i’m so bored with this insistence that you can’t truly recover from trauma if you don’t forgive your abuser. tbh it doesn’t even make sense, because how does that forgiveness help me? if i need to “forgive” anyone it’s myself, bc all the self-blame does more to stall my recovery than refusing to forgive my rapist ever could.
i mean part of the problem is the way people conflate lack of forgiveness with hatred, but the idea that all negative feelings damage the self doesn’t help. i’m okay with nursing a little hatred. it doesn’t hurt me. it doesn’t hurt the people i love. all i’ve done is taken some negative feelings and directed them at a deserving target. i don’t have to forgive to recover, and my rapist doesn’t deserve my forgiveness anyway.
"if i need to “forgive” anyone it’s myself, bc all the self-blame does more to stall my recovery than refusing to forgive my rapist ever could."
I’m highlighting this bit because I’ve been attacked (rather viciously, might I ad) in the past for mentioning to rape victims that forgiving themselves in part of the healing process, because people associate forgiveness with guilt and use that concept to imply that I’m saying rape survivors are somehow to blame for their attack. OF COURSE that’s not what I mean, and if you are someone who hears “forgive yourself.” and assume it means “you’re to blame, but you need to let it go!” then your understanding of forgiveness is a shallow and inaccurate one.
Samanticshift did a great job of laying out why I tell survivors of any kind of abuse or trauma to forgive themselves: because self-blame, self-doubt, and self-hate are often a symptom of traumatic events and forgiving yourself, which often DOES include recognizing your LACK of blame in said event, is an act of self-care and a vital part of healing and working through that pain.