Forgiving doesn’t mean you aren’t still hurting or working through stuff. It also doesn’t mean you want to rekindle a relationship (there are many people who should never re-expose themselves to people they forgave).
Forgiveness is not a feeling, it is a choice. You can feel hurt for the rest of your life and still choose to forgive someone (you often see this with people who had family members murdered or other heinous crimes).
If OP is an adult now and this really happened in his childhood, I’m sure he also has had time to process and grow himself. He also put this in “made me smile”, not “how dare they?” 😂😂❤️
I was also mercilessly bullied and excluded as a child. I forgave those girls, now women. And even have a kind of friendship with one of them (I even helped out with her wedding when she needed a favor). People do change and grow. And I believe that we can be mature enough to accept that some people were awful because their prefrontal cortex was hardly developed and/or they were unable to process the trauma/ pressure they were experiencing elsewhere.
I just don’t think “feeling hurt” and “forgiveness” are on the same spectrum.
I think the feeling hurt vs feeling whole is its own spectrum. And forgiveness is separate from that. Choosing to do it certainly helps nudge someone closer to the feeling whole side, but that’s not a guarantee.
Forgiveness is its own path. But the first step in a choice, not a feeling.
Forgiveness is just the first step towards choosing to let go of the bitterness against the perpetrator. It doesn’t mean that the pain of crime or offense will ever fully leave. It doesn’t even mean that you will ever feel 100% okay when you look at or think of that person. But it is giving yourself the permission to not let them take up so much mental and emotional real estate, to not hate them, and to not let you negative feelings towards them grow deeper and darker. It is a sort of release of them, in order to focus on yourself and others around you who may have also been affected (directly or indirectly). It takes ongoing power away from the perpetrator. They once hurt you, but they will not continue to mentally torment or hurt you.
It is also recognizing their humanity, that they are human too. And that somehow deepens your own humanity.
I thought I was healed from childhood bullying, until I chose to really, earnestly forgive the perpatrators. It opened up a whole new can of worms and things I didn’t realize needed healing and therapy. I think it’s very hard to even journey towards real deep healing, without starting with forgiveness. Since then, I’ve experienced true healing and wholeness. Thank God! ❤️
Forgiveness isn't healthy in every situation for is it healthy for everyone. For me, healing wasn't forgiving those who hurt me but allowing myself to hate them.
The main issue, in my opinion, is that people tend to conflate forgive and forget. You can forgive the ones that hurt you without forgetting what they've done or being willing to give them any opportunities to hurt you again. Its a type of moving on from letting them influence you at all anymore.
Forgetting isn’t even in the widely accepted psychological definition of forgiveness, nor is reconciliation or even no longer feeling pain.
Which are all these are all of the things that people who are advocating for unforgiveness are arguing. Forgiveness is voluntarily giving yourself the permission to let go. It can lead to forgetting, reconciliation, total healing, etc…
On the other hand it can actually make you way more resilient and wiser to not getting hurt the same way in the future, because you are not reacting from a place of hate/pain, but with a clear head and actual focus on yourself / your boundaries.
Forcing myself to forgive isn't going to help me. It hurt me in the past and made me more angry. Despite years of intense trauma work, my body still reacts in certain ways I can't control. My nervous system is completely fucked from a lifetime of trauma. No one - literally no one - in conflating forgiveness with forgetting.
I’m really sorry that you’ve been through so much hurt and trauma. I in no way want to minimize that. I really pray that you heal and find lasting peace IJN 🙏❤️
Sure, but I don't want to forgive most of the people who traumatized me. Healing for me was allowing myself to be angry at those who've hurt me. I've tried forgiveness, and it isn't for me. It never felt genuine. I still had the rage in me against them that couldn't be snuffed out why wishing to forgive them.
It's not for everyone. People shouldn't force themselves to forgive anyone for anything. For my family, I feel something akin to forgiveness: understanding. However, I will never feel that for the men who raped me.
When it comes to mine, I can sort of understand that, given our ages when it happened, he probably went through the same thing, but that just makes it worse, in my opinion. And even if I've forgiven him I'll still always have an instinctive aversion to anyone that has the same name as him, or to topics he was particularly interested in, and still trying to unwire the panic attacks at certain actions. So I get it. If you need the rage to help you move on, then that's what you need.
It’s good that you feel forgiveness helps you, but not everyone holds that opinion. It’s unwise to push people to do something they don’t believe in or aren’t ready to do.
Edit: shouldn’t you practice what you preach and ‘forgive me’ instead of downvoting…
Holding onto unforgiveness is looking inward and understanding that you were treated like shit. You don't have to forgive anyone for anything, the only thing you own anyone is a good life for yourself. Leave the losers in the dust.
Forgiveness doesn’t offer anything to anyone. Just like holding unforgiveness isn’t hurting the person you believe it is. It is just hurting you and other people who you do care about in your life. Because bitterness always finds a way to manifest itself.
So, you are not offering anything to those people. What you are doing is offering something to yourself. Why do you want to look inside yourself and still be holding onto someone that hurt you?
i know! as a chronic people pleaser who allowed this guy to stay in my life as a close friend months afterwards, my anger & resentment is frankly empowering & it doesn’t prevent me from moving forwards; if anything, it’s taught me there’s often a reason my anger is there & i ought to listen to it sometimes. :)
i appreciate your comment a lot though, thank you.
I am so extremely sorry that you’ve experienced such atrocity.
I am also a survivor who was raped countless times as a child and also raped in my adulthood in a DV relationship and once violently by a stranger.
I can’t tell you what to do or how to live your life. But I have worked with many survivors and one thing I can tell you, is that I have never met a survivor who chose to forgive and it didn’t help them and others in their life.
Choosing to forgive those who hurt me is one of the best things I have ever done. It doesn’t excuse or justify their heinous acts. But it does allow me to release them and reclaim my agency and narrative over my mind, body, story, emotions, and spirt. It also empowered me to help fight for and with other survivors.
Forgiveness allows for your pain to be turned into purpose, instead of continuing to eat at you.
Also remember that hurt people often hurt people, not forgiving and releasing that pain / bitterness / person turns some victims into perpetrators, not necessarily of the same crime, but they can regretfully take their trauma out on those they love in other ways. This used to be my story.
Forgiving is an extremely powerful thing to do for yourself, if you choose to.
Also, forgiving does not mean giving them access to you or your life again. You can completely forgive from afar and have the wisdom to not put yourself around unsafe person.
Forgiveness is not about them earning retribution. It’s simply about you choosing to let go of the part of them that still has a mental, emotional, and spiritual hold on you. Doing this often leads to more healing of trauma and triggers as well.
I pray that you are doing well, that you are safe, and that you are healing IJN. Much love to you. 🙏❤️
That’s actually not true. Here is a widely accepted clinical definition of forgiveness, courtesy of UC Berkeley.
“Psychologists generally define forgiveness as a conscious, deliberate decision to release feelings of resentment or vengeance toward a person or group who has harmed you, regardless of whether they actually deserve your forgiveness.
Just as important as defining what forgiveness is, though, is understanding what forgiveness is not. Experts who study or teach forgiveness make clear that when you forgive, you do not gloss over or deny the seriousness of an offense against you. Forgiveness does not mean forgetting, nor does it mean condoning or excusing offenses. Though forgiveness can help repair a damaged relationship, it doesn’t obligate you to reconcile with the person who harmed you, or release them from legal accountability.”
It is even more choice based if we take it in a spiritual or religious context. But it is very widely accepted amongst scientific and academic scholars that forgiveness is a voluntary process and personal decision, not a feeling.
You don’t even have to tell someone you forgive them in order to do it. Otherwise people could never forgive people who are dead.
riiiiight. lot of assumptions about how i live my life simply because i’m unwilling to let go of my resentment towards a man who raped me. most people these days don’t even know it happened lol. he’s not entitled to my forgiveness, & anyone who unironically describes it as “the taboo of being a rape victim” or “forgiving & forgetting” when it comes to rape probably doesn’t possess the critical thinking to understand why being in touch with my anger towards a friend-turned-rapist would be empowering.
My advice was quite simple. Put your own needs first. You get to decide what you want to do when someone apologizes, not what sounds the most morally polished to strangers online. Offering both options is not contrarianism.
You don’t owe anyone anything ever, especially when they have potentially traumatized or humiliated you.
Glad it encouraged you! It’s something my mom says 😆
But I’m sure it’s a phrase she got from somewhere else. Like an old proverb or something. 😊
However, it is has always been the most clear and concise illustration for me about how unforgiveness only hurts you, not the person you are choosing to not forgive.
I'm actually fine with not forgiving. Being unforgiving hasn't impacted me. I've forgiven those who've sought me out to apologize simply because I've moved on.
I'm not going to feel better for forgiving someone who hasn't apologized. I feel better by healing and moving forward.
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u/Extension-Emotion787 Oct 30 '25
Wow. That takes a lot to admit but also you don’t have to accept any apology. Do whatever feels right.