Should We Forgive Perpetrators Who Aren’t Sorry?
Many spiritual teachings, self-help messages, and therapies focus on forgiveness as either a spiritual virtue or a way of freeing ourselves from seething resentment and freeing others from the bitterness of our judgments. Forgiveness is viewed as a noble act of grace, a way of letting go of the past and reclaiming our ability to be happy in the present.
This all sounds nice, doesn’t it? Don’t we all want to be generous, liberated, grace-giving, and happy in the present?
The problem comes when forgiveness teachings put the burden of forgiveness on the victim, rather than putting the burden of accountability, repair, and the making of amends on the perpetrator.
My partner Jeff got very confused about this because of his fundamentalist religious teachings from the cult he grew up in. His parents had been terribly abusive, but instead of apologizing and making amends for the immense harm they caused, they denied that the abuse had happened, accused him of being a liar, shamed him for being so strong-willed and stubborn, blamed him for leaving the cult and going to college, excommunicated him from the family, cut him off from the will, and somehow still expected him to forgive and forget. It’s the classic DARVO (Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim & Offender) of narcissistic abuse. And forgiveness teachings are often used to let narcissists get off the hook of accountability by pressuring the victim to forgive, rather than pressuring the narcissist to confess to wrongdoing, humble themselves, express remorse, and make things right.
It’s exactly this dilemma that we’ll be addressing in my next Internal Family Systems six week Zoom workshop, The Path To Inner Justice.
Learn more & register for The Path To Inner Justice here.
IFS works beautifully as a counter-balance to the spiritually bypassing forgiveness teachings of many religions and New Age spiritual beliefs. Although IFS can also be misused to side with perpetrators and pressure victims to do the “YOU-Turn,” this is not part of the IFS model. When applied correctly, IFS can be the antidote to spiritual bypassing and a real tool for relational repair, boundary setting, accountability, and justice in relationships. If you’ve felt confused about such things, please join us for The Path To Inner Justice.
When Premature Forgiveness Enables Abusers
Jeff wasn’t exposed to Internal Family Systems until after this incident with his family. Being a compliant good boy, he tried his damnedest to forgive his parents and also his siblings, who enabled the ex-communication and shunning of Jeff. No matter how spiteful and unremorseful they were, he just kept trying to forgive them, to be a good boy who could get over it and move on.
Jeff even went to Princeton seminary to try to figure out how to do so. He admired the story of Corrie Ten Boom, who forgave the Nazi guard who murdered her sister in the Holocaust. He looked up to our mutual friend Scarlett Lewis, who forgave the shooter who murdered her 6 year old in the Sandy Hook massacre. He collected stories of noble people who were able to do the unthinkable- forgiving even the most atrocious perpetrators with a generous, open heart.
But it always felt fake, like he was gaslighting himself. Even when he tried to achieve some gold standard of forgiveness, it didn’t do a thing to help him feel happier or closer to his estranged family.
When Jeff told me his story, I couldn’t help filter it through the Internal Family Systems lens. It felt like he was putting all the forgiveness energy in the wrong direction- towards the people who continued to harm him, even to that day. He was putting himself in harm’s way, day after day. They were abusing him still- and he was putting up with it. He finally realized he was enabling his parent’s narcissism and betraying and gaslighting his own hurt, wounded parts. Who he needed to forgive first was himself.
He needed to forgive the part of him that kept throwing all the other hurt, abused, angry, sad, scared, devastated, despairing, justice-seeking, overwhelmed, abandoned parts of himself under the bus in order to try to win a gold star in forgiveness, be a “spiritual person,” and earn the title of saint.
Until he could do the YOU-Turn and forgive himself for continuing to tolerate ongoing abuse, any attempt at real forgiveness or letting go seemed destined to backfire.
These are the kinds of issues we’re going to be addressing in The Path To Inner Justice.
Learn more and register for The Path To Inner Justice here.
In this workshop, we’ll be focusing on:
- The steps to take in order to maximize the chance for real forgiveness, not the spiritual bypassing kind that gaslights yourself, but the real heart-opening kind that results from relational repair with those who have caused us harm
- How to begin the process of being honest with yourself about what actually happened- and how bad it really was (or not)
- What it means to forgive the parts of yourself that might have tolerated ongoing abuse in the name of forgiving others
- How to get justice when you can and accept injustice when justice is out of reach, in a Self-led way
We hope you’ll bring any parts that are confused about forgiveness, wanting to be free of resentment and bitterness, or holding out hope for relational repair- the right way, the way that leads to real forgiveness, if your perpetrator is up for it. And if your perpetrator is not up for relational repair, we’ll be talking about what to do then too.
Join us for The Path To Inner Justice.
