Mission Yearbook: Forgiveness can be elective while recovering from trauma

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Trauma psychotherapist Amanda Ann Gregory, whose book “You Don’t Need to Forgive: Trauma Recovery on Your Own Terms” was recently published, told the hosts of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” during a recent episode that people who’ve experienced trauma can extend elective forgiveness if that’s what’s best for their recovery.

“Can forgiveness benefit them? Absolutely it can. It can be a part of their healing journey,” Gregory told “A Matter of Faith” hosts the Rev. Lee Catoe and Simon Doong. “But it doesn’t need to be there, and I think that’s kind of a sticking point for some people — the fact that forgiveness can be elective, it can be optional.”

Listen to the episode here.

Definitions for forgiveness vary for those participating in trauma therapy, Gregory said. One is “if you get to the point where you feel apathetic about your offender or your abuser — you don’t wish them well, you don’t wish them harm — that’s forgiveness,” Gregory said. “But there are other people who say you need to love them, and you need to wish them well. If you don’t, you have failed at forgiveness. That is such a hard message to get.”

“How do I know when I’m there? A lot of these are still question marks. We haven’t narrowed this down,” Gregory said, “and I think that makes it so much harder to know in trauma recovery what we are working for when forgiveness comes up.”

That can be especially true in faith-based communities, Doong said, where “forgiveness is a place you should get to. We think that’s the moral standard someone needs to reach. If we’re not getting there, then there’s something wrong with them, when actually there’s something wrong with the situation. We have to not put the onus on the person who’s trying to recover.”

To make things more complicated, “we sometimes inadvertently perpetuate shame,” Gregory said. “If we’re saying to survivors, ‘You need to forgive’ and they can’t, then we say, ‘It’s the moral high ground. Good people forgive.’”

“But there are so many reasons why trauma survivors struggle to forgive, or maybe can’t forgive,” Gregory said. “That forgiveness process might still be difficult, absolutely. I’m not saying it’s easy.” Trauma survivors “need to feel they are safe enough to forgive,” Gregory said, and that includes both physical safety and emotional safety. They also need to have a sense of self-worth to be able to forgive. “If I’m in shame, it’s going to be tough to forgive my offender because I can’t see the value of myself, and so it’s going to be hard to empathize with them. There are things that survivors need in this process that I think people just aren’t aware of.”

Catoe said it’s spiritual bypassing or even gaslighting to offer advice like “just trust God” or “give it to God” to a trauma victim. “It may be the only thing they know to say, but it does bring harm,” he said. “Who’s saying you don’t trust God in these moments?”

“What I tell people — and you usually can’t go wrong with this — is if somebody you know is a survivor or is just contemplating forgiveness, and you want to be helpful, ask them” what they need, Gregory said. “They may not know, but at least they know you’re not the person who’s going to tell them what to do.”

A recovering person’s anger “can actually be so vital in trauma recovery and emotional processing,” Gregory said. “When we are the loved one of someone going through this, it’s devastating because we witness it, and we want it to go away. We want to fix it.”

For the person in recovery, Gregory said feeling safe can mean “feeling safe enough with a therapist” or “feeling safe enough to go out into the world.”

“A lot of times, survivors will need to lean into their faith and explore forgiveness and other things,” said Gregory, who has invited rabbis, priests and pastors into therapy sessions “to be that support system and talk about forgiveness to help the survivor navigate that.” New episodes of “A Matter of Faith: A Presby Podcast” drop each Thursday. Listen to previous editions here.

Mike Ferguson, Editor, Presbyterian News Service (Click here to read original PNS Story)
 

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Donald McKim, Writer/Editor, Theology, Formation & Evangelism, Interim Unified Agency
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Loving God, we are mindful that you have called your people to sit together in the kingdom of God. We are thankful for new ministries within our midst that give witness to that calling. Amen.