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April 2 - April 6, 2025
Her incapabilities as a parent had had a significant negative impact on me, and even after I’ve undergone years of therapy, they still do—and always will. I knew I didn’t—and couldn’t—forgive her. Yet, I had made so much progress in my recovery. How was this possible? Was I in denial? Was I missing out on an experience that would propel me forward? Was forgiveness the missing piece?
How does a child know they exist if their parents cannot see them? They don’t. How does a child acknowledge their value if their parents do not show them their value? They can’t. Without others, a child doesn’t truly exist.
This is what happens when you’re a child without an attachment figure. You are constantly trying to build your house on a shaky foundation.
“Don’t you love your parents?” a high school classmate once asked me when they noticed I never mentioned my family. “Of course I do. All kids love their parents,” I responded. But I didn’t.
Before we consider that question, we need to start by recognizing that when forgiveness is forced, pressured, encouraged, or recommended by those in positions of perceived authority (mental health clinicians, religious leaders, authors, politicians, social media influencers, family, and friends, etc.), it can cause harm. Indeed, forgiveness can be one of the most significant obstacles in trauma recovery.
Imposing forgiveness can sabotage trauma recovery by overriding or compromising your feelings of safety, by reinforcing damaging gender roles, by reinforcing societal inequalities, by hindering or attempting to repress your need to feel, express, and process negative feelings such as anger and rage, and by promoting shame and self-blame. Unfortunately, some people even intentionally use forgiveness as a weapon to harm, silence, or police you—or to in fact center and prioritize the interests of your offenders rather than those of survivors themselves—under the guise of moral virtue.
Dysregulation caused by trauma, however, is more prolonged, as it lasts months, years, or a lifetime, long after the stressful event has passed. Trauma-induced dysregulation impacts many aspects of one’s life, such as one’s sense of safety and self-worth, emotional stability and physical health, and ability to engage in and maintain healthy relationships.
Psychiatrist Peter A. Levine wrote, “Trauma is perhaps the most avoided, ignored, belittled, denied, misunderstood, and untreated cause of human suffering.”
In correcting others’ use of the term, you might inadvertently reinforce certain norms that shame, silence, or even gaslight survivors. It’s important for people to feel empowered to articulate their experiences as they perceive them.
Even though I had a master’s degree in counseling psychology for six years and had worked solely with trauma survivors for five years, I had no clue that I myself was a trauma survivor. How was this possible? It’s simple: it was my “normal.” My type of trauma (little-t) did not result from a singular, unusual event or situation but developed gradually from a consistent, everyday set of adverse and abusive circumstances—circumstances that, given their consistency and predictability, I experienced as “normal” or as “just the way things are.”
Diagnoses are crap; they exist so that insurance companies can sleep at night, if they sleep at all,” said my psychologist as she informed me of my diagnosis of generalized anxiety disorder. “You’ve got anxiety; that’s true. But you’ve got to address your childhood trauma that created and is maintaining this anxiety. Focusing solely on the anxiety would be like putting a Band-Aid on an open infected wound. It might help a bit, but it won’t last. You deserve better.”
whenever I started treatment with a new clinician, I made sure to advocate for myself and demand that I receive trauma-focused therapy. I do not consider myself an anxious person; instead, I consider myself a trauma survivor. Trauma is my core, and anxiety is my symptom.
“It’s the feeling that my body is my enemy, not my ally.”
“Trauma is fighting daily to survive, even after you’ve been safe for decades.”
“Trauma is the inability to love myself and others. I know that I’m worthy, deserving, and lovable, but I just can’t feel it.”
“Trauma isn’t about getting hurt. It’s about what we didn’t have access to when we got hurt. We needed support, love, guidance, and safe spaces to heal. It’s the lack of these things that causes trauma.”
“Trauma is dysregulation, not a disorder. No one is disordered.”
Trauma is also a complex web of deceptions about our self-worth and life circumstances. It tells us that we are not good enough, that we are unlovable, unworthy, incapable, unsafe, bad, weak, and so on; it infects us with negative core, all-or-nothing beliefs about ourselves that aren’t true or rationally justified. Such a web may have been initially spun by one or many spiders, but we unknowingly and unintentionally take over the job of spinning this web ourselves.
As though it is not enough that we are often gaslighted by myriad social forces and institutions, trauma typically leads us to gaslight ourselves.
Trauma makes us feel like we are still children, young adults, or victims—even after we have grown up or learned how to protect and take care of ourselves.
Premature forgiveness—also called cheap forgiveness—is when we forgive without going through the emotional processes necessary in order to forgive authentically.
Offenses that cause or contribute to trauma usually involve a journey of emotional processing that isn’t quick, easy, or simple.
Unfortunately, many people attempt to force, pressure, or encourage survivors to forgive, believing this will automatically lead to reconciliation. The misconception that those who forgive will automatically reconcile with their offender(s) may cause you to avoid forgiveness, as you might fear that if you extend forgiveness to your offender(s), you will be required to reconcile with them. Some survivors who forgive their offender(s) reconcile, and others do not.
“If a client accepts what happened but does not accept the offender as a human being worthy of respect, he or she is not forgiving. Some people make peace with the past but not with the people of the past.”
On the other hand, many survivors report that they decided to forgive or felt a willingness to forgive yet were unable to do so. Some say that these situations occur because forgiveness depends upon an emotional experience and is not the sole result of a single decision or act of will.
All emotions are expected to change, to undergo alterations and alternations over time, and this is a sign of healthy emotional processing.
“No matter how passionately survivors may wish for an apology, they must be fully prepared for disappointment since they are more likely to meet with denial, excuses, or blame than with acknowledgment and repentance.”
Many survivors have been encouraged to experience compassion, generosity, and love toward their offender(s). Some survivors have tried and succeeded, while others have failed and felt guilt or shame as a result, and many have felt unseen, unheard, and manipulated by those who encouraged them to experience positive emotions, thoughts, and dispositions toward their offender(s). Spring writes, “It is commonly assumed that when you forgive, your negative feelings are completely replaced by positive ones. The problem with this expectation is that it is so categorical, that it puts forgiveness out
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As we will further see, forgiveness that is not considered elective is simply not trauma-informed or trauma-sensitive. Safety is a necessary element of trauma recovery. Attempting to force or pressure a survivor to forgive their offender(s) threatens their safety and restricts their agency.
If you are a survivor of domestic violence, you are more likely to be killed by your offender not while you remain in the relationship, but when you leave.
“How many battered women, for example, have returned to their batterers for more (and perhaps fatal) abuse because some counselor advised them to keep trying to save the marriage out of love and forgiveness?”
Some days you might feel safer than others, and the circumstances of your life can change to bring you closer to or further away from the unsafe situations or relationships you seek to avoid. There is always the possibility of a step back in recovery, and that’s okay. It’s a normal part of recovery.
When we establish the boundaries that we need to feel safe, we are often criticized. This is especially true when those boundaries are stigmatized, like family estrangement. Some people would force, pressure, or encourage us to engage in relationships with genetically related family members who are offenders, regardless of whether we feel safe. To reestablish safety, we often need to identify, maintain, and sustain firm boundaries with our offender(s), and this may include family estrangements.
“I’m bad,” said sixteen-year-old Owen. “How long have you believed that you’re bad?” I asked. “Since forever. I was a bad baby and a bad kid, and I’m still bad. That’s why my mom did what she did. She knew. Now you know too.”
In trauma recovery, shame is not defined by the emotions of embarrassment or feeling ashamed but by a much more detrimental experience. Shame researcher Brené Brown defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging—something we’ve experienced, done, or failed to do makes us unworthy of connection.”
We are not born with an inherent sense of self-worth. Instead, we learn our worth based on our relationships and interactions with others. When we soothe an infant or child, we communicate to them, “You are valuable.” When we ignore or mistreat a child, we communicate, “You have little to no value.”
“To imagine that one could have done better may be more tolerable than to face the reality of utter helplessness.”11 Who wants to admit that they are helpless or powerless?
Activist David Bedrick puts it quite clearly: “Much of the counsel is downright offensive, suggesting that if we can’t forgive, we are dwelling on the past, focusing on negative emotions, holding on to grudges, filled with retribution and revenge, addicted to adrenaline, marrying our victimhood, recoiling in self-protection rather than mercy, or poisoning ourselves with non-forgiveness.”20 How can these messages not reinforce our shame?
“Grandpa says that I should forgive my mom,” said Owen. “What do you think?” I asked. “He says that it’s not right to be angry at her ’cause she’s my mom, and she’s dead. He says if I don’t stop being angry, it’ll hurt me in the end.” “What do you think?” “I don’t know. I tried to forgive her, but I couldn’t. I know all that stuff she did wasn’t my fault. But now I feel like because I can’t forgive her, and I’m supposed to, now that’s my fault. It makes me feel like I’m bad all over again.” Owen’s shame was reinforced by his grandfather’s well-intentioned attempts to help him by encouraging
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April left her physically, sexually, and financially abusive husband for the final time. It was her third attempt at leaving and what she called “my last Hail Mary.” She moved in with her sister, ceased all communication with her husband, and filed for divorce. Her husband attempted suicide and was hospitalized. April’s family, friends, and church members begged her to forgive him so that he wouldn’t harm himself again. “They keep saying, ‘You don’t have to go back to him, just talk to him, just forgive him,’” April said through tears. “It’s funny how I’m supposed to be the bigger person. The
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It’s not uncommon for women to be expected to remain calm, speak softly, and verbalize forgiveness in order to manage someone else’s anger.
Forgiveness can harm women who forgive their offenders, as doing so in cases of domestic violence increases the possibility that they will continue to participate in relationships with their offenders and therefore expose themselves to further abuse. Forgiveness might make further abuse more likely because, provided one extends forgiveness to one’s offender without conditions, the offender may simply continue to behave abusively because they know that every time they do so, they’ll simply be “forgiven.”
Encouraging survivors to forgive may be less about the needs of survivors and more about the needs of the encouragers. It hurts us to see loved ones struggling; we are compelled to try to fix or heal their pain however we can. But, in doing so, we are also trying to escape our own suffering. Recommending forgiveness is a method people use to avoid the anguish it causes them to see the ones they love in pain.
In addition to coping with the difficulty of bearing witness to another’s pain, they may also encourage forgiveness to assuage their own feelings of inadequacy, guilt, or shame.
Yet, if you forgive without engaging in as much emotional processing as you need, those emotions will return, and you’ll wonder if you ever truly forgave.
Emotional processing, like any trauma recovery interventions (including forgiveness), do not produce a perfect positive result. Although it can lead to emotional integration, your emotional slate is unlikely to be completely wiped clean. Your emotional experiences are a part of you. They do not need to define you or negatively impact your life, but they cannot be undone as if they never were.
As a survivor of complex trauma (for whom treatment is often much longer than for single-event trauma survivors), my intense recovery took three years, and I am continuing to engage in multiple recovery methods to this day. I will likely need to do so for the rest of my life. You can expect that your recovery will take some time as well.
For survivors: Trauma and Attachment: Over 150 Attachment-Based Interventions to Heal Trauma by Christian Reese
For survivors: Getting Unstuck from PTSD: Using Cognitive Processing Therapy to Guide Your Recovery by Patricia A. Resick, Shannon Wiltsey Stirman, and Stefanie T. LoSavio
For survivors: No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model by Richard C. Schwartz
