02/18/2025
Forgiving people who hurt you:
This is for the people who want to forgive. If you are not ready to forgive, that's ok. To be ready to forgive, you would have needed to fully see and fully feel the damage that was done to you. When that pain is unbearable, which it frequently is, it is normal to bury or run away from that pain. That is why people numb or distract themselves, because it feels so bad to fully feel all of the pain. I empathize with anyone who isn't ready. When we suffer a horrible physical wound, it's completely understandable to want painkillers, that is completely reasonable. The unfortunate thing with emotional wounds, they can't heal while you're numbed.
I've seen that even when an abusive parent later apologizes for all their wrong doing, the person (the child grown up) doesn't instantly heal from all of those experiences.
Current day you is capable of forgiving the current day parent, but that does not help your younger self. When we are traumatized, that version of us is frozen in time.
Inside of you, you carry every previous version of you. To forgive, current day you needs to talk to the previous version of you who was wronged or hurt.
There are two things you need to do:
1). Hear your previous self tell you how hurt or angry they are about the event and validate their feelings
2). After validating your previous self, your current day self needs to tell them the rational or ethical reasons that they should forgive the aggressor. This means you need to have come up with a strong case to argue why your previous self should forgive this person.
