Do I Need to Forgive to Heal?

TL;DR: No.

Note: This article most directly relates to childhood and developmental trauma, though some of what is written may apply to other experiences as well.

Something I see passed around on the internet a lot is the idea that you need to forgive those who have hurt you in order to heal from trauma. People often come to me with this belief, distressed because they don't feel like they can forgive those who have hurt them. I almost always see a look of relief when I tell them that they absolutely do not have to forgive anyone in order to heal.

So why do people keep saying forgiveness is a must?

The language we use is important, and being precise with our words matters, even when we aren't fully aware of the meaning behind them. Some words can be limiting, while others can be freeing. The language we use to make meaning of our experiences is paramount. How does this relate to healing?

Well, sometimes when we hear people say we need to forgive those who have hurt us in order to heal, what they may actually be describing is acceptance. There is a big difference between forgiveness and acceptance.

Forgiveness can mean different things to different people. For some, it means releasing resentment or blame. For others, it may involve changing how they hold the person who hurt them in their mind. It does not necessarily mean excusing what happened, forgetting it, or continuing a relationship. But regardless of how someone defines forgiveness, it is not a requirement for healing.

Acceptance, on the other hand, is about acknowledging the reality of what happened and its impact on you. It is recognizing that it happened, that it cannot be changed, and that it may have shaped you in ways you did not choose.

One may ask, “What's the difference?”

Some people do unforgivable things, and there is nothing we can do about it. We have no control over who we are born to and little control over many of the experiences we are surrounded by and live through. We have no control over the geographical location we are born in. We have no control over how others treat us.

Saying we must forgive in order to heal can ignore the reality that some people do things we may never feel able or willing to forgive. Your values may not allow you to forgive something that contradicts them morally, and that's okay. You do not have to change how you feel about what someone did in order to heal from its impact.

For some people, healing may involve gradually accepting what happened as reality and working to cope with its effects. That is different from accepting what happened as okay.

What Does Acceptance Look Like?

This is where therapy can be helpful for many people. To work toward acceptance, we often have to understand how our past experiences inform who we are today. Not only our past experiences, but also what we didn't experience.

I specialize in attachment-based interventions and Complex Trauma, and I have found that processing what we didn't receive can be just as, if not more, important than processing the negative things that happened to us.

Adversity does not affect everyone in the same way. Supportive relationships can profoundly shape how we cope with difficult experiences and make meaning of them. I often find that the impact of trauma is not only rooted in what happened to someone, but also in what they didn't receive while they were experiencing it. What support was missing? Who helped them make sense of what was happening? Who was there to comfort them, protect them, or help them feel safe?

We can experience terrible things and still have people around us who help us survive them. When those things are absent, the experience can take on a different meaning.

Acceptance and healing can mean looking at who you have become now and holding the reality of how that may differ from who you may have become had you been given what you needed and deserved. I often find that people don't necessarily feel their life outcomes would have been different, but that the way they feel about their outcomes might be.

For instance, they may imagine they would feel more confident, more independent, or more able to feel happy with their progress rather than critical of themselves.

There can be grief in recognizing this. Healing doesn't necessarily mean becoming happy about what happened. Sometimes it means allowing yourself to acknowledge what it cost you without needing to pretend that the cost was acceptable.

Do I Have to Estrange Myself to Heal From Childhood Trauma?

The natural trajectory of this conversation is often the question, “How do I have a relationship with my parents when they have hurt me?”

I'll preempt this by saying there is no perfect answer, and these situations have so much nuance, which is why therapy can be a good option when weighing this decision.

What can help inform that decision is the level of insight your parents have, but insight alone is not necessarily enough. A parent may understand why they hurt you without being able to take accountability for it. They may recognize what happened but still become defensive when you talk about it. They may understand your perspective intellectually while still being unable to respect your boundaries or tolerate your feelings about their behavior.

It can be helpful to consider their ability to listen, take accountability, respect your boundaries, and allow you to have your own experience without requiring you to minimize it or take care of their emotions in response.

In my practice, I have seen people with complex trauma work toward balanced and fulfilling relationships with their parents, and I have seen others for whom that is not possible.

The decision to estrange is not an emotionally easy one, though it can sometimes feel like the most intellectually apparent decision. There is still hurt, and estrangement can be difficult because you may have to grieve the possibility of ever receiving the closure, accountability, or relationship you hoped for.

Many people who come to me feel they need to push down their emotions for the sake of the relationship, but I often counter that a relationship cannot be fully authentic when one person has to continually suppress their emotional reality to preserve it. And for some people, continuing to do so may cause regression in trauma treatment.

That does not mean estrangement is always the answer. For some people, a relationship may be possible with clearer boundaries and a different understanding of what that relationship can realistically provide. For others, distance or estrangement may be necessary. There is no universally correct answer.

I've Accepted What Happened, But I Don't Feel Better

What do you expect to feel about your experience once you are “healed”?

We often conflate healing with feeling better, but why would you feel better about something terrible you experienced or an experience that harmed you? Just because you have healed does not mean you will feel positively about what happened.

Before starting this journey, it's important to ask yourself what you expect healing to feel like at the end.

It's a tall order to expect healing to make you feel better about what happened. You may still think what happened was terrible. You may still wish it had never happened. You may never forgive the person responsible.

Healing can still mean that the experience no longer organizes every corner of your life. It can mean you no longer need the person who hurt you to agree with your version of events in order to trust yourself. It can mean interacting with your world differently and, ideally, not passing on the same wounds, whether to potential children of your own or to the community around you.

There is a purpose to healing. Even if it doesn't help us feel better about what happened, it can help us feel better about how we move forward in the world.

And importantly, you don't have to forgive anyone to get there.