me, I was a child ,she the adult'
My life to the 43 yrs I am now have been severely affected by trauma effects and my chances of survival and Thriving affected..
There is a part of me lately that wants to face her, that wants to stop living in that fear of the chance I may see her in the street and want to run... but to face her in reality needs me to be in a certain place and I'm not sure I'm there yet
The anger and images I feel can be very powerful
TRIGGER WARNING
I have an image where I grab her throat with one hand pick her up against a wall and tell her exactly what I think about her until she can't breathe '

I want power - I want to reclaim some power - I want to be untouchable by her
Forgiveness ? Not yet ....

[radical]

I've been in so many places with forgiveness through my life.  for much of it I've been far too forgiving for my own safety and well-being.  I feel I've really hardened, and that probably isn't a good thing.
I'm struggling with a lot of bitterness at the moment and I know that isn't a good thing either.  I don't know what the answer is, but I feel that the demand to forgive (internal and external) is a further injustice.
I'll be spending the bare minimum time with family at Christmas, and won't be staying with them or relying on them for transport and I hope that helps.  As the family scapegoat in a superficially friendly 'lord of the flies' situation my first priority in dealing with them is 'do no harm' and I've finally reached the place where that includes me.

[2Spirits]

Thank you  for sharing your personal struggles. I am very touched.
And I have been through very up-and-down days with my ongoing meditations, which is a good thing, because before i had mostly down-only days.

Isn't it wonderful that we are given tools to aid us to heal and grow more ...

Yes, it is really wonderful, and it's good noticing it. And I try to notice every baby step, because it helps focusing on the progress.


I am no longer trying to forgive my father. I find it counterproductive, the more i try, the more my resistance grows. This does not benefit either of us, so i changed the meditation to "I look at him, I say what I have to say, I listen, and i have the final say". And not trying to forgive leads me more to having some peace than a forgiveness for which i am not ready now.

I have worked on forgiveness with my dad through 12 step recovery .. I cut him out of my life for some years and was in deep pain.. I went back and said I was sorry for cutting him out and that I was wrong ..
this felt a natural thing to do, I felt more grown up and the child pain had lessened .. I was and am so pleased that we are now connected and have a relationship ...

[...]
... I may very well reach my grave with no one in my family acknowledging what happened to me and for me it is important to accept that as a reality ...
the acknowledging is the stuff that goes on in myself, the acceptance and subsequent compassion that I am starting to have for myself ...
My dad gives love and care in his own way today and when it comes my way I enjoy it ... for the many times he can't meet me ( emotionally and internally I work to accept it 'forgive him for what he does not know

This is so touching and encouraging. Kudos to you for your ability to grow, heal, and be inventive for your own good.
And i can relate to what you say about your mother - yes, it is a deep need to be in control of your own safety and to be able to stick to your own truth. There is nothing wrong with acknowledging this need!

[Contessa]

What an amazing thread!

If I could remember where I read it, I would post an article that I read recently about not forgiving someone to move on. It was well worded.

I noticed, Nicole I think it was, write that forgiveness is acceptance. Now I could have the context incorrect here, and this may have already been discussed, but my thought is acceptance can be achieved without forgiveness.

The other day I accepted that my FOO will never, ever support me in response to my earliest trauma. And it was so calming and liberating. I have not forgiven them.

Years ago I accepted the trauma had happened and was moving forward. Six years of their insensitivity to what has happened, and my early and repetetive requests to be mindful of triggers, pulling me back into the trauma... they are now the trauma.

I cannot forgive them for their lack of care. There is no point forgiving someone who will not accept they have done wrong.

I cannot ask for forgiveness because I did nothing wrong. To them that is an admission of fault and not a means to put the past in the past. I cannot submit to them. I will not forgive them either because I will kick myself when the next nasty thing comes along.

But I can accept, and gain peace from that. That peace has been the gateway to laughter. Oh how I have missed laughing. But laughter has come without forgiving.

[Contessa]

Here is the article. Pertinent words:

Often, Lerner says, when her patients talk about wanting to forgive, they're actually talking about something else entirely: "Really, if I question carefully enough, what they're saying is that they just want the burden of their anger and resentment to go away," she says.

Forgiveness is Not a Binary State - Cari Romm - 11 Jan 2017
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2017/01/forgiveness-is-not-a-binary-state.html?mid=forbes

New perspective? Or agreement?

[radical]

I'm really glad you've reached that place Contessa.  Are there some boundaries about the subject you can enforce to keep from being hurt again?

It's good to come back to this thread.  The people I was talking about who kept foisting their forgiveness on me, they didn't stop.  Their need to believe their long term friend hadn't really been malicious and vicious, and as a result, pathologising and "forgiving" me in order to manage their cognitive dissonance was as toxic as * to me. 

I tried to enforce boundaries over the behaviour to prevent more damage, as gently as I could.  I took the offender out of the picture and tried to talk to them about needing them to treat me as an equal rather than as a 'poor thing' and to not bring the subject up again, in order to continue with the friendship.  I didn't use these words, in retrospect I was probably excessively gentle considering how badly they had hurt me, betrayed my trust in the situation, and insisted on continuing in a way that was toxic to me. 

One of them backed off (whatever their thoughts, they respected the boundary) the other  played the victim at the very suggestion that the way she chose to behave was anything other than perfect, ie she was as defensive as *.  And she kept on doing the things I asked her no to.

To my mind that was her choosing to end our friendship, and it will probably be a bit of a relief to her as well as to me.  Continuing to try and convince me, get me to agree that the whole thing was an overreaction on my part, to what she insisted on describing as "a difficult communication style" of someone who abused me to the point of my becoming suicidal, and even knowing that kept on going, was outright gaslighting and a form of secondary victimisation in itself. 

When this friend pushed this line far enough to provoke me to anger she was able to "prove" to herself how unstable I was, which is what she needed to believe.  It was her who kept bringing the subject up. The fact is thse people have enabled this abuser for decades.  I'm not the first person she has bullied out of a group they have been part of.  The circumstances of what happened in my case were severe.  I couldn't continue telling the story of what had happened to even get to the worst parts, because they were so distressed in hearing it.  I stopped because I cared about their distress, yet they had invited me to tell them (presumably so they could mediate the 'misunderstanding').  The details weren't as forgiveable as they anticipated.  What I should have done is said "this is obviously distressing you and I don't feel I can continue to talk to you about this" What I did do was to turn my attention to their distress, and this is where toxic "forgivenenss" comes in.  I felt for them when they should have been focused on doing me the justice of hearing the whole story and putting their own feelings to the side, or they never should have inserted themselves into the situation in the first place.

Then, every time it happened I pushed 'reset' in my mind.  I thought these are genuinely good who are doing their best, given their lack of understanding.  But the reasons didn't change the fact that they were hurting me. Continuing to forgive them meant I continued to get hurt.

I wont be angry when we run into each other, I'll chat and be friendly, but I can't be their friend on the terms they set.  I feel much more at peace now I'm not being gaslighted, and I've come a long way in getting over my awful feelings about the bullying since letting the friendship with these people go.  I just feel sad it had to be this way.

[Contessa]

Hi Radical.

In answer to your question, no. Never. Six years later.

Just half an hour ago I received an expletively punctuated apology from the person that inadvertantly  instigated the incident, recognising their complete insensitivity. They promised to make sure it never happens again, and I believe they mean it. This has been a mere matter of days.

I could slot myself into the situation you describe easily with my FOO and other delightful fiend... Right to the proof that I am unstable...

Anyhoo, sorry to have hijacked the thread everyone. The above article is worth the read. It really hit home that I don't need to forgive to move on.

Time for a cuppa to go with my book

[sanmagic7]

i agree with you, contessa.  there are people i refuse to forgive, and it doesn't matter to me anymore.  too many forgiveness lectures down the road, and most of them seemed to be in order to make me feel guilty if i didn't forgive.  now i know i don't have to.  yes, i can accept it is what it is or was, and keep on keepin' on.  it's on them to forgive themselves, as far as i'm concerned.  i have no energy to put in their direction anymore.  they burned all those bridges.

[Candid]

Forgiveness is performance anxiety run amok.

Brilliant!

I'm working on my new script that points ahead, not a return to *. Forgiveness, the very word, puts me back there.

I used to feel that way, too. Since I've abandoned the idea -- Mother knew exactly what she was doing, and as far as I know feels something closer to triumph than to remorse or guilt -- I'm happy to put my hand up and say I believe some things are unforgivable.

The only thing that would possibly move me towards forgiveness would be if she said "sorry" to me and, more importantly, talked honestly to the siblings and extended family who swallowed her lies -- "I love Candid, but she's always been so difficult" being the main theme, so that I'm regarded as suspect wherever I turn. I don't think you can forgive while the reverberations are still clanging and causing misery.

Even if she fessed up and apologised, I still wouldn't spend time with her in company, much less alone which of course is when all the horrible things were said and done.

I'm more invested in forgiving myself for not handling things differently at the time. For example, when she took me aside on a long-ago Christmas Day to tell me she wished I hadn't come "because you always cause so much trouble". When I replay my last family Christmas, I wish I'd said: "Please tell Dad and [my siblings] why I'm not here and won't be coming here again."

As it was, I stayed miserably on (I'd taken a cab to their place), kept my gob shut and distributed presents as normal. Cue my father, god bless him, calling me every few months to tell me "You've upset your mother" because I no longer visited them. I didn't tell him what she'd done, either. Also, a kindly aunt telling me: "Mum doesn't know what they've done." There was no "they" about it; Mother singlehandedly wrecked my self-esteem and my ability to relate normally to other people.

Oops. Glad I got that off my chest.

I