Genuine forgiveness does not deny anger but faces it head-on. –Alice Miller
Forgiveness is a gift we give ourselves, perhaps because when we break our attachment to unforgiveness, we feel freer. When we struggle to forgive, we may have a skewed perception about what is forgiveness, and how to forgive. This newsletter talks about the critical first step that is often missed when attempting to forgive. Without this step, forgiveness feels hollow—like surrendering our power instead of taking it back. That step is accountability. If we grew up with hostile, critical, dismissive caregivers, we need to hold those caregivers accountable for their intolerance of the developmental imperative to make mistakes in order to learn, grow, and change.
When children grow up with unforgiving caretakers, there is a covert expectation of perfection. When children fail to be perfect—which they must in order to grow—they will experience the toxic shame of parental judgement. The experience of toxic shaming strongly wires the child’s developing nervous system for protection, not connection. When children are flooded with the toxic shame of judgements from a hostile or critical parent, they experience the overwhelming urge to ‘fight or flight’. If a child lives with a parent who is continually critical, the consequences are profound. This kind of emotional abuse creates lifelong issues of social anxiety, fear of being vulnerable, and ‘anti-dependence’— the inability to ask for or receive help.
When we struggle to forgive as adults, we may be stuck in a victim story. That story served a purpose—as children we had to create a story to explain what was happening to us (the hypervigilance, the toxic shame, the judgement, the deep feelings of unworthiness). The problem comes when—as an adult who has choices—we feel somehow that we do not, and can’t accept or be accountable for our own behaviors. We become fused with that victim story. Victim stories do not allow for compassion, or kindness, or understanding–they are full of the hostile emotions our caregivers induced in us with their rigid perfectionism. Victim stories reinforce the outer critic—”the part that views everyone as flawed and unworthy… too dangerous to trust” (Walker, 2013).
Victim stories flow from a child part of ourselves—a part of ourselves that was wounded by the judgements and unforgiveness of our caregivers. If we grew up with caregivers who were intolerant of normal typical childhood behaviors (losing things, breaking things, spilling things, blurting out embarrassing things), then we may have an internal victim narrative that launches when someone in our present life triggers this story. When a childhood victim story is launched internally, we will be in the grip of that story—ignoring information that would disprove the triggered story, and highlighting info that agrees with it.
In order to forgive, our caregivers must be held accountable for how they treated us. Because we were powerless children, we could not hold them accountable when they judged us, berated us, or shamed us. Accountability is a necessary first step before we can get to forgiveness.
How do we hold our caregivers (or others) accountable for things that happened many years ago? A therapeutic letter. This is a letter written to tell OUR story of what happened. It is written to express how we felt then (and how we feel now) without regard to punctuation or editing. It is often addressed to the offending caregiver(s) and it is not kept as part of a regular journal. It is written in states of high emotion, and it is burned when completed. It is a way for the child part that is holding onto her/his victim story to actually use that story to hold caregivers responsible.
The part that is wounded is a child part. The part that is wedded to a victim story is a child part. The part writing the letter is a child part—finally getting the chance to speak their truth. Because that child part is stuck way back in our past, it doesn’t need to hold the actual/historical parent accountable. It is the internalized parent we are addressing in a therapeutic letter.
There are big feelings that come up when we write this kind of letter. That is the point of writing it, to release those feelings we’ve carried for so many years. When they come up when writing a therapeutic letter, it’s important to have a strategy such as EFT tapping (see my video) that can reduce overwhelming emotions: AKA big feelings. Often when big feelings are released—usually by grieving—our identification with being a victim is loosened.
Anytime we struggle with forgiveness, it is a kind of rigidity. Sometimes we can forgive others when they offend, but not ourselves. This can be a kind of inverted perfectionism, born from the experience of toxic shame: “it’s okay for others to make mistakes, but it’s not ok for me—because I need to be above reproach (perfect).”
This is an inhumane standard, and it is linked to the deeper story of spiritual annihilation. A caregiver who continually shames a child for making mistakes—the necessary mistakes embedded in any learning curve– is communicating “you are not acceptable when you make mistakes”. This lack of forgiveness on the part of our caregivers gets internalized. When we aren’t forgiven, it must be because we are fundamentally unforgiveable. The toxic shame floods our emotional system with self-rejection. Toxic shame separates us from our inherent goodness. When we re-experience that toxic shame as an adult, it will send us into fight/flight/freeze/fawn states of reactivity and intense outer critic judgements of others.
The inability of our caregivers to forgive is a kind of spiritual abuse. The result of this unforgiveness is a child who is alienated from themselves: cut off from their connection to their authenticity and to a higher power. The child’s behavior orbits around the perfectionist demands of critical caregivers, which makes it almost impossible for the child to develop, learn, and grow. The parent is the judgmental god, and the child’s development takes a back seat to either pleasing the critical parent or never giving offense.
Human life is incompatible with perfection. If we offend or hurt another, we are being human. When we offend, we need to be accountable. If we are stuck in a victim story, we will have trouble being accountable for our own behavior. We may know how to make amends, but if we fall into the shame pit when we offend (because we’re supposed to be perfect and now, we’ve made a mistake) we have to help ourselves get back to safety—out of toxic shame–in order to be accountable to others and to forgive ourselves. When we are in shame, we can’t be accountable: shame is so dysregulating that it will trigger intense fight/flight/freeze/fawn. It is a good idea to use EFT tapping (see this website) anytime toxic shame is triggered, as reducing the intensity of toxic shame creates more internal safety.
Making mistakes is human. Offending others is human. Forgiveness is also human. Forgiveness has an arc: it bends through justice. Without holding those accountable who wounded us as children, it is very hard to forgive. Holding the internalized “mother’ or “father’ accountable through a technique like a therapeutic letter is an activity which has a low probability of retrauma-tization. It is between you and you. In the case of our childhood wounds, accountability is about letting the wounded child inside set the record straight. The truth needs to be spoken as a first step in releasing the past.
Helpful tips
Letting go of childhood pain through writing therapeutic letters is a powerful process when accountability is the first step. Our inner children need to feel safe enough to tell their story, so it is best to commit to the process for several sessions, each session length depending on how it feels to you. The paramount consideration is emotional safety– try to minimize your interruptions and distractions. Have paper, tissue, pen, and anything else that helps you relax close at hand. Sometimes its helpful to begin with “How could you…” or “How dare you…” There is no emotion or situation that is off limits because you are working with the internalized caregivers. You may need more than 1 letter per caregiver. If you are working with a specific memory, after writing the memory, ask it these 2 questions: “How did I feel about this when it happened? “How do I feel about it now”.
Resources
* Walker, Pete (2013) Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving, page 191