Why Forgive?

Forgiveness only comes into play when there is psychological pain – the hurt that we cause to ourselves or others, as well as the hurt that was inflicted on us. Even though the latter is what most of us focus on, seeing how life is so annoyingly messy, all these hurts come into play. Wounded people wound others. We are unhappy so we treat ourselves with contempt. We are in pain, so we inflict pain on others. Others hurt us because their pain is unbearable to them.

When we are hurt, we hold onto the injustice and the more we hold onto our pain, the more we resent those that have hurt us. We get caught up in cycles of pain, anger, jealousy, envy. These cycles feed our pain even more. It’s a self-generating burden.

Forgiveness is the beginning of healing. It’s not healing itself, it’s a necessary precondition for it. One way to look at forgiveness is as the process of clearing space, removing the debris from an open wound so that you can attend to t properly. It’s also a process, a difficult one. There are parts of us that like to hold onto to anger because anger justifies our pain, it absolves us of the responsibility to grow and heal. You hurt me, so it’s your fault (not mine – I’m the victim here). You change. You make me feel better. When we hold onto the pain, we feel righteous and we feel right, we want vengeance even.

When we hold onto that pain for years and years, as it often happens, that pain becomes a pillar that supports a part of who we are.

The longer you wait to start forgiving, the more difficult it gets. Think about that: long lasting pain becomes a pillar of our personality. How has your pain shaped you? How has your resentment turned you into who you are? Our identity is what we are, and by shaping it, our pain shapes us. It’s what guides our decisions, fuels our actions, and even what determines our values, our sense of self-worth. We are very much invested in our identities as if they had any concrete reality! Giving up resentment and anger would also mean having to change how we see ourselves and profoundly so.  Giving up the negativity towards those who have hurt us would then lead us to a swirling, sweeping change, an identity crisis, and all the confusion, anxiety, threat, guilt that comes with it.

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Maya’s parents got divorced when she was quite young, and she lived with her mother until she moved away to go to college. She wanted to study in California but had to stay in Florida so she could be close to her mom. Her father was a part of her life, and their relationship is best described as functional, although not overly emotional. He was there to spend every other Saturday together, and he was there to pay her tuition or rent – whatever she needed. Maya’s mother, on the other, was always there even if she was never available. She never remarried but had several turbulent relationships, she struggled with depression, alcoholism and even attempted suicide when Maya was a senior in high school.

Even though Maya can’t recall her mother being violent or abusive, she felt abandoned by her. It had seemed as if she was too consumed with her own psychological hell to be the mother Maya needed. Maya had to do everything on her own. She had to take herself to school, forge her mother’s signature on many permission slips, she had to cook, clean and iron her own clothes. In fact, Maya had grown up to be an incredibly independent and successful woman, and before that she was an incredibly independent and successful child – something children shouldn’t have to be.

When we began working together, all the suppressed anger directed at her mother came flooding back. Whereas Maya was aware that she harbored some resentment, when all the anger was released, she couldn’t close the floodgates anymore. Furthermore, she began to realize that anger towards her mother affected her other relationships too: she was annoyed every time her boss (a woman roughly her mother’s age) would ask her to do or change something. She was incredibly reluctant to rely on her friends or partners, something they pointed out many times. As a girl, she couldn’t rely on the love and care of an adult that was supposed to provide both, and as an adult she wasn’t able to rely on anyone at all.

Once I introduced the idea of forgiveness, Maya objected strongly: “That woman stole my childhood, I’m not forgiving anything”.  

We began exploring her resistance to forgiveness and this led us down a very meaningful path. Maya summed it up like this: “My mother was neglectful, and I had to raise myself. It’s hard to admit this, but her neglect is what allowed me to become this independent person. I had no choice but to become that, because otherwise… how could I have survived? It’s who I am today – I am independent.” The anger towards her mother fueled Maya’s development and so, indirectly, it became a core part of who she is. Now that she was working through that toxic relationship, she was afraid that she would have to give up her cherished independence - and partially she was right. To have a close, intimate relationship we need to be able to depend on our partners. Vulnerability that this dependency brings can be challenging to navigate and it requires us to have faith that the person we love will love us back and that their love for us will stop them from hurting us. This seemed borderline impossible to her in the early stages of our work.

As she was reflecting on the topic of forgiveness, and as she was nearing readiness to begin forgiving her mother, her anger came back. This time, it was anger towards herself. Suddenly, it occurred to her that her notion of independence brought her so much suffering, on top of an already difficult childhood. She had no compassion for herself whatsoever. Someone needs to do a double shift. Sure, Maya can do it. Work full time while doing your PhD? Sure, Maya can do it. Live alone, help your mother financially and take care of your roommate’s sick dog? Sure, Maya’s there. The way she went about her independence involved inflicting enormous amounts of suffering on herself, and as she was slowly becoming aware of it, another topic arose: forgiving herself.

Humans are profoundly relational beings, and everything that happens to us, affects how we treat others. In turn, that defines how they treat us. We are continuously trapped in loops of actions and reactions too numerous to comprehend. That’s why forgiving others always means forgiving ourselves, as we are the other to someone else.

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Psychologists often talk about forgiveness as letting go of hurt or resentment, but in my opinion that’s too simplified. Forgiveness is letting go, but it’s also a process of building something in the void that letting go leaves behind. It’s precisely our fear of this void that makes letting go so difficult. To paraphrase Jacques Lacan, often our symptom is all we have, all that’s keeping us from falling apart. The same goes for holding grudges: a chronic grudge defines us, letting it go can mean letting go of whole parts of our identity that we’ve carefully built over the years. This is everything but a simple task.

When we intentionally work on forgiving someone, we are not necessarily going to become the best of friends. In fact, forgiveness doesn’t mean that a relationship will survive or that we’ll want to renew it. We can both let go and rebuild without having to shake hands, hug and have coffee with the person that has hurt us. We don’t have to like them either.

Forgiveness is an internal process, one that shifts our own mindset and allows us to begin healing, so it’s primarily something we do for ourselves. At the same time, forgiveness deepens our capacity to be compassionate and to take other people’s perspectives: not to justify, but to understand. For Maya, it meant understanding that her mother even though neglectful was a troubled woman, unable to deal with her own demons and therefore unable to be the kind of parent that Maya had. Forgiving herself involved recognizing that her lack of self-compassion is not because she wasn’t worthy of it, but because she was afraid of it. Growing up psychologically alone, she had to be tough to get where she wants to be. Just like her mother, Maya didn’t know any better.

Forgiving allows us to use adversity to create change, it builds resilience, because it allows us to see others as fully realized human beings we can have more complex, mature relationships, and most of all because, by forgiving, we are becoming better people.

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Stay tuned for two FREE forgiveness meditations coming up on Four Steps Coaching:

-        6/10/2022 – Forgiving Yourself

-        6/17/2022 – Forgiving Those That Have Hurt Us

In case you miss them, sign up for our newsletter and get access to all the meditations at the end of the month!