Is Forgiveness the Goal? Part 2
Note: I was honored to be asked to preach and give four lectures at Bay View Michigan Association, a Chautauqua community, from July 24th through the 28th, 2022. The sermon title is “Remembering the Tough Stuff” and the lectures are entitled: Dissociative What?, Pathways to Recovery, Is Forgiveness the Goal?, and Let It End Here (prevention). I will post one of these offerings each month from August through December. Today’s post is the third lecture delivered on July 27, 2022. Special thanks to Dissociative Writer Mariah who gave permission for me to use their writing.
Also of note, I published a blog post on May 28, 2021 entitled Is Forgiveness the Goal which can be found here. ~ Lyn
I’d like to begin with a very short passage from 2 Corinthians 5: 17-19 that describes the new life God has in store for us.
So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us.
I love this beautiful passage from 2 Corinthians! It reminds me that God is always making us new, making me new, making you new, changing and transforming us for a reason. Did you notice in this passage that God doesn’t count our sins against us? And he entrusts the ministry of reconciliation to us, in spite of the fact that we goof up and mess up all the time. That’s a tall order. Reconciling the world to himself, through us. It’s in that spirit that I talk with you about forgiveness, about its power and its shortcomings on our road to healing.
Forgiveness as Intimacy
Forgiveness is the thread that weaves our world together. When the thread is strong, the fabric seems strong, but when it’s weak, the fabric seems to unravel, as we can see today, in all aspects of our lives – our personal family dynamics, our community histories, the social, political, spiritual state of our nation, and the vicious warmongering of our world. What do we do when someone or some group hurts us? We could exact revenge. We could withdraw. We could deny. We could smile and passive-aggressively go behind their backs to give them what they deserve.
All major world religions, our psychological and psychiatric authorities, and our secular culture call us to push back against our natural inclinations and forgive. It is healthy for our emotional well-being, they say. It is moral and the right thing to do, they say. We’ll never heal from life’s wounds if we don’t forgive, they say. Forgiveness. Letting go of wrongs perpetrated against us, releasing bitterness, and moving on.
You don’t know what you don’t know. When I was a young adult, I didn’t have many friends. I didn’t know that real friends require intimacy, or that I was afraid of intimacy. I didn’t know that intimacy always hurts, at least a little bit, and I didn’t know that forgiveness was the antidote to hurt in intimate relationships. We’re all imperfect. We mess up. We step on each other’s toes, sometimes intentionally but mostly unintentionally.
So friends, people who have a certain level of intimacy in their relationships, naturally forgive each other. One of us may need to talk about it to get our hurt out in the air. One of us may need to listen intently and then say we’re sorry. And both of us may need to forgive – the victim forgives the perpetrator, and the perpetrator forgives themselves.
This is how we maintain relationships, how we stay married, how we put up with great aunt Hilda’s quirky outbursts or our little brother pulling our pigtails. It’s how we remain friends over time with people who aren’t perfect just like us. Sometimes we forgive them, and sometimes they forgive us.
I learned this lesson the hard way, over decades of grueling work, because I didn’t learn it as a child growing up. I had DID – undiagnosed at the time – and intimate relationships were anathema to me. Once, as a young mother, I threw a party, and nobody came. Well, no wonder; I hardly knew them. I did know one woman, and I was devastated that she was a no-show. Looking back, she probably had no idea how important the party was to me, so she kept another family engagement instead. I didn’t know how to tell her it was important. I didn’t know how to convey how much I wanted to be her friend. When I got hurt by her non-attendance, I didn’t know how to deal with my feelings, and I certainly didn’t know how to forgive her.
When I began individual therapy for DID, forgiveness wasn’t in my vocabulary. Mainly, I wanted to stop feeling crazy, I wanted to feel normal again, I wanted to heal. Early on, I was invited to join a therapy group, and I remembered the warm and fuzzy support I felt with women in the psychiatric hospital, so I signed up thinking, “This group will make me feel better.” I was wrong.
It’s not that the women who attended the group weren’t good and kind people, it’s that I didn’t know how to be intimate with them, or how to let them be intimate with me. I didn’t know how to trust them. I didn’t understand the give and take of relationships.
Six years of group therapy was the most painful aspect of my healing, and the most productive. For reasons unknown to me, my psyche began to “transfer” my extremely dysfunctional and abusive relationships with my father, my mother, and my sister onto each person in the therapy room. When someone used a particular tone of voice, they were ridiculing me. When they criticized me, they were actually abusing me. When they walked past me without saying hello, they were shunning me. One night after group, I called the suicide prevention hotline because I was in such agony. Transferring onto group members produced a wealth of information for me to take back into therapy, but it was painful in the extreme.
Yet it was in this context that I eventually learned how to forgive. Over time and with therapeutic guidance, I discovered we are all imperfect. I began to trust people who deserved my trust and withhold trust from those who didn’t deserve it. I learned I was not as vulnerable as I thought and could navigate many different kinds of people and personalities. In short, I made friends, and, in the process of making friends, I forgave them as well as myself. Even forgiving others in these most basic of situations can be hard for many of us, but it’s essential as we grow, and learn, and heal. Jesus said, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
Are There Limits to Forgiveness?
So much for forgiving imperfect friends and acquaintances. I often wonder what Jesus would say about forgiving perpetrators who rob children of their innocence. I wonder what he would say about forgiving a man who rapes his six-year-old daughter several times a week? I wonder what he would say about forgiving a woman who locks her four-year-old daughter in a closet for days on end. I wonder what he would say about forgiving a husband and wife who sell their child regularly for the sexual gratification of other men and women? These and more are the kinds of sins that fragment a child’s mind into multiple selves to survive the pain. These and more are the sins that rob a child’s soul so they don’t know who they are and whether they were meant to live or die.
Mariah laments her situation in this piece entitled Evolution of a Fractured Psyche:
We all come bursting into the world;
trust that someone will catch us.
Complete dependence;
trust that someone will meet our needs.
Life or death;
trust that someone will protect us.
Unsolvable dilemma;
trust until it is repeatedly violated.
Evolution of a fractured psyche;
trust no more.
Forgiveness is a hard word for people with dissociative identity disorder. For many years, I rejected it outright and, frankly, didn’t think about it. I was working relentlessly on healing myself and other relationships in my life, and I didn’t have time to mess around with forgiving my perpetrators. In spite of the fact that experts say forgiveness fosters less depression, anger, stress, cardiovascular disease, and pain; and more hope, compassion, self-confidence and a boost in our immune response, I still couldn’t fathom the word. I was too busy surviving.
Art Credit: Wound Painting by Graham Dean
As it turns out, I’m not the only person with DID who is challenged by the concept of forgiving our perpetrators. A year or so ago, I posted a question on a Facebook page for folks with the disorder to ask whether or not forgiving their perpetrator was an important part of their healing. Here are just three responses out of many:
Forgiveness isn't something we think about. Do you forgive the weather for blowing your house down? It's the weather. It's not something you have control over.
Forgiveness is out of the question. To forgive, the way I see it, is to basically say something that happened was either alright or that it has been made up for adequately, and neither of those is true. To let go of the pain it causes me would be a lovely goal, but to forgive? Absolutely not.
Forgiveness is tough. It is so much easier having a tangible monster to blame. I think I have come to terms with what happened. With some sense of forgiveness or at least a sense of not caring. And I have even looked into trying to understand my abuser's trauma which has helped. However, forgiveness and understanding does not take away the memories, triggers, panic attacks, or the feeling I have when I see them.
So are we who’ve been victims of chronic childhood abuse cutting off our noses to spite our faces when we shy away from forgiving our perpetrators? Are we rejecting the evidence-based benefits that come to people when they make the decision to forgive? Or is there a reason underlying our reticence that maybe even we don’t understand?
Forgiveness from a Religious Perspective
To prepare for a workshop I led at a conference for people with DID a year ago – it’s called Healing Together, and it’s sponsored by organization called An Infinite Mind – I began to research the topic of forgiveness. I discovered that nobody can agree on a definition.
Psychologists and social scientists can’t agree on a definition. None of the world’s major religions can agree on a definition. Secular culture can’t agree on a definition. Yet most people believe that forgiveness of any offense, no matter how large or small, is critical for the well-being of the person who’s been offended.
For instance, Christianity teaches us that God is the source of all forgiveness and that we must forgive others because God forgives us. There’s some wiggle room about whether the Lord’s Prayer means forgive our trespassers because God forgives us or forgive our trespassers so God will forgive us. The first interpretation is an incentive, the second is a requirement.
Contrast that with Judaism that says we must forgive an offender only if they apologize and attempt to make amends.
Or with Islam that views forgiveness as a virtue, not an obligation.
Eastern religions take a psychological approach believing forgiveness prevents harmful emotions from causing havoc to our mental well-being and noting that not everyone is capable of forgiving.
So which is it? An incentive? A requirement? A transaction? A virtue? A path to emotional wellness? Any way you look at it, Christianity places the heaviest burden on the wounded person to offer free grace.
Forgiveness from a Psychological Perspective
Currently, there are over 1,000 scientists researching the topic of forgiveness, and they can’t come to agreement about the definition either. It seems the issue of whether or not the perpetrator must feel remorse and participate in the forgiveness process – the same difference we saw between Christianity and Judaism – is the sticking point. Many forgiveness gurus believe the offender is not required to be part of the process, that the benefits of forgiveness belong to the victim alone. They note that forgiveness does not mean condoning unkindness, forgetting something painful happened, excusing poor behavior, or minimizing your hurt. Instead, it’s a process you go through that helps heal the hurt and allows you to move on and leave the past behind.
Each researcher promotes a different set of activities to complete the process. For instance, Fred Luskin, author of Forgive for Good, uses a variety of tools including putting pain in perspective, breathing exercises, and refocusing on positive emotions. Robert Enright, author of Forgiveness is a Choice, offers more in-depth options that include uncovering anger, working toward compassion, accepting the pain, and releasing oneself from emotional prison. In both of these models of forgiveness, the tools they offer are good, but are they good enough?
More and more psychologists who work with trauma victims are beginning to see that this cookie cutter approach to forgiveness is not helpful for people who have experienced severe childhood abuse. Janis Abrahms Spring, author of How Can I Forgive You? The Courage to Forgive, the Freedom Not To, describes four kinds of forgiveness: the first is cheap forgiveness (forgiving upfront without doing the work), the second is refusing to forgive (cutting off the possibility entirely), the third is acceptance (coming to peace and moving on without the participation of the perpetrator), and the fourth is genuine forgiveness (when the perpetrator admits wrongdoing, apologizes, and authentically helps the victim in the healing process).
The first two – cheap forgiveness and refusing to forgive are not helpful; they don’t lead us toward a place of wholeness and healing. In fact, they both inhibit healing and place the victim in a box with no exit. The second two, however, are both paths to healing.
Acceptance is possible when the victim comes to a sense of peace without the remorse of the perpetrator. Bitterness and resentment are left behind and the person moves forward with their life even though the perpetrator is not a part of a reconciliation process. Acceptance is not only an acceptable goal in healing, it may be the only goal possible when the offender doesn’t admit wrongdoing.
Finally, genuine forgiveness is the highest form of healing and results in reconciliation. When the perpetrator acknowledges the sin, repents, and helps the victim heal, true reconciliation is possible. Let us remember, though, that genuine forgiveness, as it’s defined here, is not in the hands of the victim since both victim and perpetrator must be active participants.
Cheap forgiveness, refusing to forgive, acceptance, and genuine forgiveness. Of the four, accepting what happened, dealing with the consequences on one’s own, and letting the past go as we are able, is often the best way forward for survivors of severe early childhood trauma and abuse.
Alternative Model of Healing
For people with fragmented minds, forgiving a perpetrator too easily may equate to assuming blame for the abuse. Small children naturally believe they are responsible for all manner of things that happen in their families. Especially when a perpetrator is a parent or caregiver and swears them to secrecy, especially when the child must rely on the very person who abuses them, forgiving without excavating the past is just another way of minimizing the hurt the child experienced.
Instead of working out of a forgiveness model of healing for people with dissociative disorders, I propose a new model of healing that goes far above and beyond the inner work suggested by the forgiveness experts.
Instead of making forgiveness a therapeutic goal, we set healing as our goal, and we get there by cycling through four related modalities.
(1) We begin working with our parts, accessing memories, and grappling with our identity.
(2)We work with shame, trust, and relationship issues.
(3) We grieve the loss of our childhoods, the families we thought we had, and the life we might have lived had we not experienced chronic childhood trauma.
(4) And finally, we begin to build a future for ourselves and find peace.
I believe it is possible, even probable, to heal without genuinely forgiving our perpetrators who have cast us aside like dust in a bin.
I believe it is possible, even probable, to experience a full life without kowtowing to our perpetrators who continue to betray us even into adulthood.
I believe it is possible, even probable, to stay entirely focused on ourselves by getting to know our parts, listening to and believing their stories, managing shame, trust and relationship issues, becoming real, owning our strength, and claiming our competence – in short, healing – without embracing the divine goal of forgiveness.
For the first time in our lives, we can put ourselves first. For the first time in our lives, we can take care of ourselves. This not selfish; this at first surviving and then, thriving.
This four-point model I’ve shared represents decades worth of inner work in each individual, and it leads us toward the wholeness and sense of self that we deserve. Ironically, it may also lead us toward forgiveness but that is never the goal. Healing is the goal.
Reconciliation
My parents had disowned me and adopted my chronically unfaithful ex-husband, to replace my position in the family, both emotionally and financially. Living without family for more than a decade was scary and disorienting, but it gave me time to focus on intense inner work without the distractions of toxic family dynamics.
Eleven years after my diagnosis, I visited my dying father in a nursing home where I was able to hold his hand and feel genuine compassion in his presence. My father hated religion, yet he held a somewhat morbid interest in it up until his death. It happened I was in seminary at the time of my visit, so we talked about my studies. I asked him if he wanted me to read the scripture I was exegeting from Ephesians aloud. He said yes. I read the whole armor of God about truth, and justice, and peace, and faith, and standing firm against the spiritual forces of evil, thinking, perhaps, this passage would intrigue him.
Instead, his demeanor changed. He scowled. He got mean, the way I often remembered him. From his hospital bed, his body shook, and his frail voice yelled, “Stop! Stop! Stop!” I knew in that moment he had switched, the word we use for moving from one personality to another. It was both terrifying and awe-inspiring. I stayed with him for awhile, held his hand as he calmed down, then kissed him on the forehead before I left. My father no longer held power over me, and that was good news. He was a broken old man, ready to die. I had just witnessed proof that he was multiple too, and I wondered what happened that fragmented his mind in the early days of his life.
My mother died a year later. I was the first family member by her bedside as she drifted into a morphine-induced coma after a fall. Even though she was an agnostic, she had taught me the hymn, “I Come to the Garden Alone,” when I was a little girl, so searching for something to comfort her, I began singing this hymn at her bedside. Before she drifted off, she looked at me and whispered, “Sing it again.” So I did. Throughout that weekend and into the next week, our family stood vigil by her bedside, and all the atheists and agnostics in the room joined me whenever I sang “I Come to the Garden Alone” over and over again, until she slipped away for good.
Neither my mother nor my father ever acknowledged the past, apologized, or showed remorse. By the time I reunited with them, they were too old for me to bring it up. I didn’t need to. I had already come to a relative peace about my history. In the forgiveness model proposed by Janis Abrams, I had come to acceptance. It was time for me to move on, tentatively, with a teaspoon of wisdom and a tablespoon of compassion.
Wrap Up
When those of us with DID and other dissociative disorders work on our shame, trust, and relationship issues, we learn how to forgive. It’s a part of the everyday give and take of life. In many ways, genuine forgiveness is a way to own our power and claim the transformation God promises.
Yet encouraging us to forgive our perpetrators who tortured us, neglected us, or repeatedly abused us is not God’s way of healing. God holds us tenderly and tends to our wounds patiently, slowly, and with love. It is in God’s power to transform our perpetrators, but it is not in our power. It is in our power to transform ourselves, with God’s help.
The scripture reminds us that God is making all things new and entrusting us with the ministry of reconciliation. Like all of us, people with DID are a people in process. Reconciliation begins with reconciling our inner turmoil, reconciling our multiple selves, reconciling our history with our present and our future, and reconciling what we thought was true with what is actually true.
Imperfect though we may be, this healing process clothes us in the whole armor of God and prepares us for the ministry of reconciliation, someday, perhaps, with those who hurt us, but more likely with others who are on the healing journey too. Most of us will achieve acceptance and pass the mantle of reconciliation with our perpetrators to others, knowing only God can heal the wounds of those who hurt children so deeply.
I hope you’ll join me again tomorrow as we close out the week with the topic of prevention. With God’s help, we can end child sexual abuse which is nothing less than God’s new creation. A world without violence, intimidation, fear, abuse, and all manner of evil acts. Healing for the wounded and prevention for the future. Shalom. God’s new creation.
Many Thanks
Many thanks to Stephanie who led traditional writers workshop last week, to Sharon who will begin leading writing-in-place on November 1st, to Peter and Jill who may sub on occasion, and to JJ who leads our Social Hangout. We can’t forget Debby who is our treasurer, Gabby our scribe, and Sharon our admin. Dissociative Writers is a community affair. No one of us can handle all the tasks required for us to meet weekly to share our stories through writing and receiving feedback and support from others. ALL OF US make this wheel go, including you! P.S. I had a wonderful ten days with my dear friend while I took some time off.
Holiday Schedule
Our schedule will change slightly over the Thanksgiving and Christmas/Hannukah/Kwanza holidays. There will be NO workshop the week of Thanksgiving on November 22. There will be NO workshop the week after Christmas on December 27. There WILL be a Social Hangout on Wednesday, November 16 AND on Tuesday, December 20 (this will replace a traditional workshop). For the next two months, traditional workshops will be held on November 8 and December 6. Writing-in-place will be held on November 1, 15, 29 and December 13. If you’re confused, don’t feel bad! Just check the calendar on Groupeasy!
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If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them to have a large millstone hung around their neck and to be drowned in the depths of the sea.
Matthew 18: 6
Lyn