Dear Angelo,

How do you forgive someone that you loved and trusted most for really hurting you?

Signed, Forgiveness 

Dear Forgiveness,

There are people that will tell you that you have to forgive someone who hurt you to heal yourself. They tell you to do it for you and not the other person. I think what they mean is that you have to come to some peace within yourself about it. You can't rely on another person. But I don't think forgiveness is necessary to do that. In fact, thinking it does can cause more harm than good.

I worked with a man who was terribly beaten by his father growing up. A "therapist" told him his father really loved him and that he had to learn to forgive his dad to heal. He came to believe their was something wrong with him because he hated his father and thought of his dad as a monster - anything but loving. He turned his anger toward himself and became deeply depressed. After blaming himself for years, he eventually found his way to me in great suffering and at the end of his rope. I told him he had a justifiable right to be angry, even enraged, at his father. I also gave him permission to choose to forgive his father, or not, for abusing him. He instantly began to get better. 

When a person betrays your trust and hurts you, it is perfectly OK to feel anger or rage. Something harmful was done to you. It is healthy to hold someone accountable. This isn't the same as blaming, holding onto anger or taking revenge. It's wanting them to take responsibility and apologize to you for their wrongful action. We must give ourselves permission to feel what we feel when people hurt us. Having negative feelings doesn't mean that we also don't care about the person. We may come to understand what they did and why. We may accept their apology. We may work through the issue, renew and strengthen our relationship with them. We may never get what we want and need from them. But we don't need them to have closure within ourselves and we certainly don't have to forgive them for what they did to us in order to let it go, heal and move forward.

We never have to forgive mistreatment that is done to us. If you choose to forgive, do it because you want to and not because you feel you have to. And realize that if you do forgive, it does not mean that you've condoned the hurtful action itself.

© Angelo Pezzote, M.A., N.C.C., L.M.H.C., All Rights Reserved.