How To Do Just About Everything
By FaithAllen
Forgiveness is the key to letting go of the past.
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People who have been abused as children often balk at the thought of forgiving their abusers. Few abusers, if any, deserve forgiveness. However, every abuse survivor deserves to be freed from her past. Forgiveness is the key to letting go of the past and embracing a brighter future. Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself, not your abuser. You do not even need your abuser's participation in the process because forgiveness is about you, not him. Here is how you can forgive your abuser.
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timetoski said
on 8/23/2008 MyTree is right. Unfortunately, there is no magic wand for forgiveness, it truly is a process, sometimes a life long one. C.S. Lewis said it was on his deathbed that he truly totally forgave someone he had been trying to forgive all his life. A great analogy I heard was "forgiving is a lot like packaging an octopus. Just when you get most of it wrapped, another part pops out"
MyTree1 said
on 6/8/2008 -continued- reacting out of woundedness and personal experiences, which no doubt were passed on to her by her care-givers. My ability to find compassion (which to me is what forgiveness really is) for myself and my mother rested on understanding this generational dysfunction and how it is passed on. Ultimately I needed to acknowledge that my mother was also victimized by gross abuse by those she trusted. She unconsciously formed her own protective schemas and core beliefs, and as a vulnerable child born in an alcoholic family, I unfortunately became her victim. Now, after more than 30 years, I have finally healed and have forgiven her.
MyTree1 said
on 6/8/2008 I totally disagree with your 5 points on forgiveness. My reasoning is this: For well over 30 years I have grieved, experienced and re-experienced my anger, pretended I wasn't angry, focusing on the positive, focusing on the future. I have acted out scenarios in therapy, re-experienced the feelings and the reality of my past within the theraputic process. Pretending to be indifferent, as you have suggested in step 5 is, in my opinioin, simply bogus and does not work, mostly because it's a lie... Did I mention I've been at this for over 30 long years?
So now allow me to tell you what DID finally work... I had to understand and process on a very deep mental and emotional level that my abuser's psyche and spirit was greatly damaged and wounded also. I needed to realize and acknowledge that my abuser (my mother) never intended to hurt me, but to understand that she too was reactin
FaithAllen said
on 3/11/2008 I fully agree. We must pour out the pain and process our emotions before we can begin to let go. I went from denying I had any anger to feeling intense rage to processing the rage to eventually letting go of the rage. I learned to trust my intuition about what I needed to be doing at each stage.
Good luck with your healing journey.
- Faith
debbthebee said
on 3/11/2008 Everything in the article is a good idea in the abstract the problem for me in my life is that in reality much of it can easily move from forgiving my moolester and no longer dwelling on abuse to simply stuffig valid feelings of pain and betrayal in order to get it all overwith asap. Left unanswered these feelings of anger and pain and betrayal that are so easy to stuff in the name of moving on per someone else's schedule can have devastating consequences. I know I must find a way to deal with my pain or it will consume me but if I do not allow it to see the light of day before I banish it then I cannot identify it as that which must be vanquished.
"Just for today I pledge to stuff no more and for this I am responsible."