“Self-Forgiveness”

[brokenpony]

lately i’m thinking about self-compassion and self-forgiveness. therapy introduced me to both concepts and i feel i haven’t made progress on the latter. i’m curious about how you approach this. i understand self-compassion as a concept, but i am still confused about what to do with the guilt and shame for having put myself in bad situations and made myself vulnerable. i feel like i made so many bad choices and it’s hard to see past that but the rational side—the side that would comfort a hypothetical friend who this happened to—keeps saying that it’s not my fault people abused me, it’s their fault. that feels like self-compassion. but then i get to the concept of self-forgiveness and get stuck because then i’m suddenly back to feeling at fault, because you only forgive for wrongdoing, and if i need to forgive myself i need to accept my fault, however small. i said in therapy that i was having trouble forgiving myself; my therapist kept focusing on my choices and that he thinks i want a better life and can change. he also said that “we all play a part” and asked me if i could tell others about my “decisions” as a step toward opening up to my family. i think it triggered me. i see that as poor therapy i think, or poorly worded maybe, but if i didn’t actually play a part then why is self-forgiveness a goal for sexual abuse survivors? i don’t know if this is making sense. it just feels on one end that we need to work toward undoing the feeling of fault that we’ve carried for years, and then on the other accepting the part we played and self-forgiving. how do you define and work toward self-forgiveness? or do you even? or am I misunderstanding completely?

 

[Friday]

you only forgive for wrongdoing

Forgiveness is a word with a lot of different meanings.

My favourite is “Giving up all hope ...for a better past.”

Another way to look at it, with absolutely no wrong doing attached?
Forgiving a loan. >>> That’s literally giving someone a gift.
Forgiving a debt >>> Releases a person of obligation

but if i didn’t actually play a part then why is self-forgiveness a goal for sexual abuse survivors? i

IMO It’s just a fast way to say “Stop being angry at yourself, disappointed in yourself, ashamed of yourself, feeling at fault when you’re not, or trying to think of things you could have/should have done differently, and quit effing punishing yourself, already. Forgive yourself as it’s their guilt; instead of this victim blaming bullshit, no matter how much more in control it makes you feel. You aren’t in control. Stop treating yourself as if you are or were. Unless you actually have phenomenal cosmic powers, stop holding yourself to impossible standards”.

 

[brokenpony]

Forgiveness is a word with a lot of different meanings.

My favourite is “Giving up all hope ...for a better past.”

Another way to look at it, with absolutely no wrong doing attached?
Forgiving a loan. >>> That’s literally giving someone a gift.
Forgiving a debt >>> Releases a person of obligation

IMO It’s just a fast way to say “Stop being angry at yourself, disappointed in yourself, ashamed of yourself, feeling at fault when you’re not, or trying to think of things you could have/should have done differently, and quit effing punishing yourself, already.”.

hmm okay, that makes sense to think about it outside the first definition. i guess maybe my therapist was agreeing with me that i could have made better decisions, and when he said "self-forgiveness" he said it in that context, so when i think of it that's what i hear, but it makes more sense when you describe it that way. i dunno if he meant to imply i had any fault or not but that's how i read a lot of his commentary. though i guess to me "self-compassion" as a term seems to cover most of it.

 

[Rumors]

I am in the process of forgiving myself for the bad choices I have made throughout my adolescence and adulthood. I realize many of those choices were born from the abuse I went through as a child. I thought I was just a bad person, deserving of shame and consequences of my poor behavior. As I learn a different set of coping skills, I have started the process of forgiving myself. It's not easy and I am not laying blame on everyone else. I own what I have done but I also realize that I did those things because I was lost, confused, in search of something missing inside me, looking for attention, and a plethora of other things that I find indescribable and very sad.
I hope this helps. It definitely isn't shucking responsibility but maybe reframing the reason why you made those choices. If we had grown up in safe, secure, nonabusive homes we likely wouldn't have made the same choices. That's where forgiveness begins. Sending good thoughts and strength your way and a whole heap of forgiveness. Hugs if it's ok.

 

[somerandomguy]

I don't think self-forgiveness is a valid concept when it comes to abuse, because, as you've noted, forgiveness requires fault. Compassion doesn't require fault.

If your abuse happened in childhood, you bear absolutely no fault and you might want to frame it as "acceptance" instead - letting go of the idea that things could have been different if you were a different person than the one you were.

If the abuse happened in adulthood, "acceptance" might be understanding of the choices you made that eventually led to your abuse, but again, this is not forgiveness.

I'm confused about a therapist that would advocate for self-forgiveness when you really haven't done anything wrong. You may want to clarify with your therapist. I would say that you can have forgiveness for your abuser if you want, but forgiving yourself when you're not at fault could send you down the wrong road. Congrats to you for asking this question.

Then again, I'm a well-known blowhard around these parts so anything I write may not be useful, true, or worthwhile. Caveat lector.

 

[EveHarrington]

I think self-forgiveness isn’t for the abuse itself, but rather for how we have reacted to the abuse and our subsequent actions in order to cope.

So I don’t need to forgive myself for the CSA, but I do need to forgive myself for doing the things that followed, ie lashing out, bad behavior toward myself and others, etc.

 

[brokenpony]

I don't think self-forgiveness is a valid concept when it comes to abuse, because, as you've noted, forgiveness requires fault. Compassion doesn't require fault.

If your abuse happened in childhood, you bear absolutely no fault and you might want to frame it as "acceptance" instead - letting go of the idea that things could have been different if you were a different person than the one you were.

If the abuse happened in adulthood, "acceptance" might be understanding of the choices you made that eventually led to your abuse, but again, this is not forgiveness.

I'm confused about a therapist that would advocate for self-forgiveness when you really haven't done anything wrong. You may want to clarify with your therapist. I would say that you can have forgiveness for your abuser if you want, but forgiving yourself when you're not at fault could send you down the wrong road. Congrats to you for asking this question.

Then again, I'm a well-known blowhard around these parts so anything I write may not be useful, true, or worthwhile. Caveat lector.

thanks for this. my main issue to contend with is that i was in an abusive relationship from 16 into adulthood with someone my own age and never even realized he was so abusive until recently (he didn’t hit me but he did everything else). so it started when i was basically a kid and i stayed in the relationship well into adulthood and i am having a hard time accepting that i stayed so long and didn’t even notice and f*cked myself up so bad by doing this and basically “servicing” him sexually even though the sex was very painful and all this crap. i also have a drunk hook up that turned into a rape, sexual assault by a boy my age at 13, and a couple molestations from adolescence with an older man. the last thing i have an easier time with (because it started and finished when i was under the age of consent, though i still feel awful, “too old” to have let that happen) but the long-term abusive relationship and drunk rape have been really hard for me to accept as “not my fault” and i feel like when my therapist talked about self-forgiveness in terms of the choices/decisions i made when i was younger it set me back.

 

[somerandomguy]

@brokenpony, the abuse that gave me PTSD started when I was 30 years old and was almost 15 years into a relationship with a woman who considered me to be a horrible and unsafe person to be married to, for no reason at all other than the fact that I was a man. She started gaslighting me in little ways when we were still teens. By the time we married, she had convinced me that I would never be able to live without her, and by the time she started physically and sexually abusing me, she had me convinced that I was the abuser in the relationship.

I brought up the issue of self-forgiveness one time with my previous therapist. Very quietly, she said, "What do you think you have to forgive yourself for?" and before I knew it I started to bawl like a baby. Because everyone who knew about my abuse - my therapist, my wife, and the people here on this message board - were all trying to get me to see that it was not my fault.

You & I made choices. But the choices we made were due to 1. the messed-up circumstances we found ourselves in, and 2. the really terrible messages we learned about ourselves as children. Neither one of those things was our fault. In my opinion, there is nothing there to forgive.

Maybe as a result of our abuse, we hurt other people, and that is a choice we have to answer for. I was not a good person to some of the women I dated after I broke up with my abuser. But even though I should have acted better to them, and owed them sincere apologies, and had to learn to be a better person, I understand now why I acted the way I did to them - because of my abuse and my anger at my abuse. But I also understand that I couldn't possibly have confronted it at the time. And I hold myself and that angry, messed-up person with compassion.

 

[brokenpony]

@brokenpony, the abuse that gave me PTSD started when I was 30 years old and was almost 15 years into a relationship with a woman who considered me to be a horrible and unsafe person to be married to, for no reason at all other than the fact that I was a man. She started gaslighting me in little ways when we were still teens. By the time we married, she had convinced me that I would never be able to live without her, and by the time she started physically and sexually abusing me, she had me convinced that I was the abuser in the relationship.

I brought up the issue of self-forgiveness one time with my previous therapist. Very quietly, she said, "What do you think you have to forgive yourself for?" and before I knew it I started to bawl like a baby. Because everyone who knew about my abuse - my therapist, my wife, and the people here on this message board - were all trying to get me to see that it was not my fault.

You & I made choices. But the choices we made were due to 1. the messed-up circumstances we found ourselves in, and 2. the really terrible messages we learned about ourselves as children. Neither one of those things was our fault. In my opinion, there is nothing there to forgive.

Maybe as a result of our abuse, we hurt other people, and that is a choice we have to answer for. I was not a good person to some of the women I dated after I broke up with my abuser. But even though I should have acted better to them, and owed them sincere apologies, and had to learn to be a better person, I understand now why I acted the way I did to them - because of my abuse and my anger at my abuse. But I also understand that I couldn't possibly have confronted it at the time. And I hold myself and that angry, messed-up person with compassion.

our stories are so similar. i dated him from 16-30 and went to the same college so we lived together from about 19-30. i was vulnerable from a trauma when i started dating him and he comforted me and acted like my protector. i am just so grateful i didn't marry him. he wanted to and would have in a minute but i was hesitant and that would have made so much more of a mess. i didn't leave him because he was abusive but because he was an alcoholic who would drive my car drunk all over the place and finally he got a DUI trashed and i said, i can't anymore. it was only recently at 34 did i realize what had happened, that he was very abusive even when sober and that it had been going on since we were teens and that i too could remember him gaslighting me that early, e.g. making up things i did that i didn't remember doing and the like, and targeting my vulnerabilities including my depression and anxiety that he had always said made others dislike me and that he was the only one who would live with someone with my "issues." it's been really hard coming to terms with this, that he never ever loved me and with the fact that i stayed all that time with someone who treated me that way. it helps to hear from someone who has been in a similar situation. you grow up together alongside each other, become adults together and as so entwined at crucial times in self-development, and i don't even know who i am now. i wish my therapist had said 'what do you have to forgive yourself for.' :(

 

[somerandomguy]

it's been really hard coming to terms with this, that he never ever loved me and with the fact that i stayed all that time with someone who treated me that way. it helps to hear from someone who has been in a similar situation. you grow up together alongside each other, become adults together and as so entwined at crucial times in self-development, and i don't even know who i am now.

I really, really understand. And all the time I lost ... it just sucks, and some days it just paralyzes me.

But on my best days I can remember all that lost time and use it to make better choices now. Because I'm never getting that time back, so what I do now really counts.

 

[Cielo77]

lately i’m thinking about self-compassion and self-forgiveness. therapy introduced me to both concepts and i feel i haven’t made progress on the latter. i’m curious about how you approach this. i understand self-compassion as a concept, but i am still confused about what to do with the guilt and shame for having put myself in bad situations and made myself vulnerable. i feel like i made so many bad choices and it’s hard to see past that but the rational side—the side that would comfort a hypothetical friend who this happened to—keeps saying that it’s not my fault people abused me, it’s their fault. that feels like self-compassion. but then i get to the concept of self-forgiveness and get stuck because then i’m suddenly back to feeling at fault, because you only forgive for wrongdoing, and if i need to forgive myself i need to accept my fault, however small. i said in therapy that i was having trouble forgiving myself; my therapist kept focusing on my choices and that he thinks i want a better life and can change. he also said that “we all play a part” and asked me if i could tell others about my “decisions” as a step toward opening up to my family. i think it triggered me. i see that as poor therapy i think, or poorly worded maybe, but if i didn’t actually play a part then why is self-forgiveness a goal for sexual abuse survivors? i don’t know if this is making sense. it just feels on one end that we need to work toward undoing the feeling of fault that we’ve carried for years, and then on the other accepting the part we played and self-forgiving. how do you define and work toward self-forgiveness? or do you even? or am I misunderstanding completely?

Hi broken pony. I m sorry that you went thru such a traumatic experience. I know that it is difficult. I do have to tell you that you are on the right track towards recovery. forgiveness comes in many different ways. think about this for a minute. You said that you have not done anything wrong right. ok that is good to hear. but, how about not forgiving yourself of not letting it go. how about not forgiving the pain it has caused you. this is part of the healing process.... yes a process. self-forgivness is just that. forgiving yourself of not letting such deep rooted hurts go. I like to see it for myself as I deal with my own hurts as peeling back an onion. It is done one little thin layer at a time and it makes us cry but we get the job done. one step at a time. even if it is baby steps ok my friend. again, I want to remind you that you are doing better than you think. Keep focused on positivity and keeping your mindset on reaching your goal to recover. Believe in yourself. I do. hugs . keep us posted. we would like to hear how you are doing. thank you for reaching out to your cyber friends, like me, on here. :)