Can we forgive people who don't take responsibility for impact?
Reflections on the impacts of addiction as an adult child and an IFS-informed practice of forgiveness
The practice of forgiveness has always been a question for me as a trauma professional and someone with lived experience with addiction in my family system.
Often when I hear people talk about the subject of forgiveness, it’s accompanied by the subject’s platitudes like “let go and let God,” “everybody’s human,” and “it makes you stronger.” These platitudes are well-meaning but they do not speak to the complicated landscape that trauma survivors and adult children of alcoholics/addicts must traverse to arrive at the unburdened promise-land of forgiveness.
Forgiveness bypasses the painful yet necessary work of plumbing a wound when it’s upheld as a prerequisite for healing.
In embodied models of trauma recovery, forgiveness most closely resides in that final stage of healing known as integration and post-traumatic growth. What precedes it is developing resources, connecting with traumatized somatic and affect states, discharging memories and negative beliefs, and connecting with the repressed movements that wanted to take place but couldn’t when surviving trauma. When forgiveness is introduced before natural practices of grieving and angering take place, it cuts the wings off the most natural response to violation and injury. Founder of developmental trauma recovery model NARM, Laurence Heller, says that grief and anger are biological imperatives for the trauma survivor, emotions that must be reclaimed and felt fully for recovery to take place. The response of anger and grief must complete to open ground for embodied, spacious forgiveness to take root.
We can’t possibly forgive without connecting with the impacts of what was injured.
In On Being article “Forgiveness Can be Bittersweet”, Sharon Salzberg speaks to the importance of grief work in forgiveness practice. She writes,
“To forgive we may need to open our minds to a fuller exploration of the context in which the events happened, and find compassion for the circumstances and everyone involved, starting with ourselves. The grief helps us relinquish the illusion that the past could be different than what we know to be true. We are in charge of our own forgiveness.”
I find this reflection interesting because she offers the possibility that acceptance of circumstances is the natural outflowing of grief; without getting in touch with our hurts, we cannot begin to accept events as they were and are. She also suggests that moving into this space of curiosity and acceptance for the full context engenders forgiveness. Having a full perspective allows us to forgive because we have understanding. Awareness doesn’t change events but awareness softens the personalization that our parts take on when they have suffered.
Could forgiveness be an awakening of awareness? Is it possible to hold a healthy respect for context alongside accountability for choices that have caused harm?
Recently, I have been reflecting on what it means to forgive when someone isn’t asking for forgiveness or isn’t aware of the damage they inflicted. When someone is caught in addiction, for example, and is single-mindedly pursuing their own selfish ends with little consequence for how it affects me, the impacts are multi-fold: there is the natural personalization of their behavior in how it causes suffering, but there is also the burden of addiction they leave me with, the burden of suppression and dissociation. Because they lack the awareness to recognize their own pain and how that pain perpetuates pain in others such as myself, they can’t validate and hold my experience. This leads to a swallowing of grief and suppression of anger in my system, the exiling of natural responses to the chaos of a loved one in active addiction.
How can I possibly grieve the many deaths that are dismissed by an emotional tyrant wielding an ax they insist is no weapon?
How can I possibly anger over the hurts which are swept up by the greater winds of self-destruction?
How can I possibly forgive what hasn’t been named and acknowledged by the person who left me with the wound?
My understanding of forgiveness is informed by my experience with loved ones who struggle with untreated addiction and it admittedly rests on this fundamental burden of unacknowledged impact. In my own practice of parts work, the IFS model has taught me the value of my own acknowledgement when others can’t take ownership for how their parts injure mine. I can sit with my own hurt and I can validate how the pain of a parent’s untreated addiction has shaped my life experiences and personal beliefs, even if they can’t.
Getting into relationship with these parts when other people aren’t taking responsibility for their system has helped me in several key ways. The practice of parts work has helped me take steps to protect my system from people whose systems are burdened by addicted parts that lead with escapism, denial of consequences, and opposition to reality because I’m clear on what doesn’t belong to me. I absorb guilt trips, negative projections, and personal attacks from lash-out episodes less. I sit with my system enough to know who I am. And in clarifying this relationship to my own parts and clarifying the boundaries between my own system and theirs, I’ve discovered a freedom in acceptance that is the closest working model I have of forgiveness.
I can give other people space to make their own choices and live out the consequences of their choices. I can give other people’s parts grace to play out their respective dramas and storylines and this does not mean I am bypassing, enabling, or condoning.
For me, it’s an admission that I am truly powerless over how their system organizes and takes action in the context of our relationship. All I can do is make my own choices and allow them the freedom of making theirs (which also might mean choosing to not be in their line of fire).
I love this reflection from a piece of Al-Anon literature, How Al-Anon Works for Families & Friends of Alcoholics, that speaks to the power of relational acceptance and personal insight:
“What is the purpose of our recovery? If we are truly in pursuit of serenity, of healing, of a sense of inner peace that will help us to deal with and possibly even enjoy whatever life brings, we must improve the way we interact with others. This doesn’t mean that we close our eyes to the unacceptable or tolerate the intolerable. It has no bearing on what behavior we will accept, nor on whether or not we continue our present relationships. It simply means that we cultivate the ability to look beneath the surface.”
Do I want this person in my field?
If so, how closely?
If not, how far away?
How can I hold fair standards and boundaries for my own system and also let go of the expectation for someone to be different?
How can I tend to the burdens of mistreatment and abuse responsibly?
How can I keep myself safe?
How can I hold the hurts of a loved one’s addiction with the integrity of presence that was missing when their disowned wounds entered?
Can I forgive when they haven’t asked for forgiveness or know what I am forgiving?
These are all questions I get to ask and answer in the light of my own experience, and this is the gift of tending ourselves responsibly.
~S
Journaling Practice
For reflecting on forgiveness
What are the cultural, religious, and familial messages you received about forgiveness? How does this inform your understanding of forgiveness today?
What does forgiveness mean to you? If you could define it in your own terms, what would you say?
Have you ever been forgiven by someone? How do you think this impacts your relationship to offering forgiveness?
Think about someone you are struggling to forgive. Where is grief in relationship to this person? Anger? Boundaries? Expectations? Needs? Acceptance?
Is it possible to forgive someone who doesn’t know what they do and doesn’t take responsibility for impact? If not forgiveness, then what?
p.s. I’d love to hear how you connect to this theme of forgiveness. To connect with my work more, consider subscribing to this newsletter, giving me a follow on Instagram, or booking an IFS Coaching session. If you’re a helper who wants to go deeper, consider signing up for Embody Lab’s Embodied Intimacy and Relationship Coaching Program or Somatic Parts Work certificate (and use code SARAH for 10% off!).
Beautifully written with nuances reflecting the complexity of it all.