Could you ever forgive your abuser? Or maybe you already have? 

If you are a survivor of any kind of abuse, you may find it hard to forgive the person or the people who have done this to you.  And you might think, why forgive them at all??! They have done horrible things! Yes, they did do those things and to question the ‘why’ when it comes to forgiveness is fair.

It took me a veeery long time to understand a popular and valid take on forgiveness: you are not doing it for them and you are not giving them an absolution. You do this for yourself to be able to let go of the attachment to the abuser, the situation and eventually the pain it has caused you, to be in a position to move on.  And yes, I learned the hard way that ‘holding a grudge’ is not helpful, when you try to get some kind of inner peace.

But I also found myself investigating, why it is actually so hard to forgive people that have abused you in some shape or form. Some people might argue that it depends on the severity of the abuse. For example, some people seem to think that being neglected emotionally by your parents as child is ‘not as bad’ as if they had physically abused you. While I do not necessarily agree with this point of view, I can acknowledge, how the severity snd continuation of the abuse may affect this – but then again, the level of what we can possibly endure is different for everyone.  

Other than on this platform, I rarely open up about the details of my abuse.  However, when I do, I am often being told to just forgive my abusers already and it leaves me feeling defensive, but not really knowing hoot respond. 

Mostly, to be honest, I think how lucky they are to be in a position where you wouldn’t know, how it feels when unspeakable things have happened to you and you’re not faced with this forgiveness- challenge. But they are not wrong about this one aspect: it would make my life-experience a lot lighter to be able to fully forgive.

So, the abuse itself and the horrors that came with it, can make the forgive-y approach tough at times. But I was wondering about another aspect of is….

A personality (or character) disorder is not the same as a mental illness. Because, unlike a mentally challenged person, who might indeed not be aware of what they are doing,. Our abusers did know, what thy were doing! 

And proof for this is to me: the behind closed doors – approach, their persistent grooming and gaslighting to make their victims and others think that nothing bad ever happened and their,  often so well woven, net of lies. They clearly and very deliberately try to hide their actions.

If you feel like, you need to hide and deny your actions – you clearly understand that what you are doing is not socially accepted and that there might even be repercussions, like imprisonment, if things came to light. 

So, this is not a behaviour driven by insanity, they are making a deliberate choice and that choice is to hurt others. Of course, I’m not really telling you anything new – all abuse survivors have to come to grips with this harsh truth many times along their healing journey. I just feel, that it might be something to keep in mind when it comes to the topic of forgiveness. Especially in those moments when others are blaming us for not being able to say in good conscience:”I forgave them.”

This doesn’t mean that it is not possible to forgive, but it means that we have to be gentle to ourselves, when we feel that we are unable to meet those outside demands for being the bigger person –

We are the bigger person, because we survived what was done to us. 

It means to acknowledge that they had a reason to make that choice – no matter if we can understand it or not – but, this reason had in fact nothing to do with us and had to do everything with them. 

Hopefully, this can enable us to let it go, not by forgetting or condoning their actions, but  by taking excellent care of ourselves and move on with our lives and live out maybe long-lost dreams, we had before the abuse.

Never forget that you are a true champion for surviving whatever kind of abuse you had to go trough and that you’re not alone in this. There is no shame in not being able to forgive them so quickly, or even fully. Like everything else along  this healing journey, it is a gradual and slow process. 

You can do it , if you want to. And if you do, it won’t be for them, but for yourself.