forgiving an abusive parent

Post Reply New Topic

ok, i know they say that forgiveness is necessary for a person to move past something painful in their lives. i've been hearing this for years. my problem is--how does one do this? as in, exactly what steps do i need to take to be able to achieve that? because no one seems to be able to tell me how.

i've been angry for so long, and my father has been so completely unapologetic and absent for so long, that i don't see how forgiveness is possible. i've tried to put it behind me. i've tried "giving it back" to him, as they say.

but i still hate his ******* guts. i still want to see him in the ground. i can't help but see, every day, the negative impact he's had on my life in so very many ways, and i don't know how i'm supposed to stop blaming him for that, or to find some way to just "accept" it.

for over a decade i've have been going to various therapists, as well as psychiatrists (i'm also bipolar), and working on repairing the damage he's done to my psyche. my father destroyed any hope i had of ever having any real self esteem. it doesn't matter how hard i challenge myself, what i accomplish, what i overcome in my life--i can't take pride in any of it, or feel any sense of self-worth because of it. no matter how many positive mantras i say to myself, how many "exercises" i complete to help me build self-esteem, it just doesn't stick. none of it sticks. it's like i am only mentally capable of believing negative things about myself, no matter how hard i try to believe otherwise. i feel like, despite all my work over the years, i haven't even managed to make a dent in my self-hatred. and it's all because of him. how the **** am i supposed to forgive that? i fail to see how that helps.

i know they say that the forgiveness is not for the other person's sake, it supposed to be for your own, so you can stop being angry. i know that intellectually, but i can't feel it. i can say "i forgive my dad" til i'm blue in the face and i still won't feel it's true. i still won't stop being angry and hating him.

does anyone have any experience with dealing with anger towards an abusive parent, and if so did you manage to forgive them?

....and if so, how?

I like this perspective.Personally I found it a lot easier to forgive my father after he died.


Desmond Tutu on Forgiveness

Talk on Forgiveness

by Desmond Tutu

To forgive is not just to be altruistic. It is the best form of self-interest. It is also a process that does not exclude hatred and anger. These emotions are all part of being human. You should never hate yourself for hating others who do terrible things: the depth of your love is shown by the extent of your anger.

However, when I talk of forgiveness I mean the belief that you can come out the other side a better person. A better person than the one being consumed by anger and hatred. Remaining in that state locks you in a state of victimhood, making you almost dependent on the perpetrator. If you can find it in yourself to forgive then you are no longer chained to the perpetrator. You can move on, and you can even help the perpetrator to become a better person too.

But the process of forgiveness also requires acknowledgement on the part of the perpetrator that they have committed an offence. I don’t like to talk about my own personal experience of forgiveness, although some of the things people have tried to do to my family are close to what I’d consider unforgivable. I don’t talk about these things because I have witnessed so many incredible people who, despite experiencing atrocity and tragedy, have come to a point in their lives where they are able to forgive. Take the Craddock Four, for example. The police ambushed their car, killed them in the most gruesome manner, set their car alight. When, at a TRC hearing, the teenage daughter of one of the victims was asked: would you be able to forgive the people who did this to you and your family? She answered, “We would like to forgive, but we would just like to know who to forgive.” How fantastic to see this young girl, still human despite all efforts to dehumanise her.

- Desmond Tutu

Archbishop Desmond Tutu was the chairman of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). The TRC was created by Nelson Mandela’s Government of National Unity in 1995 to help South Africans come to terms with their extremely troubled past. It was established to investigate the violations that took place between 1960 and 1994, to provide support and reparation to victims and their families, and to compile a full and objective record of the effects of apartheid on South African society.

Write Spirit - Home | Contact

The acknowledgment of the perpetrator is the tough part but like a therapist said to me once-sometimes you have to give yourself closure. For me forgiving my son's father is I'm not going to let you live in my head any longer.

i understand what you're saying, but what i'm asking for is specific steps to take. the intellectual part of it i get already. i just can't do it. i don't know how to "let go" of my anger and hatred? i need instructions, like do a), b), and c) and then you will have achieved forgiveness. are there such instructions out there? i have tried everything ever suggested by a therapist, but it doesn't work. it's just an intellectual process that doesn't change in the slightest the way i actually feel. i can't seem to bridge the two.

I honestly don't know. Who says you can't go on? Maybe it happens along the way.

There was something else Tutu said on TV that I liked better. To paraphrase-that forgiveness is not telling the person that what they did was alright but that when someone wrongs you-you have the "right" to retribution. That's not always possible. Forgiveness is telling the person-I am relinquishing my right to retribution because this is making me stuck and I want to move on. I'll try to find it on YouTube.

You don't have to forgive.

Forget all this nonsense about being the "bigger person" by forgiving. None of that is really true. While you're at it, forget what other people tell you. Most of that is worthless.

From someone who has been in a similar situation, the only thing that helped me was accepting that they were weak. Accepting that this person had become a hate filled monster and that while she didn't really deserve any kind of forgiveness she was incapable of understanding or even realizing the things she had done. Once I accepted that she was a very pitiable person I had to forgive her. Not to would be like holding a grudge against a dog that never stopped peeing on the rug. She doesn't get it and she can't be trained.

She may be shallow and cruel, but when I look at what she has done to herself it is hard to hate her for what she has done to me. Hate has swallowed her and destroyed her and knowing that I have come to a point in my life where I can prevent it from doing the same to me.

Do not forgive him for what he has done. Forgive him for what he has become. If you understand how he became what he is not only can you avoid it but you can forgive him for not being able to.

I apologize for the length of my post.

It can be a long process.
It must be something that you determineto do. C.S. Lewis once wrote that he had been saying he forgave someone for something he did but it took forty years of saying that every night during prayer that he finally felt it. There are some things I find that I need to repeat forgiving for because on remembering I get mad again. And so I forgive again by determination and remind myself that there are many, many things that people forgive me for.

The few people I know who refuse to forgive are very hard people to be around. They are so focused on their pain that they can't see how they are hurting people around them by neglecting other people's needs and being snappy and ungrateful.

Once I went to help with housework of a lady in our church who was ill. She spent a lot of time griping about how the other people in the church weren't being helpful at all. After her unpleasant rant was done she moved on to the entire history of how the American government had screwed the Indians and then her evil father. So while I was washing the dishes she finally ran down long enough for me to say something and I gently asked her to pray for one of the ladies who had broken her foot that week, and another lady who's mother had died recently, and another who had to move because of her apt neighbor burning her kitchen and another whose child had run away etc. She said absolutely nothing to that and we moved onto other topics. But when I saw her a week later, she thanked me for showing her that she had been unjust in her accusations. And that surprised me, because I had not known she was capable of gratitude and had not expected any.

My mother told me time and time again not to ask someone for what they will not give you. That advice has kept me sane through a lot of situations. If someone can't give me affirmation or mercy, I'm not going to ask for it.

sometimes I think it is me that can't feel anything other than negatively. I have often thought that people could 'help' me, or give me love or gratitude or hope or comfort or something they seemed to give to each other. Only these days I am starting to understand that what ever it is that people give to each other, I can't feel it given to me, I can only feel the lack of having it.

Now, to forgive my parents, I had to do an 8th and 9th step as part of my AA recovery that took me three years with seveal sponsors and a cross country trip (by Greyhound Bus -gack!-) to finally pull off. All I had to do was keep myself from creating more problems until my parents finally passed away and I was clear! I lived half a continent away, so that was actually do-able. When they passed, I still didn't know I was autistic, so they never knew, and just thought I was the worst willfull and disobedient child, ever.

Now I realize that I have a lot of emotional needs, but am coming to the conclusion that I don't have the capacity to FEEL getting those needs met. Just something I don't have, even though I feel the need, I can't feel the satisfaction. So it isn't that I don't receive it from people, it is that I CAN'T FEEL IT when I do. Not knowing this, I lash out at those who are stedily feeding me what works for other people. I blame them and accuse them of not 'caring' and not giving me what I can see them give to others. But now I am starting to see that it is me, not them.

on another note; when I gain some hard worked for thing, successfully finishing a project, doing a good job at work, graduation, getting a degree or certificate, I don't feel any satisfaction or whatever it is people do that sort of thing for. I have come to understand that I am to be denied that by my physiolog, too. I try not to look for fulfillment anymore, and find that all the reasons mankind has for living is absent in me.

wow, this was supposed to be uplifting and hopeful, but the truth of it is, even when you know about it, it sucks.

along those lines-when I was drinking I felt like my family rejected me because of it (so of course I drank more). Once my head was clear I realized that I was the one who was shutting them out.

I agree with CWhite978 and Victor.

Plus I'd like to add that I think forgiveness is one of those things that you can't think about on an intellectual level too much. It's like you are trying too hard to forgive your dad because you think you should do it. First thing is to stop trying so hard. It will happen naturally when you are truly emotionally past the whole ordeal; the fact that you find it hard to forgive suggests that although intellectually you might be ready for granting forgiveness, emotionally you aren't. And that's ok, there's nothing wrong with that. You will do what you will do when you are ready for it.

It does help to look at reality, though. If your dad shows no willingness to change or apologize, there really isn't a need to forgive him. There may be some things you will have to accept, like your dad being weaker than you'd like him to be, and these will come when you are emotionally ready to accept that.

So all I can offer is to try not to think about it so much. If possible, spend time away from your dad, to minimize the emotional impact his continued presence would have in your life. That way, after time has passed, you may one day reflect back on how things used to be, and can evaluate for yourself how you feel about your dad at that point. Now simply might not be the right time.

First, let me strongly state that what I am about to say is NOT an attempt at proselytization. You don't have to buy the whole package to get the technique to work.

I also had difficulty forgiving my parents and by extension others who I felt had wronged me or mine. I was a very angry person. And I'm really not anymore and what they say about being for you is true... my life is much sweeter and more relaxed now.

The way I learned to work with and through the bitter poisonous resentment and pain was through the techniques taught in Buddism. They have many, many step-by-step techniques, very clear, very detailed, and the support for coming into a better relationship with anger. The techniques are based in both analytical and experiential meditation. They assume a certain amount of intelligence, as opposed to blind faith.

You've already got the first step... a basic aversion to the experience of feeling angry. You've noticed what thinking feeds and supports that physical and mental pain and you want to stop it. Literally, you want liberation from it, to be free of that hell.

The transformation won't be overnight, but it is very do-able. Many, many of my fellow students have released a tremendous amount of fury, self-hatred, and loathing through the techniques. You've been practicing anger for at least 29 years, so it's pretty deeply ingrained and will be hard to turn away from. But it's served its purpose and it's time to realize more of your potential as a kind, loving, compassionate person.

Forgiving someone doesn't mean excusing or forgetting what they did. It doesn't mean you don't speak up. It just means you stop helping them hurt you.

I'd encourage you to check into the understanding and techniques that Buddhism has for working with the negative emotions. I'm most familiar with Zen and Tibetan Gelugpa traditions... the Tibetan Gelug (the Dalai Lama's tradition) study the lam-rim or stages of the path and have very clear step-by-step instructions to help develop a more appreciative understanding of other's kindness. I personally didn't do well with the "all my kind mothers" series of meditations due to my history of abuse and would rec'd the practice of rejoicing in the kindness of others. After about 5 years of practice, one day I finally got what a tortured, suffering person my mother had been and forgiveness was automatic. Not that I liked her any better, not that I didn't continue to get angry with her manipulations, but I was free of my own internal torture.

To begin, read some of Pema Chodron's stuff... When Things Fall Apart or Start Where You Are perhaps. Everyday Zen if it's still out there. If it strikes a chord then I trust you'll find what you need... there are many meditation groups and sangha centers.

And what you do now has nothing to do with what your father does or does not acknowledge. What you do now is how you care for your precious human life, a life that can be of enormous benefit to others.

Desmond Tutu said that, not me. I actually agree with you on that one.

I don't think "therapy" actually works at all - unless there isn't a real problem in the first place.