Forgiveness is such a trap and I honestly highly recommend not forgiving people who’ve done irreparable damage in your life. Despite what people say, you don’t need to forgive someone to have peace in your life.
I love this song
Forgiveness isn't for the other person, it's for you. Holding on to anger and resentment can fuck you up, both physically and psychologically.
So yes, you absolutely do need to forgive too have peace in your life, and science backs this up.
It actually doesn’t in fact a lot of therapists talk about forgiveness as a trap and you don’t need to forgive in order to let go of anger and resentment.
I encourage you to read Toxic Parents by Dr. Susan Forward but I’ll include some of what she says about the forgiveness trap here:
“One of the most dangerous things about forgiveness is that it undercuts your ability to let go of your pent-up emotions. How can you acknowledge your anger against a parent whom you’ve already forgiven? Responsibility can go only one of two places: outward, onto the people who have hurt you, or inward, into yourself. Someone’s got to be responsible. So you may forgive your parents but end up hating yourself all the more in exchange.
I also noticed that many clients rushed to forgiveness to avoid much of the painful work of therapy. They believed that by forgiving they could find a shortcut to feeling better. A handful of them ‘forgave,’ left therapy, and wound up sinking even deeper into depression or anxiety.
Several of these clients clung to their fantasies: ‘All I have to do is forgive and I will be healed, I will have wonderful mental health, everybody is going to love everybody, we’ll hug a lot, and we’ll finally be happy.’ Clients all too often discovered that the empty promise of forgiveness had merely set them up for bitter disappointment.”
I feel like this therapist, and their clients, are misunderstanding forgiveness. It doesn't mean you absolve the person who hurt you.
Often people say "I forgive you" as a way of moving on so they don't have to actually deal with what happened, but forgiveness means letting go of the pain and resentment, and that can take time.
I wouldn’t be so quick to dismiss the work of trained professionals as them just misunderstanding a word that you must hold the real definition to.
The first two real life synonyms listed for forgiveness are “absolve” and “exonerate”
Absolution and forgiveness are shoulder to shoulder and no matter how you spin it, letting go of anger involves absolution.
and I’m really happy to say that anger is a normal and healthy human emotion. You don’t actually ever have to stop being angry about things that have been done to you to heal. Anger doesn’t have to be all encompassing. It doesn’t have to eat a way at you. But I am here today to tell you emotionally forgiveness is a trap and it traps a lot of people from healing and a lot of people know this.
We’re not just all foolishly misunderstanding forgiveness. We don’t neee it to heal and it’s not for me it’s for the other person and I don’t have to give it to them to feel better.
If you want to forgive go head! I’m good on that.
