This question comes up in many contexts and often has religious, or at least moral, overtones when it turns to self-judgement, feeling like you “should” forgive but not being able to. This can become a rather dangerous emotional landscape to navigate, and I’m sure various parts could be whole blogs by themselves. 

“Should” I Forgive?

The famous psychologist Albert Ellis once said, “Don’t ‘should’ all over yourself.” This catchy phrase is a good thing to remember in all kinds of situations. Often we get caught up in applying systems of belief, or other people’s expectations on ourselves, in ways we haven’t fully thought through. In the case of real forgiveness, it has to be fully thought through. 

Forgiveness can’t be about fulfilling an obligation, either religious or even just your expectations of yourself to be “better than that.” It’s not quite as easy as waving a wand or simply deciding that’s what we’re going to do. Often the feelings facing off against us are like a force of nature all their own and can’t just be discarded as if they don’t matter.

Anger, Bitterness, and Forgiveness

Anger is absolutely an under-appreciated emotion, and often it gets blamed for things that aren’t really its fault. I’ll discuss anger in a future blog (and eventually link that here), but we shouldn’t gaslight ourselves into believing we should somehow be “beyond” anger. It has its place in a well-balanced psyche. No, the real opponent to forgiveness is bitterness. Bitterness is anger that’s gone past its sell-by date; the time has passed, there’s nothing useful to be done with it, and if you swallow it down for too long, it will make you sick. Entirely appropriate anger can turn into bitterness, a form of self-injury, and then it’s nothing but self-inflected suffering. Bitterness, then, can be seen as the rotting leftovers of past anger, or angers, a residual feeling that persists long after the inciting events have passed, and there’s nothing productive left to do with them.

Most of the time, when we talk about a need for forgiveness, we’re really talking about a need to get rid of that bitter aftertaste. There can be very good reasons for not wanting to let things go, or to admit that the time has past to do anything about them. But let’s start by looking at the consequences first.

The Destructive Cycle of Bitterness

When unresolved, bitterness is a corrosive emotion that correlates with depression, behavioral problems and difficulties maintaining social supports. People don’t want to be around bitter people, which then gives the bitter person more reasons for bitterness, because the original cause of their bitterness may honestly not have been their fault. This cycle is a particularly insidious trap of rumination and resentment that compounds the problem and prevents a person from moving forward. It reminds me of Dante’s picture of Hell as a frozen block of ice rather than fire. It becomes a form of self-injury, as the afflicted person continuously re-lives the pain and anger of past events voluntarily, unable to break free from the grip of these negative emotions. At least flashbacks aren’t something a person chooses to do to themselves.

Frenemies to Trauma

It’s much easier to recognize that we’re hurting ourselves by holding onto some feeling than it is to know what to do with it. Consider the subtle pain of being ghosted by a close friend. The silence left behind can be so confusing, and as I said in the blog about sexual abuse, often “the confusion is the injury.” So anger steps in to protect us from the vulnerability and pain, but then once the days stretch on, it shifts subtly into bitterness. From frenemies sending mixed signals to less ambiguous questions of an assault, it’s never just about what we should do but what something means. Such as with infidelity, one act or piece of information can change the meaning of your memories, and turn them against you. It’s perfectly reasonable to think that another act or understanding could change them back, or at least turn them in a better direction. If we can just figure out what to do now, maybe we can change the meaning of every event. And I think that’s true, just not in the way that your bitterness whispers in your ear.

Each situation presents unique challenges to the forgiveness process. I certainly can’t claim that one size fits all. In fact one of my catchphrases is that “one size may fit everyone, but poorly.” Still, I do think if we clear up the picture, we can see how every unique situation may point us in the same direction.

What forgiveness isn’t

First let’s be clear. Forgiveness isn’t ignoring a problem and setting yourself up for future injury. This is just poor boundaries. Part of the value of anger is that, appropriately used, it’s protective and motivates action. However, in the real world, that action may not be sitting down and having a good-faith conversation where everything turns out to be a simple misunderstanding.  

A significant part of the forgiveness process must be knowing that you’re safe, or that you at least actually understand the danger. This is where we learn our boundaries, where we can go and what we can do to protect ourselves. Certainly living in a bunker to keep from being hurt, or attacking everyone at the first sign of threat, are just as unhealthy as getting walked on. So we work on our boundaries. (Setting limits diplomatically.) There are various ways people go about determining how to establish boundaries with people who’ve hurt them, such as a “three strikes and you’re out” policy or, as is discussed in DBT, using a wise-mind thinking process to predict someone’s future behavior merely based on their past behavior, not our desires or trusting their word alone.

What Forgiveness Is

I’ve taken a hint from Gestalt Therapy and created a very simple and practical definition of forgiveness that works for the religious as well as the atheist. “Forgiveness is believing that something can be healed.” That’s it. If you’ll permit me at least the use of a religious metaphor, believe it can be healed, and the injury isn’t something frozen in Dante’s Hell. If it can be healed, you don’t have to be defined by your injury. If you can be healed, you’re not frozen in Hell forever.

As hard as it actually may be to act on, this is a clear proactive step that, religion aside, starts with a simply choosing a commitment of faith. I say choosing a commitment because yes, if you want to commit to the frozen bitterness being your entire world for eternity, you can certainly make that happen. If you want to be free, you can certainly make that happen as well, but it does take a small act of faith. Believing in something you haven’t seen, healing, just long enough to start to make the slightest move toward it. Watch yourself for that tiniest bit of progress, and do more of that. No, not easy, but simple.

In Dante’s Hell, the gates were broken down and presumably all the trapped souls could leave any time they wanted, but none of them ever moved toward the door.  It is the belief in the possibility of healing and a commitment to moving past the anger and bitterness that once served as protectors against further injury. 

Embracing the Future

The definition of emotional baggage is living in the past, and the trap of bitterness keeps us from moving into the future. Only there can we find closure. It is entirely possible to find some new way of thinking that entirely changes the world even more dramatically than the injury did, by creating it. Not from revenge or trying to pray down a plague of locusts on someone, but by focusing on what we can create in our own futures. Perhaps we could not defend ourselves or resist things that happened to us in the past, but we can certainly defend ourselves and demonstrate resistance to those memories that would attack us now, by improving the future. As has been said, living well is the best revenge.