Is It Healthy To Not Forgive Your Offenders Or Keep Grudges?

[Tei-Saji]

Not just for PTSD victims, but in general, I mean.

 

[Deleted member 1860]

For me personally there is a difference between not forgiving and holding a grudge. I think that forgiveness is a very personal issue. Not forgiving someone doesn't necessarily mean you are being unhealthy. What I think can hurt us is holding a grudge because to me, holding a grudge means that I'm holding all that anger and negativity inside of me and it will only end up hurting me in the long run. I have learned to let things go so that those negative feelings don't eat away at me. For many things, I have decided that I cannot forgive, so I put it on God to do the forgiving. (Sorry, if you're not religious then this doesn't apply, but I thought I'd share anyway.)

 

[Queen Boudica]

I guess I associate holding a grudge with minor things, like someone didn't call you back or something. But the abuse my ex and my mother put through that is a bit more than holding a grudge. That is they damaged me and I don't think I hold a grudge I just know they were evil people and I don't have to forgive them to get on with my life. Not sure that makes sense.

 

[Seasounds]

• Grudges and lack of forgiveness both involve unresolved and and pain. Two birds of the same color.
• When someone has injured me, in my pain and suffering, I found it a natural response to hold a grudge and to be angry at my abusers. The pain they caused me, limited my life. I felt helpless. I needed some sort of protection, which grudges and anger provided.
• As I healed, forgiveness happened organically, since I regained my power. Abuser's actions no longer controlled me.
• Intellectually forgiving someone, to me, means that I understand that they hurt me, that they were jerks, and that due to their own dysfunction, they did the best they could. It does not mean that they were right.
• Intellectual forgiveness began the road to freedom; it unlocked the chains of abuse, and allowed me to pursue healing.Organic forgiveness, came with freedom from pain, years later. I'm still on that road.

 

[shimmerz]

I suppose it depends on what you mean by 'grudge'. If it eats me up inside, if I am suffering a negative impact(s) from the memories, I know I have to do work on myself. This is what I consider to be 'carrying a grudge'. It isn't good for me.

What I like to attain to is no emotional attachment that eats away at me. On the flip side, I never forget. That way I don't fall into self harming patterns that come with repeating the same mistakes over and over again but expecting a different and better outcome. Different outcomes rarely happen.

 

[HëllaBubz]

I actually just wrote a 7 page letter to my in laws on this very topic. Will post it up here for your perusal once I've given it to them.

 

[Deleted member 28812]

DICTATORSHIP, UNJUST STATES, UNFAIR PUNISHMENT

In my country we have a proud history of everybody doing one another wrong.

I was born when it was still unfree and my parents were wronged by the government (and my grandparents were wronged by the government before that) and of course it wasn't only the government but there were people involved in that. People following the orders of the government - but actually there was a system behind that and this people were wronged too. They did not have the chance to say "No. I refuse to follow the orders".

My parents are Christian and what they did is seeking to talk to the people who done them wrong and try to understand why they did it. I think that an eye for an eye makes whole the world blind and that we would not be able to live in peace and prosperity if we would not be able to forgive.

I owe the fact that I am free today to some very brave people who stood up to the government. Unfortunately I never had the chance to meet them and thank them. I just must aknowledge that not everybody is a hero and to my mind there is no shame in not standing up to them. It's what most people do.
In my country we talk about the "grace of being bron late" - meaning that the young generation was never tested. It's pretty easy to say "I would have acted heroic" - most of us would not have done that. I guess this includes me.

I try to do the same in my personal live. I don't have PTSD though and neither do my parents.

 

[anthony]

Is It Healthy To Not Forgive Your Offenders Or Keep Grudges?

Like some responses above, it really depends on pretty much two things, being whether it creates negative emotion for you, or not.

You can not forgive an offender, whilst still it being healthy, providing you're not walking around harbouring all kinds of negative emotion that keeps you symptomatic. Saying that, will forgiveness change that negative emotion? If yes, then work on forgiveness. If no, then find the solution that works for you to remove it, thus you keep your belief that you do not have to forgive, if that is your belief.

Grudges are one in the same. Nothing wrong with being pissed off at someone, and staying that way for life... but the question is always, is it affecting you negatively. If so, you have to deal with it. If not, then happy as and continue onwards.

 

[ms spock]

As everyone above says: it depends on your point of view. I see the religious forgiveness in my family, as part of the dynamic that has enabled the complex trauma to go from one generation to the next.

Alice Miller resonates for me, but possibly not for you.

In her book Abbruch der Schweigemauer (The Demolition of Silence), she also criticized psychotherapists' advice to clients to forgive their abusive parents, arguing that this could only hinder recovery through remembering and feeling childhood pain. It was her contention that the majority of therapists fear this truth and that they work under the influence of interpretations culled from both Western and Oriental religions, which preach forgiveness by the once-mistreated child. She believed that forgiveness did not resolve hatred, but covered it in a dangerous way in the grown adult:displacement on scapegoats, as she discussed in her psycho-biographies of Adolf Hitler and Jürgen Bartsch, both of whom she described as having suffered severe parental abuse.

A common denominator in Miller's writings is her explanation of why human beings prefer not to know about their own victimization during childhood: to avoid unbearable pain. She believed that the unconscious command of the individual, not to be aware of how he or she was treated in childhood, led to displacement: the irresistible drive to repeat abusive parenting in the next generation of children or direct unconsciously the unresolved trauma against others (war, terrorism, delinquency)., or against him or herself (eating disorders, drug addiction, depression).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Miller_(psychologist)

 

[ms spock]

And if "forgiving" it then about repressing, and fitting back into the family unit, then the cycle is perpetuated. Once again resonates with me, but might not for you.

The roots of violence
According to Alice Miller, worldwide violence has its the roots in the fact that children are beaten all over the world, especially during their first years of life, when their brains become structured.[31] She said that the damage caused by this practice is devastating, but unfortunately hardly noticed by society.[33] She argued that as children are forbidden to defend themselves against the violence inflicted on them, they must suppress the natural reactions like rage and fear, and they discharge these strong emotions later as adults against their own children or whole peoples: "child abuse like beating and humiliating not only produces unhappy and confused children, not only destructive teenagers and abusive parents, but thus also a confused, irrationally functioning society."[16] Miller stated that only through becoming aware of this dynamic can we break the chain of violence. She was appalled by the fact that in the USA, there still remain 20 states, which allow corporal punishment to children even in schools.[16]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Miller_(psychologist)

 

[Deleted member 28812]

DICTATORSHIP, UNJUST STATES, UNFAIR PUNISHMENT

That was supposed to be a trigger warning but I forgot to include the word trigger and now I cannot edit anymore.

 

[somerandomguy]

@Lemontree, we don't use trigger warnings on these forums. Everything is a potential trigger here.