Healing Without Forgiveness: My Journey Through Trauma Recovery

by Amanda Gregory

Listen to Executive Director Gabriel Nathan read this post aloud:

At age 33, I feared that I was a sociopath.

I didn’t love people or seek to be loved by them. When they left me, I didn’t miss them; when they touched me, I couldn’t feel them; when they died, I didn’t grieve. I had no secure attachments, not to myself nor anyone else. I must be a sociopath. What else could explain my cold heart? My anxiety became so torturous that I needed to know one way or another.

I completed a whole battery of psychological tests, which reported that I was a survivor of complex trauma as a result of the physical and emotional neglect that I experienced throughout my childhood. The psychologist told me that I had a severe case of avoidant attachment, generalized anxiety, and dissociation. How could this be? I wasn’t physically or sexually abused; I was simply ignored. My childhood wasn’t that bad.

A Neglectful Childhood

My parents rarely spoke to me. I was left alone to raise myself. When I was sick, I took pills that I found in the drawers. When I was hungry, I ate dry, uncooked food that I hoarded in the backs of cupboards. When I was lonely, I created imaginary people in fantasy worlds who adored me. When my parents couldn’t ignore me, they treated me as an inconvenience.

I was denied food, warm clothing, a clean home, medical care, academic support, and, most of all, love. Instead of being stuck with consistent, pervasive pain, I became an expert on dissociation. When I didn’t have enough food to eat, my body shut down, so I didn’t feel the hunger pangs. When I didn’t have warm clothes, my body went numb, so I didn’t feel the sting of the cold. When I was ill, I didn’t feel much pain at all. Dissociation helped to protect me, but it also left me feeling as if I did not physically or emotionally exist in the world; it made it difficult for me to know when I was seriously ill or injured, and it prevented me from connecting with others. I went through the motions of life mechanically, as if I were not fully alive, but not yet dead.

I had no safe, healthy, or capable adult in my life to act as my attachment figure, the foundation upon which children build relationships. It was as if I were building a house on loose gravel as opposed to sturdy concrete. As an adult, I tried to build a house on this shaky foundation, which never worked. How was I supposed to know how to love or be loved when my parents couldn’t love me? I couldn’t.

People tend to focus on the impact of childhood physical and sexual abuse and downplay the effects of emotional abuse and neglect. I learned that this is a mistake. No one type of child abuse is worse than another because trauma isn’t about experiences themselves; it’s about the impact of those experiences or lack thereof. The first step in my trauma recovery was acknowledging that my childhood was abusive and it had a significant adverse effect on me. My childhood was, in fact, that bad.

Do I Need to Forgive?

Over the next five years, I began intense trauma therapy. I participated in EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy, attachment therapy, somatic experiencing, internal family systems therapy, and animal-assisted therapy. I engaged in support groups, took psychiatric medication, and embraced my realization that I was not a sociopath but a trauma survivor. I made significant progress. I noticed a decrease in my anxiety, hypervigilance, and dissociation as well as an increase in self-worth, feelings of safety, and ability to connect with others. Then, I came across one of the most significant obstacles in my recovery: forgiveness.

During my recovery, I experienced intense confusion, anger, betrayal, and grief directed at my parents. My treatment team told me this was healthy, and I needed to explore and feel these emotions to process them and heal. I did, and these emotions became less intense. Yet, they were never entirely gone. They would reemerge as less severe, but still present. Was it possible for these emotions to completely dissolve and never return? Could I one day think of my parents and feel content, neutral, or even love? Forgiveness is widely recognized as a means to achieve emotional peace. If I didn’t forgive my parents, would I be denying myself peace?

“Do I need to forgive my parents to make more progress in my recovery?” I asked my therapist.

“What do you think?” asked my therapist, which is the typical response of a therapist who’s trained never to give advice. But I needed an answer, so I asked other clinicians.

“Yes, if you can forgive, you should. It will improve your life and strengthen your relationships,” said a marriage and family therapist.

“I can’t say for sure. I’ve had clients who forgave and those who didn’t, and I honestly haven’t noticed a difference in treatment outcomes,” said a trauma therapist.

“Absolutely. Forgiveness is the key to healing. You cannot truly heal without forgiveness. I encourage all my clients to forgive,” said a Christian counselor.

“I think it all depends on what the client needs. I’ve had many clients who didn’t forgive, and they made great progress in therapy,” said a psychologist.

“Everyone needs to forgive. Holding grudges isn’t good for mental or physical health,” said a child therapist.

“If forgiveness were a proven cure-all, we’d recommend it to every patient. As you know, nothing in psychology is all-or-nothing,” said a psychiatrist.

There was no consensus among them. How could that be? How could they not know? As a trauma survivor, how could I not know? I needed an answer.

I spent the next three years researching forgiveness from the perspectives of psychology, sociology, philosophy, and religion as it applies to trauma survivors in recovery. I interviewed mental health clinicians, scholars, religious leaders, social advocates, and forgiveness therapy practitioners. I listened as trauma survivors shared their own perceptions, experiences, and struggles with forgiveness. I learned that forgiveness should be considered an elective, not a requirement, in trauma recovery, and when it is not, it can cause harm.

When Forgiveness Harms 

“She’s your mother,” said a family member. “You need to forgive her so that we can move on.”

“If I forgive her, yet I never speak to her again, would that satisfy you?” I asked.

“That’s not forgiveness,” she responded.

“What you’re describing isn’t forgiveness, it’s reconciliation, not forgiveness. They are not the same.”

“Well, in that case, you need to do both. It would make things easier for all of us?”

She was right; it would make things easier for her, my parents, and my entire family. But it wouldn’t have made things easier for me. My family wanted me to forgive my parents, not for my benefit, but for their own comfort. If I forgave, they would not need to acknowledge or change our family dynamics that contributed to the abuse of children. These dynamics would continue, exposing me to more harm.

Many people encourage survivors to forgive, thinking it’s for their benefit, but if you look closer, it could be for their benefit. Some people use forgiveness as a weapon to harm, silence, or police trauma survivors, or to, in fact, center and prioritize the interests of offenders rather than those of survivors themselves, under the guise of moral virtue. This can put survivors at risk.

I knew a man whose wife physically abused him for five years. One day, he left the family home and filed for divorce. His wife profusely and publicly apologized, sending him texts and emails, leaving voicemails, and creating multiple public social media posts in which she admitted her wrongdoing and promised to change. Paul did not respond to her, and he continued with the legal proceedings.

“She’s apologized, what more do you need?” texted Paul’s friend. “Can’t you just forgive her?

“She really wants to work this out,” said his mother. “Can you give her a second chance?”

I learned that forcing, pressuring, or even strongly encouraging survivors to forgive their abusers can sabotage trauma recovery by overriding or compromising their feelings of safety, reinforcing damaging gender roles and societal inequalities, hindering or attempting to repress the need to feel, express, and process emotions such as anger, and promoting shame. As imposing forgiveness upon trauma survivors often does more harm than good, I discovered that a better alternative is to consider elective forgiveness.

Embracing Elective Forgiveness

Elective, as opposed to required forgiveness, was a better option for me as it created an environment where forgiveness was no longer an obligatory component of my trauma recovery. Embracing elective forgiveness gave me the agency to explore, discover, accept, ignore, oppose, or withhold forgiveness in my recovery. Once I took the goal of forgiving my parents off the table, I could lean into the experiences I needed to have to heal. I needed to feel safe in relationships, so I started to take risks by attaching to a cat and then to people. I slowly expressed emotional vulnerability to a few friends and allowed them to provide me with empathy, attunement, and acceptance. This felt strange as it was new, but as I kept doing it, it started to feel more comfortable. I needed to grieve as I began allowing myself to feel anger and sadness, mourning all that I had lost. I needed to develop self-worth and overcome shame. I discovered that I have a value that I don’t need to prove to anyone. If they couldn’t see and accept my worth, like my family couldn’t, they shouldn’t be in my life. This realization came slowly as I was able to compare those who could see my value and those who couldn’t. Receiving a brief text message from a friend who was checking in on me or letting me know that they were thinking of me was a stark contrast from those who claimed to love me, yet I haven’t heard from them in years. Instead of chasing or waiting for those who didn’t value me, I leaned into those who did. This pivot allowed me to establish safety, challenge my shame, and build self-worth.

Instead of trying to forgive, I focused on doing what I needed to recover from trauma. This neutral approach helped me resist those who pressured me to forgive, where they be family members, church leaders, clinicians, or society as whole. I was able to focus on my needs with patience, compassion, and acceptance. I gave myself permission to both forgive and not forgive my parents. This freedom opened up the space that I needed in my recovery.

Forgiveness was not a part of my trauma recovery journey, and it may never be. I might never forgive my parents. On the other hand, I could wake up one day and find that I have forgiven them. I haven’t focused on forgiveness thus far, and I’ve made significant progress.

​EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR: Gabriel Nathan | EDITOR: Evan Bowen-Gaddy | DESIGN: Leah Alexandra Goldstein | SITE ORIGINATOR: Bud Clayman

See Related Recovery Stories: Anxiety, Mental Health First Person Essays, Trauma