Forgiveness is the Wrong Response to Trauma
We must encourage healing, not forgiveness.
Forgiveness is an evolutionary phenomenon necessary for building and sustaining community. Minimizing conflict preserves cooperation so that groups can achieve goals. Accordingly, people practice forgiveness more readily within-group and withhold forgiveness from out-group members.
The Power Thesaurus lists over 750 synonyms for forgiveness, which is proportionate to the value given to the concept. Forgiveness is a personal adaptation that allows the continuation of a physical, emotional, or metaphysical bond with someone who has caused harm.
Evolution Marker
Family members and people who share a loving relationship are drawn to share physical and emotional space. Forgiveness allows them to do so in the face of harm.
Misbehaved children, neglectful parents, careless spouses, and demanding grandparents are frequent beneficiaries of forgiveness. Children can be raised in low-conflict environments, weddings can be executed smoothly, and family reunions can be a joyful experience because forgiveness is extended.
As some researchers acknowledge, not everyone harmed benefits from sharing physical and emotional space with the person who harms. Many people are serial offenders who hurt people. Continuing relationships with them cause physical or psychological harm to victims.
Instead of helping individuals and communities overcome evildoing in the world, uncritical and misplaced forgiveness can perpetuate evils and, arguably, inspire wrongdoers. (DiVietro, S., & Kiper)
Modern-day Virtue
Nevertheless, forgiveness has evolved into a modern-day virtue. Even if the individual never had a relationship with the person who caused them harm, forgiveness is considered the high ground.
Some mental health professionals and religious leaders consider forgiveness the holy grail of healing. Regardless of the depth of harm or the repentance of the offender, forgiveness is a therapeutic or spiritual objective.
Any discomfort or negative emotions surrounding the inflicted harm is assumed to be related to a metaphysical bond between the offender and the survivor. “Don’t let someone rent space in your head” is the incentive given to forgive.
The virtue of forgiveness has incentivized survivors of harm to wear it as a badge of honor sometimes. “I’ve forgiven the person who hurt me” is sometimes a spiritual pledge or an emotional emblem.
Wrong Response to Trauma
Unfortunately, the virtue of forgiveness overrides the process of healing deep wounds. Justified anger is interpreted as a need for forgiveness, as are depression and anxiety. Forgiveness is more important than connecting to your inner child, taking care of your body, creating healthy boundaries, or letting go of secrets. I assert that forgiveness is the wrong response to trauma.
Trauma is a complex experience that is lodged within the psyche. It can affect every aspect of a person’s life. While forgiveness contributes to the cohesiveness of a community, the individual who was harmed pays a heavy price.
For several reasons, forgiveness should never be required of a person who has experienced trauma.
1) Trauma requires a focus on self, not another person. To suggest to a survivor that their healing is contingent on resolving a relationship with the person who harmed them is secondary harm. The suggestion can create more profound feelings of victimization.
Healing requires survivors to focus on their relationship with themselves. As they heal their relationship with themselves, the forgiveness of their violator may or may not arise. Even in the absence of forgiveness, through processing emotions, survivors thrive.
2) You shouldn’t equate unforgiveness with hate or a desire for revenge. Since forgiveness is ill-defined, the unforgiveness is as well. Since “unforgiveness” isn’t even a word, we have to a seemingly opposite. But, there isn’t an opposite to forgiveness. Forgiveness exists on its own continuum.
Survivors deserve to be understood, not mandated by harmful norms of forgiveness. All survivors of harm have their interpretations of healing that don’t have to be judged on a forgiveness continuum.
The death of their violator is a sign of favor from God. For that reason, they do not state forgiveness.
For many of the adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse I have consulted, they have no desire for revenge and don’t use the word hate to describe their feelings. Most often, their violators were family members, making hate highly unlikely. Hating kin is in opposition to evolutionary marking.
Many survivors patiently wait for their violators to die so that they can have a feeling of resolve. The death of their violator is a sign of favor from God. For that reason, they do not state forgiveness. They otherwise go about the business of healing and often thrive.
3) The virtue of forgiveness usually comes with an expectation of silence. In the absence of forgiveness, survivors are more willing to speak their truth and allow natural consequences for the violator. Lack of forgiveness is called into play when the survivor is no longer willing to protect the violator.
When survivors focus on healing instead of avoiding consequences, living in their truth is often interpreted as revenge. Survivors take the blame for disruption in the family, job, or organization. Forgiveness is not always the high road; it is often the back road, merely the path of least resistance.
Focus on Mental Health
Every harmful act is forgivable by someone, but not necessarily by the victim. Everyone can forgive, but not to forgive everything. Perhaps someone who forgives the person who murdered their child has never forgiven their ex-spouse. That’s OK because the link between mental health and forgiveness is unsubstantiated.
Forgiveness, as a virtue, leaves a metaphysical trail of tears and an invitation for intentional wrongdoers to harm. It is another outdated evolutionary script that deteriorates cultures rather than builds them up.
If we intend to support mental health, we must learn how to help people connect to themselves. Allow people in pain to explore its complexity instead of simplifying it down to forgiveness.
Forgiveness requires no processing when presented as a task of adaptation. Forgiveness, as a virtue, leaves a metaphysical trail of tears and an invitation for intentional wrongdoers to harm. It is another outdated evolutionary script that deteriorates cultures rather than builds them up.
A Family Affair
Research shows that the gravest harm occurs most often between people who know and love each other. In cases of childhood sexual abuse, the closer the kinship between victim and violator, the more likely the victim is to never disclose the violence, even long into adulthood.
One in four women and one in four men experience severe domestic violence. Adult rape victims know their violators in 90% of the cases. Reporting and conviction for these personal traumatic crimes are less than 5%. A culture of forgiveness has given a clear message that if you want to harm someone, do it within familiar walls.
Victims often internalize anger to extend forgiveness to a violator. Victims commonly boast about forgiving their violators while admitting that they hate themselves. They don’t make the connection between self-hate and offering unconditional forgiveness.
Peace through Unforgiveness
Often, peace is found within the status of unforgiveness. The condition of unforgiveness creates enough distance from the violator to process the pain. When enough of the pain has been processed, and the victim returns to a state of homeostasis, forgiveness may arise naturally. Forgiveness does not cause the pain to stop. Stopping pain causes forgiveness.
Trying to stop pain by forgiveness is like putting a box of cake mix in the oven and expecting to get a cake. That does not work, and you could burn down your house. You have to pour the cake mix into a bowl and add some ingredients. Once you the mix in the oven, ultimately, you have to let the oven do the work. So, it is with forgiveness. Put the ingredients of healing into the wounds.
Many lives could be saved, and less trauma would be endured if we stopped passing down generational trauma through a dangerous culture of forgiveness.
References
Bakari, R. (2020). How to heal childhood trauma without forgiving the person who caused it. The Start-Up on Medium. https://medium.com/swlh/how-to-heal-childhood-trauma-without-forgiving-the-person-who-caused-it-e83ac9e0c5a1.
DiVietro, S., & Kiper, J. (2018). Perspectives on forgiveness: Contrasting approaches to concepts of forgiveness and revenge (1st ed.). Boston: BRILL.
Coleman, B. (2019). Do you forgive people a little too easily? 3 reasons you should STOP right now! Times of India. Retrieved from https://link-gale-com.libproxy.uccs.edu/apps/doc/A587301139/GIC?u=colosprings&sid=GIC&xid=24cdd119
Forster, D. E., Billingsley, J., Russell, V. M., McCauley, T. G., Smith, A., Burnette, J. L., Ohtsubo, Y., Schug, J., Lieberman, D., & McCullough, M. E. (2019). Forgiveness takes place on an attitudinal continuum from hostility to friendliness: Toward a closer union of forgiveness theory and measurement. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000227
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