PTSD: Is it possible to Forgive and Forget?
Read Janni Styles’ poignant post about the difference between forgiving and forgetting…I agree with her…while forgiveness is essential to lightening our own spirit, it is unwise to give abusers a second chance to inflict damage. However, in the eastern view, or rather my view of the eastern teaching, the highest way to deal with abuse is to destroy the egoic mind itself from the very roots…Ramana Maharshi’s Direct Path (Atma-Vichara) is a powerful path to total freedom from suffering; for me all other tools pale in comparison.
There is a lot of media out there from both organizations and individuals who claim that forgiving is our only way forward once we have endured trauma. The problem I have with this is that I believe you can forgive alright. But forget? Never. If you dare for one minute to let your guard down around certain people who were harmful to you in your past, you leave yourself vulnerable for more hurting. This is always a conflicting statement to me whenever I hear it because forgiving and forgetting aren’t even in the same category in my world.
Forgiving means you have grown past the pain or abuses well enough to let go of them and stop the daily torment of “why why why” but I personally believe it is completely impossible to forget what happened to us. In forgiving I find nothing more than a sensation of not being…
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